Ministry can be soul crushing work.  Or—it can feed and strengthen one’s soul and provide opportunities for one’s soul to overflow for the benefit of others.  Barton’s book gives both warnings and suggestions for the pastor.

Using Moses as a case study, Barton first explores the dark side of a pastor’s personality, and notes the power of a strong soul to harness the destructive elements of that dark side to work for good.  The dark-side reveals truth, strength, and primal energy that can be used to sustain a pastor through challenging times—as long as it does not govern the pastor’s actions and leadership.  

In a bit of psychologizing, Barton challenges the pastor to examine the life-shaping events that happen early in life to discover what might interfere with ministry—what might need healing.

Another chapter on Moses’ encounter with a burning bush reminds the pastor to slow down, pay attention, and engage the fires that burn—within or without.  Other stories from Moses’ life remind the pastor of the importance of both listening for God and arguing with God—and working on the questions that arise in those engagements—and letting those questions shape the sense of one’s “call.”  Barton asserts that the “call to ministry” is not so much a certainty (perhaps) as a cumulative sense of direction posed by the questions that keep arising in one’s interactions with God.

A pastoral leader must understand the wilderness—from experience and reflection, from trial and error and victory.  The soul is where this wisdom grows.  Another chapter indicates that the soul can be crushed by not honoring one’s limitations—of time, wisdom, energy, stamina, or ability.  The increasing need for escape is one sign of this overextension.

There are also excellent chapters on the pastor as “intercessor” and the pastor as “target.”  Leadership inevitably involves changes that will provoke two backlashes:  the first when a decision is being made, and the second a subversion of the decision once it begins to get rolling.