Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul

This book was assigned to me as required reading for a doctoral class. It also falls into my area of study for doctoral research. It's a great read. It's a treasure trove of encouragement for ministers and Christian workers. I highly recommend it.

"We will never growth healthy churches without healthy leaders," claims Lance Witt in his great book Replenish:Leading from a Healthy Soul.Doesn't that sound obvious? Who wouldn't want to lead from a healthy soul? Why then do we find ourselves as leaders running on empty? Or making life decisions that lead to disaster when we know better?That's why this book is so valuable. Replenish not only lays out the challenge to grow healthy churches with healthy leaders, it provides the tools to do so.I am so glad I read this book s-l-o-w-l-y. With its 41 short chapters, it would have been easy to zip through this book. Instead, my pace was a chapter a night followed up the next morning by journaling through the questions each chapter provided. Such a pace provided room for pondering and reflecting, even more applying the lessons learned.After a 3 chapter introduction to re-frame a church leader's focus to one's life in Christ, and not merely one's work for Christ. Replenish covers 4 areas of filling one's soul to overflowing:1. De-toxing Your SoulFrom managing one's image to being addicted to approval to being fatigued, frazzled and fried. Replenish holds the mirror up for a closer look into one's heart, into one's life. Toxins easily and readily attack the soul. These chapters provide an awareness of what's at stake and of the pitfalls ministry can bring to one's own soul development. As Lance writes, "Busyness will not only distract, it will infect. Your busyness will damage your soul."2. Start Here ... Start NowBaby steps begin the way to soul replenishment. Too often we get to AWOL (A Worn Out Life) and are not sure how to navigate our way back to an invigorated life. These initial steps show that simplicity is not simple, but that in discovering the rhythms of leading from a healthy soul one's life can be renewed.3. Sustaining a Lifetime of HealthPowerful part of the book in building spiritual habits that care for one's soul. This was my favorite part of the book as it helped me identify some areas to correct and how to correct them. I loved his Sabbath quote from Lynne Baab, "Sabbath is God's gracious 'five o'clock' whistle' that give me permission to stop and lay down my tools, ready or not." And this gem from Tony Blair, "The art of leadership is not saying yes, it is saying no."4. Building Healthy TeamsMost challenging and most needed part of the book in my life were these chapters, especially Chapter 39: Are Your Systems Vitamins or Toxins? My favorite concept from this section comes from Lance as he states, "Ministry leaders are usually better quarterbacks than coaches." Quarterbacks like to be on the field making plays. Coaches develop players. In ministry the greatest impact is made by coaches.I give Replenish 5 out of 5 stars. Not only was it a great read, it is a great tool for building a healthy soul for leadership. I found the book so valuable I ordered copies for my fellow administrative staff to work through and hopefully to growth through.

I served under Lance Witt during the 90's at Calvary Baptist Church in Las Cruces, NM. First off, I'm not really a book reader. I prefer small chunks of information at a time - like articles. In all honesty, I bought the book to support Lance. When it came I started skimming it and I really couldn't put it down. I speed-read the whole thing in one night -- and I just don't do that sort of thing. Part of it may have been that Lance's voice was in my head as I read it, but mostly the content was just spot-on and so relatable -- and I'm not even a church leader. It's honest, encouraging and challenging. I think any Christian could benefit from Lance's wisdom-by-experience guidance, but I really do think that every church leader should give this a read. I will be recommending it directly to a couple of local churches that I feel could really benefit from Lance's expertise. Buy it!

Lance Witt is one of a kind pastor and mentor. I'd met him for the first time back in 2003 in saddleback church, california. He was for real. Authentic, good listener, and humane. No show off. I'd start paying attention to his teachings and deeds since then whether small groups, preaching or the 40 Days of Purpose Campaign. His book summarized perfectly what is going on in pastor's lifes for the last two decades. We are actuallt facing the worst crisis of integrity in church life. Not because of moral conduct like stealing or cheating but mostly because there are more and more pastor who drift away from a personal relationship with Jesus. Ministry is getting so busy, we do not pay attention to our souls. We are careless and this is costing us our spirituality, family and churches. We are running empty, and Lance really know why and how. This is not just a book to point out problems, it brings real effective solutions to most of us pastors and leaders. I celebrate this and plan to recommend it to everybody I know.

This book was recommended to me by the pastor of our congregation, who herself is an inspiration in humility and determination. This book highlights the importance of leading a healthy prayer life, cleaning up your heart before Jesus in leadership and treating those in our care as precious and not as slave labour and leading them to develop their own relationship with Jesus.This book was a refreshing look at how to focus less on paperwork and programs and focus on taking the time for solitude in the secret place with Jesus. I enjoyed this book very much and it gave me confidence that the time spent in quiet away from the noise of life studying the bible and praying is time well spent. This book is about refocusing and re-prioritising and essentially points to us the children of God remembering and returning to our first love; Jesus, to refresh and replenish our souls.

This book was recommended to me at a conference that was focused on soul care in ministry. After the speaker made referenced a few quotes from this book and my interest was peaked. This book is well written and a simple read with tremendous impact. I felt as if this author was writing about my own story as a read through the chapters. I recommend this book to all pastors in leadership regardless of the stage of life they are ministering in.

This is a simple book to read, and yet so challenging and a must for leaders! So helpful how topical it is and how it speaks into everything scenario you could think of. And each chapter is short in length which helps keep to the point

Excellent read- loved this book, it’s going to be my “go back to read “ highly recommended

This book will inspire and provoke its readers to take inventory of their time/energy and resources. It is so easy to allow the work life, hobbies, habits and the general distractions and the busyness of life to begin to deplete our world. The decline can often be subtle but the eventual impact is destructive. The book is written in bite size chunks that are very easy to grasp and apply. Too outstanding 5/5 books that sit alongside this perfectly are ‘Leading On Empty’ by Wayne Cordeiro and ‘Margin’ by Richard Swenson.

An excellent book especially for those in leadership. The front and back stage analogy in the early chapters is particularly poignant and insightful. Every leader should read this.

Simple and insightful read from someone who's walked the journey. Good book for ministry leaders. Good examples to learn from.