Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

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Emotionally unhealthy leaders tend to be unaware of what is going on inside them. And even when they recognize a strong emotion such as anger, they fail to process or express it honestly and appropriately. They ignore emotion-related messages their body may send—fatigue, stress-induced illness, weight gain, ulcers, headaches, or depression. They avoid reflecting on their fears, sadness, or anger. They fail to consider how God might be trying to communicate with them through these “difficult” emotions. They struggle to articulate the reasons for their emotional triggers, their overreactions in the present rooted in difficult experiences from their past. Bible Gateway interviewed Peter Scazzero ( @petescazzero) about his book, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World (Zondervan, 2015). Silence, appropriate body posture and above all, emptying the mind through repetition prayer – have been the practices of mystics in all the great world religions. And they form the basis on which most modern spiritual directors guide those who want to draw near to God…Silence is the language God speaks…says Thomas Keating who taught “centering prayer” to more than 31,000 last year. “Keating suggests that those who pray repeat some ‘sacred word’ like God or Jesus.” (Newsweek, January 6, 1992, “Talking to God” p. 44). The God Who is [Already] There Emotional health was powerfully changing people at New Life, but people remained too busy. After a four-month monastic sabbatical in early 2004, Founding Pastors Pete & Geri Scazzero, profoundly transformed by their season of silence and solitude, began introducing the treasures of the contemplative tradition.

Leadership can be a painful journey - especially in a church or ministry that depends on the depth and quality of the relationships within. In Scazzero’s confusion of terms, one must examine one’s present behavior by looking for signs of it in parents, grandparents and other ancestors. His idea is that in finding the negative influences, we might discover what we might have been without such influences and what we might become by discovering them. In other words, if we exhibit lots of anger, we might find a parent or ancestor who was angry to help explain why we are angry and suppose that our “true self” was not an angry person and with that knowledge, reduce the amount of anger we are expressing. The idea is that the expression of anger must not truly be me, but a “false self” acting as me. Without this skill, church teams remain silenced - unable to speak truth and creating the conditions for an environment of frustration, resentment, and judgement. The book is probably best considered in terms of the concepts of diagnosis and cure. In diagnosis we are given a wealth of stories and biographical material to consider. Scazzero shares story after story of woe – church splits, marital strife, bitter pastors, etc…. So what was the problem? Why all this failure? Interestingly, Scazzero lays the blame squarely at the feet of a church culture of “emotional repression” (55). He says, One of the basic assumptions of psychotherapy is that it is emotionally beneficial to be totally transparent and open. In other words, “let it all hang out,” meaning to be completely candid and straightforward, saying whatever you want and condemning whomever you wish, without any need to prove anything.David Sheldon has spent over 50 years studying theology, teaching, and discipling. He received his Bachelor of Arts in History, with an emphasis in Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Early Church history in 1973 from The Ohio State University. He received his Master of Divinity Degree in 1981 from Bethel Theological Seminary in St. Paul, MN. As a result, I was not present with myself, with God, or with others. I saw my sadness as something to be overcome through prayer and Scripture. I would declare, "the joy of the Lord is my strength!" while ignoring the deep cries of my heart. Brennan Manning in his book “The Signature of Jesus” which explicitly gives training for centering techniques has his book endorsed by Max Lucado and Amy Grant. The image of the Christian life as a journey captures our experience of following Christ like few others. Journeys involve movement, action, stops and starts, detours, delays, and trips into the unknown. (P. 97.) That is why the GENOGRAM is one of the core tools in both parts of the Emotionally Healthy Discipleship Course.

While it is called a “Commission,” it is also a commandment. We searched through EHS but did not find any reference to the Great Commission. We are not surprised that there is no reference to the Great Commission, because EHS is a psychologically self-oriented book that encourages readers to focus on self. Every follower of Jesus at some point will confront the Wall—or, as the ancients called it, “the dark night of the soul.” Emotionally healthy spirituality helps provide a (partial) roadmap of both how one goes through the Wall and what it means to begin living on the other side.

The God Who is [Already] There

Secondly, the book minimizes the offensiveness of sin. This is perhaps most strikingly seen in a quotation where he reflects upon a scene in a film. Emotionally healthy leaders see their emotions as invitations, not obstacles to the mission of God. When sadness, anger, or disappointment surfaced from my soul, I did not see them as gifts. As a leader, I saw my emotions as interruptions to "my real work" – moving the church forward and reaching the lost! This appears much more than focusing on my God-given breath. Though some may pursue contemplative as a way to be silent, etc., the origin of all this is ancient Catholic mysticism borrowed from Eastern mysticism in the 4th century and mixed with a Catholic tradition of monasticism. The Contemplative Paradigm Philippians 3:10 is a strong and essential verse regarding experiencing “the fellowship of his sufferings,” as a means of spiritual growth. Psychology or the Bible?