The Emotionally Healthy Leader Read online

  Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Finally, Dr. Peter Scazzero’s response answers this timeless search for emotional trauma in his book The Emotionally Healthy Leader. His approach is a tremendous resource with practical, pragmatic ideas that are revolutionary in their approach to reach far beyond the fluff of spiritual clichés to touch the deepest pains in leadership with salve for the soul.

  BISHOP T. D. JAKES, SR.,

  C.E.O., TDJ Enterprises,

  NY Times bestselling author

  Peter Scazzero is one of the world’s authorities on emotional health, and his teachings have had a profound impact. His professional approach, borne of many years of study, combines powerfully with his strong Christian faith to offer new hope to anyone seeking to grow and develop the way they live their life.

  NICKY GUMBEL,

  Holy Trinity Brompton, UK;

  founder of Alpha Course

  The Emotionally Healthy Leader is a profoundly helpful and insightful offering. With remarkable honesty about his own journey, Pete describes key components of healthy Christian leadership, inspiring us to bring our transforming selves to the communities we serve—for the glory of God, for the abundance of our own lives and for the good of many.

  DR. RUTH HALEY BARTON,

  founder and president,

  Transforming Center and author of Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership

  Also by Peter Scazzero

  Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

  The Emotionally Healthy Church

  Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day

  The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Church – Wide Initiative Kit

  The Emotionally Healthy Woman

  (Geri Scazzero with Pete Scazzero)

  The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (EHS) Course (includes The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Course Workbook, The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Course: A DVD Study, and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day)

  Available at www.emotionallyhealthy.org

  ZONDERVAN

  The Emotionally Healthy Leader

  Copyright © 2015 by Peter Scazzero

  ePub Edition © June 2015: ISBN 978-0-310-49458-4

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Scazzero, Peter, 1956-

  The emotionally healthy leader : how transforming your inner life will deeply transform your church, team, and the world / Peter Scazzero.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-310-49457-7 (hardcover, jacketed)

  1. Clergy — Mental health. 2. Religious leaders — Mental health. 3. Christian leadership I. Title.

  BV4398.S295 2014

  253 — dc23

  2015006570

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Scripture quotations marked MSG are from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

  Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations marked NLT are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois. All rights reserved.

  Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book. Also, the names and personal details of some people mentioned in the stories have been changed for reasons of privacy.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover design: Grey Matter Group

  Interior design: Denise Froehlich

  15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 /DCI/ 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Geri

  who taught me the meaning and implications of the word integrity

  CONTENTS

  My Journey through Emotionally Unhealthy Leadership

  CHAPTER 1

  The Emotionally Unhealthy Leader

  Part 1

  The Inner Life

  CHAPTER 2

  Face Your Shadow

  CHAPTER 3

  Lead Out of Your Marriage or Singleness

  CHAPTER 4

  Slow Down for Loving Union

  CHAPTER 5

  Practice Sabbath Delight

  Part 2

  The Outer Life

  CHAPTER 6

  Planning and Decision Making

  CHAPTER 7

  Culture and Team Building

  CHAPTER 8

  Power and Wise Boundaries

  CHAPTER 9

  Endings and New Beginnings

  Afterword

  Implementing EHS in Your Church or Ministry

  Appendix 1

  Characteristics of Churches Transformed by EHS

  Appendix 2

  Rule of Life Worksheet

  Appendix 3

  Genogram Your Family

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  MY JOURNEY THROUGH EMOTIONALLY UNHEALTHY LEADERSHIP

  I grew up in an Italian-American family in a New Jersey suburb just one mile from the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Although we lived within minutes of one of the most diverse cities in the world, our lives were narrowly defined ethnically, socially, and spiritually. When I was about ten, I remember my dad remarking one day that we were Roman Catholics living in a largely WASP town. I was confused because all our friends were Roman Catholic and most of them were Italian. What else could a person be?

  My father was fiercely loyal to the church, but my mom was not. She loved gypsies, fortune-tellers, Tarot card readings, and a variety of other superstitions passed down for generations in her Italian family. When we got sick, for example, the first thing Mom did was call “Fat Josie.” Fat Josie was a medium who prayed some prayers over us to determine if we had the “eyes,” the invisible sign that someone had placed an evil curse on us. She then detailed the necessary steps to remove the “bad luck.”

  My older siblings and I rejected both the church and Italian superstitions in our teens. My parents were devastated when my brother Anthony quit college to join the Unification Church, founded by self-proclaimed messiah Sun Myung Moon. At sixteen, I was already a committed agnostic, or I too may have followed in my brother’s footsteps. Neither of us could have known it at the time, but these early choices set us both on spiritual journeys that continue to this day. My brother remains actively committed to the Unification Church, and I have undergone not just one, but several life-changing conversions.

  A Spiritual Journey with Four Conversions

  When I tell people I have had multiple conversions, I mean it quite literally. In fact, I’ve experienced four dramatic conversions, and each one turned my life in a radically new direction.

  Conversion 1: From Agnosticism to Zealous Christian Leader

  Like many of my friends, I spent most of my teens searching for perfect love in all the wrong places. But everything cha
nged my sophomore year of college when a friend invited me to a concert at a small Pentecostal church near campus. At the end of the concert, the worship leader invited those who wanted to receive Christ to raise their hand. When I tell this story, I often say, “God raised my hand without my permission.” It sure felt that way. When the altar call was given, I bolted out of my seat and ran to the front of the church with both hands raised, praising God. I didn’t know the difference between the Old and New Testaments, but I did know that I was blind, but now I could see. I also knew without a doubt that God had changed me and set his love upon me. Within nine months, I was president of a Christian group of sixty students, teaching and leading out of whatever I’d learned the week before.

  The year was 1976.

  I was so profoundly grateful for the love of Jesus, who lived and died on my behalf, that I could not help but share this great news with anyone who would listen, including my family. My father and I especially had many long spiritual conversations. We were sitting in the living room one weekend when I tried again to share Christ, but he remained skeptical.

  “Pete, if this Christianity and Jesus you are talking about are true,” he said, “then why haven’t I ever heard of this ‘personal relationship’ thing?”

  He paused for a moment, and I could see a mix of anger and sadness on his face as he looked out the living room window. “And why didn’t someone talk to your brother before he destroyed his life . . . before he destroyed our family?” He looked back at me and made a sweeping gesture with his hands. “Where are all these Christians you are talking about? How is it that I’m fifty-six years old and I’ve never met one?”

  I didn’t say anything because I knew the answer. Most Christians, especially those who grew up in evangelical homes, were insulated from our Italian-American world. Although my father later gave his life to Christ, I never forgot that conversation. It ignited a fire in my bones, and I set out to bridge that gap, sharing the gospel with anyone who would listen.

  My career in ministry leadership continued when I joined the staff of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an interdenominational ministry that works with students on university campuses. I traveled around New York City and New Jersey, doing open-air preaching and mobilizing students to share Christ with their friends. In my three years on staff, I witnessed many lives radically changed by Jesus Christ. At the same time, I was developing a burden for the church. I wondered what might happen if the richness and vitality of what I had seen with students could be experienced by people in a local congregation. How might the glory of Christ spread even farther if an entire church could be radically changed and mobilized?

  So off I went to prepare for church leadership, with three years of graduate study at Princeton and Gordon-Conwell seminaries. During that time, I married Geri, a friend of eight years who also was serving full-time with InterVarsity. Shortly after graduation, we moved to Costa Rica for one year of Spanish language study. I had a vision that we would return to New York to start a church that would bridge racial, cultural, economic, and gender barriers.

  When we returned to New York, I served for a year as an assistant pastor in a Spanish-speaking immigrant church and taught in a Spanish seminary. During this time, Geri and I not only perfected our Spanish but were immersed in the world of 2 million undocumented immigrants from around the globe. We became friends with people who had fled death squads in El Salvador, drug cartels in Colombia, civil war in Nicaragua, and implacable poverty in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. It was just the preparation we needed for starting a new church in a working-class, multiethnic section of Queens where more than 70 percent of the 2.4 million residents are foreign born. It also shaped our understanding of the power of the gospel and the church, and how much the largely invisible poor have to teach the prosperous North American church.

  In September 1987, forty-five people attended the first worship service of New Life Fellowship Church. God moved powerfully in those early years, and it wasn’t long before the congregation had grown to 160 people. After three years, we launched a Spanish-speaking congregation. By the end of our sixth year, attendance at the English service had reached 400, and 250 were attending the Spanish service.

  It was an exciting and rewarding experience for a young pastor. People were coming to Christ. The poor were being served in new, creative ways. We were developing leaders, multiplying small groups, feeding the homeless, and planting new churches. But all was not well beneath the surface, especially in my own life.

  Conversion 2: From Emotional Blindness to Emotional Health

  My soul was shrinking.

  We always seemed to have too much to do and too little time to do it. While the church was an exciting place to be, there was no longer any joy in ministry leadership, just an endless, plodding duty of thankless responsibilities. After work, I had little energy left over to parent our daughters or to enjoy being with Geri. In fact, I secretly dreamed of retirement — and I was only in my mid-thirties! I also began to question the nature of Christian leadership. Am I supposed to be miserable and pressured so that other people can experience joy in God? It sure felt that way.

  I struggled with envy and jealousy of other pastors — those with larger churches, nicer buildings, and easier situations. I didn’t want to be a workaholic like my dad or other pastors I knew. I wanted to be content in God, to do ministry in the unhurried pace of Jesus. The question was, How?

  The bottom began to fall out in 1994 when our Spanish-speaking congregation experienced a church split. I will never forget the shock I felt the day I walked into the Spanish service and two hundred people were missing — just fifty remained. Everyone else had left to start another church. People I had led to Christ, discipled, and pastored for years were gone without so much as a word.

  When the split occurred, I accepted all the blame for the problems that led up to it. I tried to follow Jesus’ model of remaining silent when accused, like a lamb going to slaughter (Isaiah 53:7). I repeatedly thought, Just take it, Pete. Jesus would. But I was also full of conflicting and unresolved emotions. I felt deeply wounded and angry at the assistant pastor who had spearheaded the split. Like the psalmist, I was devastated by the betrayal of someone “with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship” (Psalm 55:14). I was full of rage and hate, feelings I couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard I tried to let go and forgive. When I was alone in my car, curse words came out of my mouth almost involuntarily: “He is an @#&%!”

  I was now the “cursing pastor.” I did not have a theology for what I was experiencing. Nor did I have a biblical framework for sadness and grief. Good Christian pastors are supposed to love and forgive people. But that wasn’t me. When I shared my predicament with fellow pastors, they were afraid I was sliding into an abyss of no return. I knew I was angry and hurt, but at a deeper level I remained unaware of my feelings and what was really going on in my interior life. My larger problem now was not so much the aftermath of the split, but the fact that my pain was leaking out in destructive ways, and I couldn’t control it. I angrily criticized the assistant pastor who had left. I told Geri I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a Christian anymore, let alone the pastor of a church! The most helpful counsel I received was a referral to a Christian counselor.

  Geri and I made an appointment and went, but I felt humiliated, like a child walking into the principal’s office. In our sessions, I blamed my problems on anything and everything I could think of — the complexities of life and ministry in Queens, the unrelenting demands of church planting, Geri, our four small children, spiritual warfare, other leaders, a lack of prayer covering. It did not yet occur to me that my problems might have their roots in something to do with me.

  I somehow managed to keep life and ministry going for another year before I finally hit rock bottom. On January 2, 1996, Geri told me she was quitting our church.1 That was the end of any illusions I may have had about my innocence in the mess that had become my life. I notified church elders about Geri’s de
cision and acknowledged my uncertainty about what should happen next. The elders suggested that Geri and I attend a one-week intensive retreat to see if we could sort things out. So we packed our bags and spent five full days with two counselors at a nearby center. My goal for the week was to find a quick way to fix Geri and end our pain so we could then get back to the real business of life and ministry. What I did not anticipate was that we would have a life-transforming encounter with God.

  This was my second conversion and, much like the first, I had the experience of knowing I had been blind and suddenly received my sight. God opened my eyes to see I was a human being, not a human doing, which gave me permission to feel difficult emotions such as anger and sadness. I became aware of the significant impact my family of origin was having on my life, my marriage, and my leadership. Although I initially felt shocked by it all, the awareness also offered me a newly discovered freedom. I stopped pretending to be somebody I was not and took my first steps to be comfortable being Pete Scazzero, with my unique set of strengths, passions, and weaknesses. And Geri and I discovered the importance of love as the measure of maturity and reprioritized our schedules to place our marriage before ministry.2

  However, this second conversion also introduced me to painful realities I could no longer deny. I was an emotional infant trying to raise up mothers and fathers of the faith. There were large areas of my life that remained untouched by Jesus Christ. For example, I didn’t know how to do something as simple as being truly present or listening deeply to another person. While I was a senior pastor of a large, growing church who had been trained in two leading seminaries, attended the best leadership conferences, and been a devoted follower of Christ for seventeen years, I was stunted emotionally and spiritually.

  For nearly two decades, I had ignored the emotional component in my spiritual growth and relationship with God. It didn’t matter how many books I might read or how much I devoted myself to prayer, I would remain stuck in repeated cycles of pain and immaturity unless and until I allowed Jesus Christ to transform aspects of my life that were deep beneath the surface.