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The Emotionally Healthy Churchby Peter Scazzero (Zondervan, 2003)
Geri Scazzero told her husband, the pastor, “I’m leaving the church.” Pete and Geri were exhausted by the pace and performance expectations of pastoral life. So Geri quit.
When Marshall Shelley and I visited the Scazzeros seven years later, they were still leading New Life Fellowship in Queens, still as intense as other New Yorkers, but not stressed out. Passion had replaced their anxiety, peace had overcome the harried demands to keep up, and the Scazzeros had changed from being performance-driven to purposeful.
The journey that followed Pete and Geri’s crisis moment revealed how churches can feed off a pastor’s hidden hurts and hang-ups. Many of his church’s leaders mirrored Pete’s compulsive drivenness. “The root issues were inside me,” writes Pete. “As go the leaders, so goes the church.” Whether exhibiting busyness, defensiveness, pride, or control issues, emotionally immature leaders produce immature disciples.
On the other hand, discipleship that addresses both spiritual and emotional growth produces healthier, more mature disciples.
The Emotionally Healthy Church uncovers how emotional health either undermines or elevates spiritual maturity. It includes a diagnostic inventory and six traits of emotionally healthy churches, and it offers insight on how to minister “out of who you are, not what you do.” Scazzero discusses how to be emotionally honest, how to know and set personal limits, and how to lead a church toward valuing love over productivity, living over doing.
“We went from being ‘human doings’ to ‘human beings,'” writes Scazzero. “The result has been a rippling effect through the entire church.”
Geri Scazzero no longer feels the need to quit. She, her husband, and her church understand now the difference between ministry’s death-giving hamster wheels and its life-giving pursuits.
Drew Zahn, Stratford, Iowa
Spirituality and Leadershipby Alan E. Nelson (NavPress, 2002)
We’ve entered into “The Goldilocks Age,” Alan Nelson says. The bed of religion is too soft, the bed of technology is too hard, and now we’re looking for something just right. What does this mean for those who lead congregations of these bed hoppers, but who themselves are searching for a better fit for their own souls? And as leaders, how do we lead in this new age of soft spirituality?
The founding pastor of Scottsdale (Ariz.) Family Church, Nelson says there’s a difference between leaders who are spiritual and spiritual leaders. This book is part exegesis of the today’s spiritual climate, and part exhortation to examine your own spiritual condition in light of the times. Some of this you’ve heard before: you can’t lead from position anymore, relationships are key. Authority comes from personal integrity. Stress erodes a moral foundation. But he gives it new language: cultivate “theology of the new.”
In this environment of the new, however, leaders must remember their responsibility to give vision, support, motivation, and direction toward consummation. In other words, by example and encouragement, lead your church to the fit that’s just right.
Doug Shepherd, Rolling Meadows, Illinois
Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.
