Christy did a paper on The Emotionally Healthy Church by Peter Scazzero and here are some excerpts that are kind of like cliff notes. This book discusses emotional health and its place in the process of discipleship and ministry leadership.
- Derek
Chapter one: The Leader sets the direction for the church.
Peter Scazzero wrote that his personal life was hurting and yet he pushed through, denying the hurt, bitterness and anger that resulted from broken relationships. He had been betrayed by people he loved and, because so much of his time and energy went into the church he worked at, his marriage was crumbling. Because of false belief he had about how Christians should react to conflict, he neglected confronting troublesome people in his ministry. As a result, his ministry was hurting.
When he allowed God to change him, he began living his life honestly, ministering out of who he was and not by what he could do. He began to see positive changes in his church as well. The leader’s lifestyle serves as a model that is passed down to his family and all those who minister with him. The Leader’s actions speak louder than his words.
Chapter two: Discipleship needs to deal with emotional health.
Leaders sometimes are not able to apply what they teach to their own lives. They can get so involved in their ministry that their personal life, as well as their family suffers. Every Christian, no matter what their level of “spiritual maturity” is, needs to find a setting where they can be emotionally vulnerable. They need to be honest with what is really going on inside of them because if the leadership is emotionally healthy, then the church can be emotionally healthy as well.
Chapter three: Spiritual and emotional health go hand in hand.
People want to separate emotional health from ministry. We have decided that emotions are bad and so we do not seek to understand where they are coming from. This is how there can be pastors who are extremely effective in there ministry while there marriage and family life is falling apart. They are not dealing with their heart issues that make their relationships suffer. Ministry is no more spiritual than the rest of our lives. Christians need to deal with the emotional pain and desires that are in their hearts in order to be emotionally healthy.
Chapter four: Inventory of spiritual and emotional maturity
For the principles of: Looking beneath the surface, Breaking the power of the past, Accepting the gifts of limits, Embracing grieving and loss and Making incarnation your Model for loving well, I scored as an emotional adult. I scored as an emotional adolescent on the principle of living in brokenness and vulnerability. This did not surprise me. I know that I have a difficult time with accepting criticism in a health way and being vulnerable with people. I have a strong desire for people’s approval.
I was made keenly aware of my desire for approval this last week as I was preparing to preach a sermon for Homiletics class. No matter how much I reminded myself that any criticism I received would only to serve to help me be a more effective preacher, I felt anxious that I would not “wow” the class. Although in my head, I knew that any criticism I might receive would not change my value as a person, my heart felt that I really needed their approval to feel valuable. This is an area that God has already brought to my attention and I believe I might be finally allowing him to do some spiritual and emotional surgery on me.
Chapter five: Spiritual and emotional maturity requires looking into who we really are.
Scazzero refers to a book called “Glittering Images” by Susan Howatch, about a man who will not allow others to see more than the “Glittering Image” that he has made for himself. In each of us, there is a person we allow others to see, the “glittering image,” that has been polished so that others will see its greatness, and then there is our true selves, which we guard from discovery. Some are more skilled in the art of shining the image than others. In order for emotional growth to occur, we have to allow Jesus to get through that “glittering image” so that real change can occur. This can be an excruciating process.
Chapter six: Our families of origin have had a huge impact on our lives.
Every family, from the healthiest to the most depraved, has failed in some way. Relationships between each family member effects the way we think and feel. For us to strive towards emotional health, we must journey back to the family God gave us and pay attention to negative patterns of thought or action that originated with our family of origin. One agent of healing is reparenting through the church family where God is our father and we are brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, reparenting doesn’t always naturally happen in the church because we are often unaware or unwilling to delve into our family pasts.
Chapter seven: Leaders need to lead out of brokenness and vulnerability.
Our normal reaction to our brokenness is to flee, fight or hide. We flee from our pain by immersing ourselves in some other activity or even ministry to keep from having to face it. We fight because we are angry at the way God has chosen to answer our prayers or has allowed us to face difficulties. We hide by covering up our frailties and focus only on our successes.
God chooses to do great things through our weaknesses. Often, we assume God will use only our talents and areas of expertise to further his kingdom when, in reality, He will use the broken places in ways we would never have imagined. Leaders must be honest about who they really are so that those who follow will learn by example.
Chapter eight: Christians must heed the limits that God has put in our lives.
Whether the limits are small children, age, health or intellect, God gave us limits and expects us to live within them. God gave each of our own lives to live. We need to understand who we are and in what season of life we are in order for us to freely live the life he gave us. Jesus us a great example of living the life God gave him. He had many opportunities to proclaim who he was before it was God’s timing but chose not to. Jesus was tempted to worship Satan in order rule the world but resisted because he knew that God had set limits to how his plan was to be carried out. Likewise we need to understand God’s limits on our lives.
Chapter nine: Grief and loss help us to become more like Christ.
Our cultural tendency is to attempt to ignore or minimize grief. We are uncomfortable with it and so we pretend it isn’t there or do our best to get through it quickly. The result is people who are superficial and unwilling to grow from the tragedies in their lives. If we allow him, God will actually use grief to grow us up into who he created us to be. We need to take the time to fully experience grief and sorrow so God can do the work in us that needs to be done.
In June, I sat at a memorial service for my friend, Bonnie, who had died of cancer and left behind a husband and three small children. I remember stifling sobs, trying to not attract attention to myself. As I reflected later on, I thought about how people in the Easter world treated emotion in the death of a loved one in contrast to how our culture treats it. In the Eastern world, emotion is expressed loudly with much mourning and loud cries but here, we quietly mourn. It is a very private thing, as if we are mourning alone. I wondered, at my friend’s memorial service how many other people were trying hard to not show emotion and how many would go home and cry unashamed. I wonder if it would be better for our psyches if we felt allowed to verbally show our grief.
Bonnie died in June of 2007 and I expect to always be moved emotionally when I think or talk about her. God worked so much in my grief, there were times when I felt his presence so strongly with me, not taking away my grief, but carrying me through it. My plan is to continue walking through the grief process and allow God to use it. Perhaps he will allow me to help others in their journey as well. Chapter 10: Christians need to learn to understand other’s points of view without being lost in them.
Listening is an art. In order for us to begin to understand another’s point of view, we need to listen without judgment. It takes practice to be able to listen to others, consider their concerns seriously, make changes if necessary and not make changes if it is not necessary. People will not listen to what we have to say if we do not listen and try to understand where they are coming from.
