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

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Finally, Dr. Peter Scazzeros 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 clichs 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 worlds 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 servefor 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.

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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

Endings and New Beginnings

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 brothers 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, Ive 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 changed 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 didnt 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 Id learned the week before.