Peter Scazzero - Emotionally Healthy Discipleship

M y discipleship journey began at age nineteen when a friend invited me to a Christian concert, and I gave my life to Christ. I immediately joined the Christian fellowship on our university campus and attended Bible studies three to four times a week. I devoured Scripture for two to three hours a day. I shared the gospel with anyone and everyone and participated in every available discipleship program I could find.

The best word to describe me at that time was voraciousI was spiritually insatiable! I couldnt get enough of learning about Jesus. I was discipled in how to study Scripture, pray, share the grace of the gospel clearly, discover and use my spiritual gifts, and grow in Gods heart for the poor and marginalized in the world.

After graduating college, I taught high school English and then joined the staff of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a ministry on university and college campuses. Those parachurch days added to my practical ministry skills and expanded my knowledge of Scripture.

I was so hungry for God that I began memorizing whole books of the BibleEphesians, Colossians, Philippians. But that was little compared to one of my coworkers who memorized the entire sixteen chapters of Romans!

This deep hunger to learn more led me to two leading seminaries in the United States, Princeton Theological Seminary and GordonConwell Theological Seminary. I loved every moment of my three years there. I learned to study the Bible in its original languages, along with learning church history, systematic theology, and hermeneutics. It was a tremendous gift to learn from and be challenged by some of the best theologians in North America.

Six months before graduation, Geri and I were married. Then we moved to Costa Rica to learn Spanish. We moved in with a family of ten children for a year. None of them spoke English, and we didnt speak any Spanish. After our year, we returned to the United States. Then, in September 1987, we started New Life Fellowship Church in a working-class, multiethnic, primarily immigrant section of New York City.

I had leadership and speaking gifts. I loved sharing the gospel and teaching. I was in love with Jesus. And I considered myself rock solid in the faith and a mature believer.

But I was not.

Our first worship service began with just a few people, but God moved powerfully in those early years and the church grew rapidly. Since I spoke Spanish, we began a Spanish congregation in our third year. By the end of the sixth year, there were about four hundred people in the English-speaking congregation, plus another two hundred and fifty in our first Spanish-speaking congregation. We had also planted two other churches.

God taught us a great deal about prayer and fasting, healing the sick, spiritual warfare, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and hearing Gods voice. People were becoming Christians, with hundreds beginning a personal relationship with Jesus 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.

It seemed we were recycling the same immaturities and childish behaviors over and over, especially in the area of conflicts. With a commitment to bridge racial, economic, and cultural divides, our inability to engage in difficult conversations threatened to derail our community. What was most confusing, however, was the disconnect in some core members who were on fire for God and yet were experienced by others as judgmental, unsafe, and unenjoyable to be around.

Although I didnt realize it at the time, many of the things we were struggling with as a church were reflections of my own struggles and immaturities. My shallow discipleship was now being reproduced in those I led.