The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World by Peter Scazzero. Zondervan. 326 pages. 2015
*** ½

I was introduced to some of the material in this book through a few of the soft skill modules we covered in our NXTGEN Pastors Cohort. The book is divided into two parts – the leader’s inner life and outer life. The book was born out of the struggles and growth the author experienced following what he refers to as his “fourth conversion” in 2007. He writes that for nearly two decades, he had ignored the emotional component in his spiritual growth and relationship with God.
The author was senior pastor for twenty-six years, and when the book was published, he had been a teaching pastor and pastor-at-large for two years. In this book, the author offers a road map of sorts for an emotionally healthy journey, complete with specific ideas and practices to help you discern God’s next steps for you as a leader.
The author describes the emotionally unhealthy leader as someone who operates in a continuous state of emotional and spiritual deficit, lacking emotional maturity and a “being with God” sufficient to sustain their “doing for God.” Emotionally unhealthy leaders tend to be unaware of what is going on inside them. They are also chronically overextended and do not practice Sabbath, a weekly, twenty-four-hour period in which they cease all work and rest, delight in God’s gifts, and enjoy life with him.
The author tells us that to lead from a deep and transformed inner life, you must:

• Face your shadow
• Lead out of your marriage/singleness
• Slow down for loving union
• Practice Sabbath delight

Among the topics that the author covers in the book are family of origin, shadow, genogram, marriage, and singleness, slowing down, Rule of Life, Sabbath, shame, limits, emotionally healthy culture and teams, power and boundaries, endings, and transitions.

The author includes numerous helpful stories from his ministry that help illustrate the points he makes in the book. There are several assessments included in the book so that you can see where you are currently with the topic being discussed. The book includes information on how to implement emotionally healthy spirituality in your church or ministry, and as well as a few helpful appendices.
This would be a good book to read and discuss with a group of leaders.

Below are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

• It is not possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.
• We lead more out of who we are than out of what we do, strategic or otherwise. If we fail to recognize that who we are on the inside informs every aspect of our leadership, we will do damage to ourselves and to those we lead.
• Mature spiritual leadership is forged in the crucible of difficult conversations, the pressure of conflicted relationships, the pain of setbacks, and dark nights of the soul.
• The first and most difficult task we face as leaders is to lead ourselves.
• Your shadow is the accumulation of untamed emotions, less-than-pure motives, and thoughts that, while largely unconscious, strongly influence and shape your behaviors. It is the damaged but mostly hidden version of who you are. The shadow is not simply another word for sin. If that makes you think the shadow is hard to pin down, you’re right.
• Emotional intelligence in the workplace trumps almost every other factor — IQ, personality, education, experience, and gifts — when it comes to effective performance for leaders.
• There really are only two options when it comes to the shadow. We can ignore it until we hit a wall, with pain so great we have no choice but to face up to it. Or we can be proactive, courageously looking at the factors that contributed to its formation.
• If you want to lead out of your marriage, then you must make marriage — not leadership — your first ambition, your first passion, and your loudest gospel message.
• Bearing fruit requires slowing down enough to give Jesus direct access to every aspect of our lives and our leadership.
• All work — paid and unpaid — is good, but it needs to be boundaried by the practice of Sabbath.
• The problem with too many leaders is that we allow our work to trespass on every other area of life, disrupting the balanced rhythm of work and rest God created for our good.
• Keeping the Sabbath is a core spiritual discipline — an essential delivery mechanism for God’s grace and goodness in our lives. It provides a God-ordained way to slow us down for meaningful connection with God, ourselves, and those we care about.
• Success is first and foremost doing what God has asked us to do, doing it his way, and in his timing.
• Creating an emotionally healthy culture and building a healthy team are among the primary tasks for every leader.
• The best test of a leader’s character is how they deal with power.
• As leaders, we are stewards of delegated power gifted to us for a short time by God.