The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World

by Peter Scazzero

The result was a Rule of Life for the pastoral staff (and later for the administrative staff and church board) that continues to guide us to this day.14 This excerpt describes the three distinct yet overlapping roles of pastoral staff and how we are to navigate them well in our relationships with one another: Using their God-given talents, our members work and serve as volunteers out of a sense of passion and mission. We too work and serve out of a sense of passion and mission; nevertheless, we function in a dual relationship with the New Life Fellowship (NLF) Board and congregation as “employees.” In fact, we have at least three roles in the community of NLF: we are family members, leaders in this church family, and employees. These roles carry challenges in how we relate to one another and to NLF. Each year, we are set apart by the board of elders to serve the body at New Life Fellowship in a unique way. Whether full or half time, we are given a salary in order to fulfill this special calling free from the constraints of secular employment. The body as a whole supports us financially so that we can devote ourselves to serving the body — praying, pastoring, and equipping the saints to do ministry (Ephesians 4:11ff). This is our privilege and our joy. At the same time, the elder board is responsible for the stewardship of the church’s resources in our dynamic, changing environment. Our call from God to pastoral leadership may last our entire lives regardless of our employm...