The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World
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What am I feeling? And what am I feeling about that feeling? What am I sad about? Glad about? Angry about? Anxious about? Where in my body am I feeling tension or stress (e.g., shoulders, neck, stomach)? What might this be telling me about what is going on inside me?
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After identifying my feelings, I made it a habit to reflect on why I might be experiencing each emotion.
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Once I could name my feelings and identify their source, I could then take appropriate action, such as, graciously saying no to an invitation, asking difficult questions, or waiting before making a final decision.13
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2. Use a Genogram to Explore the Impact of Your Past
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At New Life we like to say, “Jesus may be in your heart, but Grandpa lives in your bones.”
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As a child, he had been severely punished every time he did something wrong, even if it was very minor.
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As we have worked with leaders like Ben and Juan over the years, Geri and I developed a tool called “Genogram Your Family.” If you’re ready to take a life-changing step, you can access this tool on our website, www.emotionallyhealthy.org/genogram.
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3. Identify the Negative Scripts Handed Down to You
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A negative script could develop out of almost any kind of experience. See if you recognize yourself in any of these examples:
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Her negative script: Your worth and value are based on your performance and achievements.
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Once you identify one or two of the negative scripts handed down from your family, the next step is to prayerfully reflect on them — alone and then with others whom you trust.
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1. I want/need others to like me. Even in meetings or SG's today, I'll throw out funny comments to make people laugh. 2. I often sought attention as a child, but didn't receive it (I'd be sent to my room when acting out to receive attention.)
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4. Seek Feedback from Trustworthy Sources
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When leaders ask about how to seek feedback, I always recommend the safety of asking for input from a variety of sources — a spiritual director, a counselor, a mentor, a good friend, a board member.
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“If you are going to marry, make sure you marry someone who doubles your ministry and doesn’t cut it in half!”
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Negative statement
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Finally, one of her statements got my attention: “Pete, my life would be easier if we were separated. At least then you would have to take the kids on the weekends.”
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Every Christian has the same primary calling or vocation: We are called to Jesus, by Jesus, and for Jesus. Our first call is to love him with our whole being and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Biblical writers use many analogies to describe our relationship with God (shepherd/sheep, master/slave, parent/child), but marriage is perhaps the most comprehensive and “least inadequate”3 (Ezekiel 16; Mark 2:19 – 20; Revelation 19 – 22).
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Marrieds. This refers to a man and woman who form a one-flesh union through a covenantal vow — to God, to one another, and to the larger community — to permanently, freely, faithfully, and fruitfully love one another. Adam and Eve provide the clearest biblical model for this. As a one-flesh couple, they were called by God to take initiative to “be fruitful . . . fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28).
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Singles. Scripture teaches that human beings are created for intimacy and connection with God, themselves, and one another. Marriage is one framework in which we work this out; singleness is another. While singleness may be voluntarily chosen or involuntarily imposed, temporary or long-term, a sudden event or a gradual unfolding, Christian singleness can be understood within two distinct callings:
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Keep it together morally, but your first priority is to build the ministry and extend the kingdom of God.
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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.
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Marriage Is Your First Ambition
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When Christians marry, we make a covenantal vow to love our spouse faithfully, freely, fruitfully, and forever. From this point on, every significant decision we make is to be informed by that vow. The pace of the church or organization we serve, the commitments we make, and the focus of our heart’s passion are all to be informed by that vow. To put it bluntly, if you are married, it is no longer an option for you to live as if you were single. Why? You made a vow to be married. Yes, it is sometimes painful to connect to your spouse, but in the long term, it is even more painful not to.
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One of the ways I know I’m in a healthy place now is that I actually love being a husband and father more than being a pastor. My marriage is my most important ministry now, which really goes against the grain of my Korean culture.
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Marriage Is Your First Passion
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Very few of us have been equipped to have a passionate, flourishing marriage. We expect that it will happen naturally. It does not. It must be cultivated.
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We pray for greater passion. Geri and I pray regularly, alone and at times together, for greater passion. I initially tried to remain passionate without prayer and found I was unable to sustain it in my own strength. Prayer released the Holy Spirit’s power in our marriage, and that has made all the difference.
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We make cultivating passion an intentional spiritual practice. We are committed to regular physical nakedness and union as a spiritual practice and declaration of the first importance of our marital vocation. We seek to set aside twenty minutes each day to be naked and without shame in each other’s arms (Genesis 2:24). The goal is not sexual intercourse. We simply want to be passionately connected to one another — physically, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually.
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We talk about passion, plan for passion, and pray for passion.
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We intentionally affirm one another.
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When I intentionally share with Geri the qualities I find attractive about her — be they physical, emotional, spiritual, or relational — not only do I feel differently about her, she feels closer to me and safe with me. Receiving words of affirmation from Geri can be challenging for me sometimes because they were so rarely given in my family of origin.
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Marriage Is Your Loudest Gospel Message
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When I moved from a nonvocational view of leadership (I am a leader who happens to be married) to a vocational view (I lead out of my marriage), several things changed. I gained a heightened awareness of myself first as Geri’s husband, not as Pastor Pete.
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Spend time alone with God (listing times and spiritual practices for the week) • Invest in Geri and our marriage (listing times and specific actions for the week) • Everything else at New Life Fellowship (message prep, staff meetings, board meeting prep, etc.)
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Perhaps the biggest shift in me was an increase in my awareness of, and my ability to be present to, Geri first, especially at New Life services.
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Leading Out of Your Singleness
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A Prayer for Married Couples Lord, grant me the strength to answer your call to be a living sign of your love. Make my love for _____ be like your love for him/her: passionate, permanent, intimate, unconditional, and life-giving. May I be as present to _________ as you are to him/her, so that all the world can see your presence manifested in our tender love for one another. Help us both to stay close to you in the body of Christ. And continue to nourish our love with your love. In Jesus’ name, amen.19
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The reality is, we were so caught up in the excitement over things like the new building campaign and the attendance numbers skyrocketing that we disregarded what we did notice.
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Somehow, it has become part of our default thinking that external markers of success are an indication that all must certainly be well at the leadership level.
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The force of the biblical word used for the verb know refers to the intimate, personal knowing of relationship; it is similar to the oneness of Adam and Eve in the garden when they were naked and without shame (Genesis 2:25).
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Loving union is an act of surrender — giving God complete access — and we can’t do that in a hurry. We must be humbly accessible, with the door of our hearts continually open to him. Jesus doesn’t force that on us; it is something only we can do.
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The key question is: to what extent is the door of our heart open to him?
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In other words, although what we do matters, who we are matters much more.
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Because we have so much to do and so much on our minds, we tend to accept it as normal that . . . • Worship leaders or musicians who do not connect to Jesus personally during the week can still lead people into the presence of Jesus during weekend worship services. • Gifted communicators can teach Scripture and train others without devoting the time needed for God’s message to penetrate their own hearts. • Church administrators can effectively build infrastructure, supervise staff, and manage finances without having a consistent devotional life with God. It’s not that we would intentionally ...more
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to conduct themselves in these ways; it’s that we don’t consider it much of ...
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Characters such as Balaam the Old Testament prophet, Judas Iscariot, and Saul were all engaged in what most certainly would have been considered effective work for God by their communities, but without having an authentic connection to him. The only mark of genuine spiritual maturity and ministry effectiveness, Edwards concluded, is the outworking of agape — a self-giving love for God and others.
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And so, intentional or not, we find ourselves bypassing our relationship with God. In the process, we drift into prioritizing leadership over love. In other words, we fail to slow down for loving union with God.
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In loving union, we keep that door wide open. We allow the will of God to have full access to every area of our lives, including every aspect of our leadership — from difficult conversations and decision-making to managing our emotional triggers.
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Where is my excitement coming from, and what might God be communicating to me through it? Am I excited because implementing these new ideas will help my ministry to grow — which means the lead pastor and church board will see the great job I am doing? Or is it truly because it could help so many people?
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I have relied on what worked in the past — and what appeared to be working for other leaders and ministries — without a prayerful process of discerning God’s will for our particular situation.
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In asking you to make the necessary changes to slow down for loving union with God, I am not asking you to add one more item to your already over-burdened schedule. I am asking you to make a U-turn and rearrange your life around an entirely new way of being a leader.