Emotionally Healthy Discipleship
By: Peter Scazerro
ISBN: 978-0310109488
READ: September 2024
RATING: 8/10
Summary: Such a valuable book on becoming more like Jesus in our character and personhood. Scazzero communicates out of lived experience which brings a lot of weight to the treasure trove of lessons inside. This is well-worth the read as it points Western Christians in the right direction when it comes to becoming mature. It can get a bit repetitive and wordy in places, but not overly so. Note it’s rightly titled as it’s a book on discipleship, not disciplemaking, but it’s very well done. Reading it feels like sitting with a wise mature Christ-follower—which Scazzero seems to be. I highly recommend.
**I’ve added my comments (in italics) throughout.
Chapter titles are: Part 1: The Current State of Discipleship 1. The Four Failures that Undermine Deep Discipleship 2. The Emotionally Healthy Discipleship Personal Assessment Part 2: The Seven Marks of Healthy Discipleship 3. Be Before You Do 4. Follow the Crucified, Not the Americanized Jesus 5. Embrace God’s Gift of Limits 6. Discover the Treasures Buried in Grief and Loss 7. Make Love the Measure of Maturity 8. Break the Power of the Past 9. Lead Out of Weakness and Vulnerability Conclusion: Implementing Emotionally Healthy Discipleship Appendix A: Church Culture Revolution: A Six-Part Vision Appendix B: Nicene Creed (with Notations)
The Difficult Journey to Move Beyond Shallow Discipleship:
“What we discovered was that our discipleship, which we thought was authentic, was shallow—just a few inches deep. Although we had both been Christians for over seventeen years, the discipleship we knew and practiced had penetrated our personhood only superficially.” Pg. xiv
“How could this be? I had done everything pastors and leaders had taught me about how to follow Jesus. I was faithful, devoted, absolutely committed. I believed in the power of God, Scripture, prayer, the Holy Spirit’s gifts. How was it that my personal life and marriage, along with my leadership, got so stuck as I journeyed to follow Jesus? Where was the explosive power of God?” pg. xiv
“Emotionally Healthy Discipleship is an invitation to radically shift toward the real thing, a discipleship that is heavy, load-bearing stone….More specifically, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship:
· Slows down our lives to cultivate a deep, personal relationship with Jesus amidst the hurry and distractions that routinely overload us.
· Offers guidelines to determine how much the values and goals of Western culture have compromised, or even negated, the radical call of Jesus to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him.
· Makes provision for surrendering to, rather than fighting against, the gift of God’s limits in our lives.
· Integrates sadness and loss into our following of Jesus. As a result we no longer miss out on the treasures God has buried within them.
· Provides clear criteria to measure spiritual maturity by how we are growing in our ability to love others.
· Connects how our family of origin and personal history influence our discipleship in the present. We no longer treat deep patterns and traumas from the past with a quick fix.
· Embraes weakness and vulnerability as core to accessing God’s power and offering his love to the world.” Pg. xvii
“My hope in writing this book is that you will take the risk to build differently—both personally and in your church.” Pg. xix
“I wrote a first edition of this book eighteen years ago and titled it The Emotionally Healthy Church.” Pg. xix
“My aim is nothing short of introducing you to a new way to do discipleship in the church. But it is important to note the old saying, ‘As the leader goes, so goes the church.’ We lead out of who we are more than what we do or say.” Pg. xx
Part One: The Current State of Discipleship
Chapter 1: The Four Failures That Undermine Deep Discipleship
“Too many people have been ‘babied’ in their discipleship, to the point that they have become nearly disabled spiritually.” Pg. 4
Four Fundamental Failures:
1. We tolerate emotional immaturity
2. We emphasize doing for God over being with God
3. We ignore the treasures of church history
4. We define success wrongly. Pg. 5
Failure #1 We Tolerate Emotional Immaturity
“So, let’s get started, beginning with the roots of a discipleship system that too often results in people who are less whole, less human, and less like Jesus, rather than more whole, more human, and more like Jesus.” Pg. 5
“…we have grown blind to many glaring inconsistences….You can quote the Bible with ease and still be unaware of your reactivity. You can fast and pray regularly and yet remain critical of others, justifying it as discernment….Why? Because we have disconnected emotional healthy from spiritual health.” Pg. 6
“For Jesus, enemies were not interruptions to the spiritual life, but often the very means by which we might experience deeper communion with God.” (cf. Matt 5:44, 46, Matt. 7:1) pg. 7
“Jesus radically reverses the teaching of first century rabbis who stressed relationship with God at the expense of relationship with others. If you were in worship and realized someone had something against you, the rabbis taught that you should complete your worship to God (since God is always first) and then reconcile with the other person. Jesus turned that teaching upside down saying, ‘If you…remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift’” (Matthew 5:23-24). Pg. 7
Plato’s message was essentially, “‘The body is bad. The spirit is good.’ In other words, any aspect of our humanity that is not spiritual is suspect at best, including emotions. In fact, to be emotional is, if not sinful, at least less than spiritual.” Pg. 8
“In the minds of many, shutting out emotions has actually been elevated to the status of virtue.” Pg. 9
“Many Christian leaders I meet are emotionally numb. They have little to no awareness of their feelings.” Pg. 9
“Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God…Emotions are the language of the soul.” Pg. 9 Dan Allender
“The Jesus I worshipped was very much God and very little a human being. I somehow missed the stories that revealed how Jesus freely expressed his emotions without shame. He shed tears (Luke 19:41). He grieved (Mark 14:34). He was angry (Mark 3:5). He felt compassion (Luke 7:13). He showed astonishment and wonder (Luke 7:9).” Pg. 10
Failure #2 We Emphasize Doing for God Over Being with God
“One of the greatest challenges for every ministry leader is how to balance our doing for God and our being with him.” Pg. 10
“Some of us are actually addicted—not to drugs or alcohol, but to the adrenaline rush of doing.” Pg. 11
“Aside from message preparation, I took little time for reflection on Scripture, or for spending time in silence and stillness with God. I rarely reflected before God on my failures and weaknesses. Being with Jesus to simply enjoy him, apart from the purpose of serving other people, was a luxury I felt I could not afford. Not only was my ability to be with Jesus compromised, so was my ability to be with myself and others. Think about it: How could I be in communion with other people when I wasn’t in communion with myself? How could I be in a healthy relationship with others when I wasn’t in a healthy relationship with myself? And how could I be in an intimate relationship with others when I wasn’t in an intimate relationship with myself?” pg. 11
Failure #3 We Ignore the Treasures of Church History
3 Truths from Church History:
1. We are one stream within the larger river of God
2. We are one global church with three branches
3. We are one movement with our own dirty laundry and blind spots. Pg. 15
“All three branches consider any person or group who disagrees with the Nicene Creed to be outside the boundaries of the Christian faith.” Pg. 17
Protestant Dirty Laundry:
· “Martin Luther intensely disliked Jews and wrote essays against them.
· Ulrich Zwingli condoned the torture and drowning of anabaptists.
· Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, leaders of the nineteenth-century Great Awakening, were both slaveholders.
· The great outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Azusa Street Revival (1906) in Los Angeles split terribly over race.” Pg. 19
“Our revivalist focus on individuals making a decision to receive Christ has led to a tw-tier Christianity-believers and disciples. We now have large numbers of ‘believers’ who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior but who are not ‘disciples’ following him.” Pg. 20
Failure #4 We Define Success Wrongly
“You may be asking: ‘If success by the numbers isn’t necessarily success, what is?’ Here’s how I would answer that question: Success, according to Scripture, is becoming the person God calls you to become, and doing what God calls you to do—in his way, and according to his timetable. What this means is that it is possible for a ministry or organization to be growing numerically and yet actually failing. And that your ministry and numbers may be declining and yet actually be succeeding!” pg. 21
“The fact that the religious leaders preayed five times a day, memorized large portions of Scripture, and fasted twice a week didn’t keep John from calling them a brood of snakes (luke 3:7).” Pg. 22
“When we define success wrongly, it means our best energies will be invested in things such as cutting-edge weekend services, cultivating our brand, and preparing captivating messages. Little time is left over for discipleship—our own or that of others—especially when it produces what appears to be such a small and slow return. With little time left to invest in the messy work of discipleship we do the next best thing. We standardize discipleship to make it scalable. Our approach resembles more of a conveyor belt in a manufacturing plant than the kind of relational discipleship model Jesus modeled for us. We like standardization. Jesus preferred customization.” Pg. 23
7 Marks of Biblical Discipleship that Deeply Transforms Lives:
1. Be before you do
2. Follow the crucified—not he Americanized Jesus
3. Embrace God’s gift of limits
4. Discover the treasures hidden in grief and loss
5. Make love the measure of spiritual maturity
6. Break the power of the past
7. Lead out of weakness and vulnerability Pg. 25
Chapter 2: The Emotionally Healthy Discipleship Personal Assessment
The whole chapter is the assessment which is helpful.
Part Two: The Seven Marks of Healthy Discipleship
Chapter 3: Be Before You Do
“A person who practices being before doing operates from a place of emotional and spiritual fullness, deeply aware of themselves, others and God. As a result, their being with God is sufficient to sustain their doing for God.” pg. 41
“They receive from God more than they do for him.” Pg. 41
“And when their lives begin to feel depleted, they have the ability to pivot and adjust their schedules. They recognize their presence—with God, themselves, and others—is their greatest gift and contribution to those they lead.” Pg. 41
“When we integrate our doing-for and our being-with, our lives have a beauty, a harmony, and a clarity that makes the spiritual life both full and joyful.” Pg. 42
“We did emphasize the call ‘to follow my example as I follow the example of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1), but that revolved primarily around doing particular activities and remaining faithful. I spent years, literally, developing training to teach people how to do things for Jesus. We assumed their being would somehow be taken care of in the process.” Pg. 44
“It was a traditional discipleship model that was measurable, predictable, and scalable. We could train almost anyone to do it. Emotional healthy discipleship, however, emphasizes being before doing in order to get beneath the surface of people’s lives.” Pg. 44
-Later Scazzero has a training process for this way of discipling. The issue isn’t the scalable nature it is the delivery system and the approach. Disciple making isn’t predictable of scalable in the strict sense of those words.
“A leadership culture committed to being before doing slows down the discipleship process and radically shifts priorities.” Pg. 45
3 Be-Before Do Statements
1. You cannot give what you do not possess
2. What you do is important, but who you are is even more important
3. The state you are in is the state you give to others. Pg. 45
“The principle and practice of being with God before doing for God is as ancient as Scripture itself.” Pg. 49
4 Ways to be with God Before Doing For God:
1. Make a Radical Decision
2. Feel Your Feelings
3. Integrate Silence
4. Commune with Jesus Throughout the Day Pg. 51
“Integrating silence and stillness utterly transforms the way we follow Jesus and the way we lead.” Pg. 54
“In silence we let go, surrendering our will to God’s will.” Pg. 54
“In silence we let go of our agendas, allowing communion with God to become the core of our lives.” Pg. 54
“In silence we let go, opening ourselves to hear God speak.” Pg. 54
Create a Container to Be before you Do:
1. Adjust your job description and supervision
2. Practice Sabbath Delight
3. Discover the Rhythms of the Daily Office
4. Craft a Rule of Life
5. Learn from Trust Companions who are Ahead of You
6. Experiment and Make Adjustments pgs. 59-60
Chapter Four: Follow the Crucified, Not the Americanized Jesus
“The relationship of the church to the broader culture has been a challenging issue since Jesus began his ministry.” Pg. 61
“Within the church, to Americanize Jesus is to follow him because he makes my life better and more enjoyable.” Pg. 61
“Jesus always seemed to do his miracles as inconspicuously as possible.” Pg. 67
“Jesus denounced any activity that had traces of seeking the approval or admiration of others.” Pg. 67
“Freedom comes when we no longer need to be somebody special in other people’s eyes. We are to be content to be popular with him alone. It is important to note that Jesus doesn’t criticize the fundamental human desire to be popular, but he does redirect it. He wants us to shift our desire from focusing on people to focusing on the Father. At the end of our earthly journey, he wants to be able to say to each of us, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’ (Matthew 25:21.” Pg. 69
World Discipleship vs Jesus’ Discipleship
1. Be popular versus reject popularity
2. Be great versus reject greatness-ism
3. Be successful versus reject success-ism.
4. Avoid suffering and failure versus embrace suffering nad failure. Pg. 70
“Jesus does call us to greatness, but it is utterly different than the world’s definition of greatness, which he condemns.” Pg. 71
Jesus’ beginnings were not great. Jesus’ disciples were not great. Jesus’ ministry was not great. Jesus’ impact was not great. Pg. 71-72
“Instead it is a humility that expresses itself in a willingness to be curious, open, flexible, and teachable—regardless of the title or position we hold.” Pg. 72
“Toward this end, I regularly ask myself two questions: 1. When are my plans and ambitions legitimately for the glory of God, and when do they cross the line into my own desire for greatness? 2. What opportunities has God placed before me to be lowly with the lowly, to be little with the little?” pg. 72-73
“We measure success by the numbers and bigger is always the goal.” Pg. 73
“According to Jesus, success is becoming the person God calls you to become, and doing what God calls you to do—in his way, and according to his timetable.” Pg. 73
“Despite three years of being with Jesus, he [Peter] remained so infected with success-ism that, at Jesus’ arrest, he could justify resorting to violence to protect it. With success as a supreme value, he didn’t think twice about drawing a sword and cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant (Matthew 26:51).” Pg 74
“Suffering and failure have always been God’s means to transform us from willful to willing, from swimming upstream against the current of God’s love to floating downstream, trusting in him to take care of us. It is also the primary way he teaches us to be patient.” Pg. 77
Three Practices to Help you Follow the Crucified Jesus:
1. Relax in Jesus
2. Detach for Jesus
3. Listen to Jesus pg. 78
“The goal of the Christian life is loving union with God, to allow God and his will to have full access to every area of our lives.” Pg 81
-I think I agree with this, but it reads a lot like it’s all about me. I don’t think that’s how he means it.
“I spent many years leading for Jesus but not listening to him. Peter didn’t think he was doing anything other than following his best thoughts. So did I. The problem was that his best thoughts were leading him and others astray. The same thing happens when we follow our best ideas without listening first—we hurt ourselves and those we lead. God’s word to Peter is God’s word to us: Listen to Jesus.” Pg. 84
Chapter 5: Embrace God’s Gift of Limits
“A core mark of emotionally healthy discipleship is a deep theological and practical understanding of limits.” Pg. 90
“As you can observe in these three case studies—Adam and Eve, Jesus, and John the Baptist—what we do with our limits has far-reaching consequences.” Pg. 93
“Receiving the gift of limits requires asking two primary questions on a regular basis: 1. What limits to I need to receive and submit joyfully as God’s invitation to trust him? 2. What limits is God asking me to break through by faith so that others might know him, or so that I might become the person he intends?” pg. 95
“David wrestles with the core spiritual issue we all need to face when trying to live within our God-given limits: Can I trust that God is good and really has a grip ion all things?” pg. 96
“A limit is a gift few of us want. They question is why?” pg. 96
“And yet, limits offer us so many gifts. They protect us so we don’t hurt ourselves, others, or God’s work. They keep us grounded and humble, reminding us that we are not in charge of running the world. They break our self-will. They are God’s means to give us, and our ministries, direction—if we will listen. They are one of the primary ways we grow in wisdom. And perhaps, most importantly, limits are places we encounter God in ways that would otherwise be impossible.” Pg. 96
Six Key Areas of Life to Consider Limits
1. Your Personality and temperament
2. Current season of life
3. Marriage or singleness
4. Emotional, physical, and intellectual capacities.
5. Family of origin
6. Time pg. 97-98
“It was within the limit of five barely loaves and two fish that Jesus was revealed as the Bread of Life. The miracle of feeding five-thousand men (three to four times that many counting women and children) is so important that, except for the resurrection, it is the only miracle included in all four Gospels.” Pg. 99
“We see only a small part of God’s plan at any point in time. His ways are not our ways. But what he does in and through our limits is more than we could ever accomplish in our own strength.” Pg. 99
“One of the indicators we are on the road to spiritual maturity is when we live joyfully within our God-given limits. The problem is that most of us resent limits—in ourselves and in others.” Pg. 100
“The second way in which we experience limits as a gift is by breaking through them.” pg. 100
-Huh?? I didn’t track with this. Some limits we need to see as a gift and respect and others we need to break through? Scazzero doesn’t sufficiently address this tension.
4 Ways to Embed Limits
1. Systematize self-care of leaders
2. Set limits on invasive people
3. Give people freedom to say no
4. Model and teach healthy boundaries
“This value is so vital to the health of our church that we have crafted a Rule of Life for our pastoral staff that includes weekly Sabbath-keeping, a day alone with God each month, and a commitment to pause for Daily Offices each day.” Pg. 103
“…giving people the freedom to say no helps us to create a culture in which people feel loved rather than used.” Pg. 106
“With proper boundaries, I know what I am and am not responsible for.” Pg. 106
Chapter 6: Discover the Treasures Buried in Grief and Loss
“Loss can also make us more….I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became part of who I am. Sorrow tok up permanent residence in my soul and enlarged it….The soul is elastic, like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering.” -Jerry Sittser Pg. 11
“Losses that are not grieved accumulate in our soul like heavy stones that weigh us down. When we fail to attend to them, they prevent us from living freely and honestly with God and others.” Pg. 112
“In fact, more than one great writer and power has described all of life as a growth in the art of loss, culminating in the moment when our earthly life ends and we lose everything.” Pg. 113
-Such a true observation
“Year after year, we avoid the difficulties of life and minimize our failures and disappointments. The result is a widespread inability to face pain.” Pg. 114
“What we fail to realize in all this is that a refusal to embrace our sorrows and to grieve them fully condemns us, and our churches, to a shallow spirituality that blocks the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It contributes to the overall sense of superficiality in our churches and a lack of profound compassion.” Pg. 114
Three Phases for Processing Grief and Loss:
1. Pay attention to pain
2. Wait in the confusing in-between
3. Allow the old to birth the new. Pg. 117
“From Genesis to Revelation, the Scriptures invite us to integrate seasons of grief and sadness as a central aspect of the spiritual life. To reject these seasons is to live only half of life, and to live a spirituality marked by unreality.” Pg. 117
“Half to two-thirds of the 150 psalms as classified as laments. They were gifted to God’s people in order to teach us how to pray our emotion and struggles back to God.” pg. 118
“The Psalms operate in the certainty that God does allow his people to experience great pain, even if we don’t always understand the reasons why.” Pg. 118
“When our pain and grief goes unexpressed or unfelt, it gets buried alive. AS a result, we lose access to the depth and range of feelings given us by God and our emotional lives are compressed into a tightly constricted box. Eventually, the feelings we bury claw their way back up through the earth of our lives and manifest in symptoms such as depression, anxiety, emptiness, and loneliness.” Pg. 119-120
“From the beginning to the end of the Scripture, we discover stories of God teaching his people to wait. And that waiting season is almost always confusing and disorienting.” Pg. 122
“yet, it is in these confusing in-between times that God uproots our self-will, strips us of layers of our false self, and frees us from unhealthy attachments. It is in these in-between seasons that we are emptied, and this emptying has one primary purpose—to make room for something new and better.” Pg. 123
“Tertullian even argues that the root of the original rebellion of Adam and Eve was rooted and impatience: ‘For, to put it in a nutshell, every sin is to be traced back to impatience. I find the origin of impatience in the Devil himself.” Pg. 123
“When God seems absent, the temptation is to flee from God, to quit the faith, or to fall into despair. The good news is that even then, God finds us and meets us.” pg. 125
“The process of forgiveness always involves grieving before letting go—both for the person who offers forgiveness as well as the person who asks for it.” Pg. 126
“Henri Nouwen rightly says that the degree to which we grieve our own losses is in direct proportion to the depth and quality of the compassion we can offer to others.” Pg. 129
“God does something in us through the fire of sorrow that enlarges our capacity to wait and surrender to his will. This breaking detaches and empties us so he can fill us with his life. And then, out of union with Jesus, he can fill us with a new and extraordinary capacity for fruitfulness.” Pg. 129
Chapter 7: Make Love the Measure of Maturity
“…love for individuals made in God’s image is inextricably linked to love for God.” pg. 135
“Over time it became difficult to distinguish between loving people for who they were versus using them for how they could contribute to the mission.” Pg. 136
“I don’t remember anyone ever teaching me that loving people well was the defining characteristic of a mature Christian.” Pg. 136
“In I-Thou relationships, we recognize each person as unrepeatable, as an inestimable treasure, an image-bearer of the living God. We treat each individual as sacred, as one created from the very breath of God. Most importantly, we welcome their otherness, acknowledging how different they are from us.” pg. 142
Three Questions to help live this out:
1. Am I fully present or distracted?
2. Am I loving or judging?
3. Am I open or closed to being changed? From David Benner pg. 144
“…when I say we judge people, I mean we turn our differences into virtues of moral superiority.” Pg. 145
“What it means to be a disciple can be best understood around the unfathomable mystery of the incarnation—that God took on human flesh.” Pg. 148
“We are called to be God with skin on for the people around us.” pg. 149
“…to incarnate in order to love people well: we must enter another’s world, hold on to ourselves, and live in the tension between two worlds.” Pg. 149
“In living faithfully to his true self, Jesus disappointed a lot of people.” pg. 154
“What I have to give to others—including the way I speak and listen—will always be directly proportional to my degree of self-knowledge.” Pg 155
“The degree to which you love and value yourself is the degree to which you will be able to love and value others.” Pg. 155
“…building a countercultural community that relates maturely to one another is truly one of the greatest gifts we can offer the world. Discipling people in how to love others, especially those with whom we disagree or who drive us crazy, needs the same time and energy we give to equipping them to love God. The two loves are, as Jesus said, inseparable.” Pg. 159
Chapter 8: Break the Power of the Past
“If we are going to help people live into their unique, God-given selves in Jesus, we must equip them to break the power of the past that holds them back.” Pg. 162
3-Part Biblical framework for Discipleship that Frees Us From the Past
1. Acknowledge how the blessings and sins of your family—going back three to four generations—profoundly impacts who you are today.
2. Recognize you have been birthed into a new family—the family of Jesus.
3. Put off the sinful patterns of your family of origin and culture, and learn how to do life in the new family of Jesus. Pg. 164
“…what happens in one generation tends to repeat itself in the next, whether it be alcoholism, addiction, depression, suicide, unstable marriages, unwed pregnancies, mistrust of authority, or unresolved conflict.” Pg. 165
“The great news of the gospel is that your family of origin does not determine your future. God does!” pg. 167
“Although the New Testament contains ninety-six metaphors for the church—including a body, a house, and a bride—the church as a family is the one most widely used.” Pg.
“God’s intention is that our local churches and parishes are the communities where, slowly but surely, we are re-parented in doing life Christ’s way.” Pg. 168
“Jesus may live in your heart, but Grandpa lives in your bones. In other words, those who precede us in the family tree—our ‘grandpas’—cast a long shadow, even generations after they are gone. Every disciple, then, has to look at the brokenness and sin of his or her family and culture.” Pg. 169
Five-Part Approach to Break the Power of the Past
1. Genogram your family, identifying how it has shaped you.
2. Do the hard work of discipleship.
3. Get a great future out of the past.
4. Break the power of the past in every area of life and leadership.
5. Name and tame the negative legacies of your ministry’s history. Pg. 169
“Jesus never sugarcoated the cost of discipleship.” Pg. 172
“Inevitably, we resist the hard work of discipleship. It seems too costly. Too difficult. Let’s face it: We all want Easter without Good Friday, light without darkness, hope without despair, happiness without suffering. But breaking the power of the past requires crucifixion—and so everything in us screams against it.” Pg. 172
“…retirement is an idea not found in the Scripture….the Bible is full of God calling people to new things when they are older.” Pg. 180
“Getting older is not a crisis at all. In fact, when approached God’s way, growing older offers a unique opportunity to release old identities of self-importance and learn God’s deep wisdom on how to give away our life, and death, for the sake of the world.” Pg. 180
“What do you do to bring mature spiritual leadership to the table” I suggest three things: 1. Take a thoughtful look at your own motivations, goals, and family dynamics as you consider this decision. You need to know what you are feeling and thinking and express that clearly, honestly, and respectfully to the board. 2. Create safety within the context of the meeting so people can honestly express their concerns. This will require time. Be curious. Listen. Ask questions. Provide guidelines for differing points of view, such as making ‘I’ statements, no fixing, saving, or setting other people straight, and turning to wonder rather than to judgment as you listen. 3. Invest in the spiritual/emotional development of this board. They need discipling, particularly in how they do relationships, how their past impacts their present (genogram), and how to have a clean rather than a dirty fight (by negotiating differences).” Pg. 183
“The great truth that you cannot change what you are unaware of applies to our ministries as well.” Pg. 183
“But remember the core principle of emotionally healthy discipleship: we always begin by looking at ourselves. Churches will never mature beyond the maturity of their leaders.” Pg. 185
Chapter 9: Lead Out of Weakness and Vulnerability
“When we live and build entire churches characterized by weakness and vulnerability, something inexplicable happens. People enjoy a taste of God’s beauty and presence in Christ. A glimpse of the truth and goodness of heaven shines. God’s gentle power flows. People soften.” Pg. 189
Four Characteristics of an Emotionally Healthy Discipleship that Embodies Weakness and Vulnerability:
1. Develop a Theology of weakness.
2. Embrace the gift of your limp.
3. Transition to become a church based on weakness.
4. Practice vulnerability daily. Pg. 190
“Throughout his ministry, Jesus exercised his power carefully so as to not manipulate to force people into following him. He revealed just enough of himself to make faith possible, but hid just enough of himself to make faith necessary.” Pg. 191
“There is no difference between the healthy and those with disabilities. For every human life has its own limitations, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses. We are born needy, and we die helpless.” –Jurgen Moltmann Pg. 197
“…Paul’s growth in Christ was matched by an ever-increasing sense of his own weakness and sinfulness.” Pg. 197
“What helps me refrain from choosing the easier path is a healthy fear. I never want to end up with a hardened heart—and no one is immune to that.” Pg. 204
Four Characteristics of Churches Who Embody Weakness and Vulnerability:
1. Develop a theology of weakness
2. Embrace the Gift of handicap
3. Transition to becoming a church based on weakness
4. Practice Vulnerability Daily. Pg. 208
Implementing Emotionally Healthy Discipleship
“The traditional discipleship operating system runs on a set of core beliefs and processes with the objective of growing disciple to impact the world for Christ.” Pg. 212
3 Distinctives of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship
1. It integrates biblical truths missing from the traditional discipleship mode: the gift of limits, embracing grief and loss, breaking the power of the past, making love the measure of spiritual maturity, and living in weakness and vulnerability.
2. It integrates loving God, loving ourselves, and loving others in a way that goes beyond head knowledge to a lived experience.
3. It slows us down so we ground our discipleship in the person of Jesus, focusing on who we are on the inside, rather than what we do on the outside.” Pg. 214
“Normally our goal is to build a church in which people attend worship services, participate in small groups, invest financially, and serve. We assume that active participation in these activities means people are maturing in a vital, personal relationship of loving union with Jesus. We assume wrongly. It does not. In fact, I marvel at how many excellent communicators lead as if discipleship takes place primarily through sermons. That is like going to the nursery, spraying the babies with milk, and walking away claiming we fed them.” pg. 215
“People in our churches have been deeply malformed by three primary forces—Western culture’s dictum of bigger, better, and faster; their families of origin; and values attendant to their race and ethnicity.” Pg. 216
“Jesus invested himself in a core team of twelve who , in turn, shaped the culture of the emerging church. This took time. Lots of it.” Pg. 218
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