This article continues my series on the book The Emotionally Healthy Church as it relates to my church experience at New Life Church Kelowna. (For previous articles see I, II). In Chapter Two Peter Scazzero discovers something desperately wrong in the way churches conduct themselves emotionally.  

It has to do with consistency. Specifically, consistency between espoused values and values in practice. He begins his chapter retelling the plot of the movie The Apostle, It was written and directed by Robert Duvall who also plays the main character, Sonny.

"Sonny, like most of us, is a complex individual. He is zealous, committed Christian whom we admire, and yet he is also terribly inconsistent. Most painful, perhaps, is his lack of awareness of the harm that will come from appearing to be more than he really is. In some ways he is an imposter. He easily compartmentalizes his faith and spirituality from the totality of his humanity. Most of us in Christian leadership and in the church can relate to more about him than we like to admit." (p. 39)

Scazzero then recounts story after story of real life Christian leaders who have lived inconsistent Christian lives, beginning with Bob Pierce (see CT article here), the founder of World Vision, who saw great things in his ministry overseas but ended up alienated from his family.

The number one issue that erodes trust in leadership is inconsistency. Scazzero believes that this inconsistency results from a faulty model of Christian discipleship that neglects to form the emotional aspect of spiritual maturity for church leaders. That is, leaders are unable to connect with their emotional side and be transparent about those emotions in a healthy manner.

After writing the recent articles I received an e mail from a person who has been attending New Life and is stuck in the emotional pain surrounding the things we have been going through as a church. The person asks "How can I trust when their (leaders) words and actions are so different?"

This is the central question of Peter Scazzero's book. It is about establishing trust in relationships. Whether or not it is true that leaders actions and words are different, there is often a perception in those who follow leaders that there is an inconsistency between espoused values and values in practice. Bringing actions and words into alignment both in reality and in the perception of church members is a very important responsibility of leadership. It is a responsibility that requires an emotionally healthy response because it may require leaders to admit that some actions were not in line with the core values of the church and it is through admitting those errors and being humble about them that trust can be re-established and strengthened. 

In another email that I received from one of the leaders at New Life I was asked, "Mike, don't you trust leadership?" My answer is that I trust the heart of my leaders that they sincerely desire to do what is right. That is part of the covenantal  care I have committed to at New Life.  However, no leaders are perfect, even those who guide New Life! So while I trust the heart of leadership, I do not trust that they are infallible.

For trust to grow in me and in those who were wounded by leaderships actions, there needs to be an emotionally healthy response by leadership to the concerns and questions that have been raised and that remain outstanding, otherwise trust in leadership will erode.

(UPDATED, Friday, January 5th, 2007.

I deleted four paragraphs of "backseat driving" comments. See my apology here.).

By the way Scazzero has a website for resources on being an Emotionally Healthy Church. You can read chapter one of his book here. You can take a measure of your emotional health by answering these questions here.

I have been blogging on a leadership transition occurring at my local church. (See my previous post here). I have suggested that the way forward for us is to go through the pain generated from recent personnel changes, specifically the end of the working relationship with the founders of the church, so as to come out the other side of the experience empowered to love one another more deeply.

I am using Scazzero's book The Emotionally Healthy Church as my template for the way through the current situation. Scazzero planted a church in the Queens area of New York City. Ironically, the name of the church was New Life Fellowship. That's the original name of our church after we dropped the word 'Baptist' and before we added the word 'Vineyard'.  Now we are simply New Life Church.   

In chapter one, Scazzero links the emotional health of leaders with that of their congregations. Leaders who have the capacity to publicly admit pain, disappointment and failure are better able to model appropriate and mature emotional behaviors for their congregation. Leaders that deny there is pain, pretend it is of little consequence or are not willing to publicly admit their emotional weaknesses model the opposite.

People trust leaders who are sincere, authentic and transparent with their emotions. Being transparent about the pain gives followers a sense that their leaders understand human frailty. People feel safe with those who understand and identify with that frailty. Trust develops under these conditions.

Those who cannot admit their pain publicly, will find their exhortations falling on deaf ears. People are not stupid. They can see when leadership is struggling with issues. Why not admit it? Those who have admitted it and are transparent with it gain favor in people's hearts.

This is what Scazzero does in recounting his story of emotional challenge and transitions at his church. It was when he connected with his emotions on a personal level and found appropriate expression for them in his church context that he was able to model for others how to respond appropriately to pain and disappointment.

"What God did in our lives spilled out into the church immediately, beginning with our staff team, then our elder board, and eventually the rest of our leadership. For the first time, I understood what it meant to minister out of who you are, not what you do. My discovery was contagious. We went from being "human doings" to "human beings " The result has been a rippling effect, very slowly, through the entire church. Beginning with the staff and elders, interns, ministry and small-group leaders, the congregation at large—directly and indirectly—we have intentionally integrated the principles outlined in this book throughout the church." (p. 34)

For us at New Life we need leaders who own emotions by "ministering out of who they are" in a way that allows the people they lead to follow suit.

For example, people can invest the present circumstances with emotional pain from previous events in their personal lives. Some have described the surprise announcement of the loss of the founders of our church as a divorce. The congregation are like the children who are the last ones to find out that there is trouble in the marriage. Some people who have really experienced divorce may invest in the present circumstances the feelings of hurt and abandonment they felt with their parents surprise divorce even though the two situations are very different.

Emotionally mature church leaders will see the potential for this to happen in their congregation. So they identify the pain people are feeling -- the pain at being surprised with difficult news. Then they own that pain publicly as their own pain and empathize with those who are feeling that pain, but distinguishing it from the pain that people may have personally experienced in other situations in their lives.

Then they model how they, as leaders, are dealing with the pain by seeking or offering forgiveness. They show their people a way out of the pain, a way that takes the pain "out of circulation" by grounding the 'electrical current' of the pain in forgiveness so that it is dissipated in a healthy manner, thus allowing healing to happen.

In doing so they diffuse the emotions generated by that pain that are often made worse by previous painful experiences. This allows people a measure of closure on the pain, giving them release to renew relationships and start the process of rebuilding trust.

So the way through pain for our church is not to skirt the issue or to pretend it will go away. Growing emotionally means that we own the pain and talk about it with an effort to bring healing by reconciling with one another in love. Love does not mean there will be no more pain, it simply means that when pain does come, as it inevitably will come, we are not overwhelmed by it. Instead we embrace it as a necessary part of our emotions and we let it shape us so that we can care for one another more deeply.

Thus church leadership needs to model the way through the pain. As Scazzero succinctly states, "As go the leaders, so goes the church." Our leadership has an amazing opportunity right now that does not come around often. It is an opportunity born from adversity. We have reaped the consequences of emotional immaturity too much in our past, now is our opportunity to step into the pain and through the pain and out the other side. This is what I mean by the pain shaping us as a congregation and maturing us in our spirituality as well our emotions.

The Kelowna city motto is  "fruitful in unity." It is a motto we as a church have previously endorsed. God wants for us to be an emotionally healthy and a spiritually fruitful church. For us to be fruitful as God desires we need some pruning. Pruning is painful ...   more »