The Emotionally Healthy Church;

A Stay Forth Summary

I don’t know if there is a more paradigm-shifting book for church leaders. Period. There are cracks below our leadership that bubble to the surface. Unfortunately, we rarely see them, but others can see them in us. This book is holy sandpaper, and it hurts so good.

We recommend this book to any church leader who is examining their leadership. Honestly, it’s best to read this on vacation, study leave, sabbatical, or when you’re hitting a wall. Pete shares his pastoral journey of over-controlling, over-striving and over-caring about the opinions of others. One day his wife had all she could handle and quit the church.

It’s frank, it’s authentic and it’s helped tens of thousands of pastors see the cracks below their leadership. We interviewed him on the Right Side up Leadership podcast on Episode 64. He also hosts the Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast.

Here are the killer quotes from The Emotionally Healthy Church.

“Jesus does call us to dies to ourselves. The problem was that we have died to the wrong things.”

“…the key to successful spiritual leadership has much more to do with the leader’s internal life than with the leader’s expertise, gifts, or experience.”

“I slowly bought into the lie that the more I suffered for Christ, the more he would love me.”

“I had limped along for so many years that the limp now seemed normal.”

“We were gaining the whole world by doing a great work for God while at the same time losing our souls (cf. Mark 8:35)”

“Jesus was able to separate himself from the expectations of the crowds, his family, and his disciples. His relationship with his Father freed him from the pressures of those around him.”

“’I didn’t know it at the time, but I was running on all gifts and no grace’”

“Emotional health and spiritual health are inseparable”

“What concerns me is the many Christian leaders I meet who are emotionally numb… Their emotions are in the deep freeze.”

“I learned that Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light-even for pastors and leaders! There really is another way to do leadership in the church.”

“Most Christians, I am afraid, are self-conscious but not self-aware”

“In emotionally healthy churches, people live and lead out of brokenness and vulnerability.”

“We are all broken; we each compensate in different ways.”

“Our world treats weakness and failure as terminal”