Pete Scazzero on Formation Through Winter Seasons, the Gift of Our Limits, and Keeping Your Wonder For 45 Years of Ministry
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This week, Jason was joined by Pete Scazzero for a conversation around his latest book, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship. Pete has been writing books around the theme of emotional health for multiple decades and has served thousands of pastors with his insights on personal health, spiritual formation, and recognizing patterns birthed from our families of origin.
Pete starts by sharing about his time pastoring New Life Fellowship in Queens and how the lack of development he had as a young pastor began to hurt his soul and marriage. Not only was he struggling with leadership and burnout, but his wife felt like a single mother and began to resent his church. As he entered what he called a dark night of his soul, he recognized things seriously needed to change. Over the next decade, as he sought to learn from other streams outside of evangelicalism and to draw wisdom from areas like psychology, he began to understand a new theology of marrying emotional and spiritual health together.
The need for more pastors to understand the importance of their emotional health is critical Pete says. Too many are burning out, hurting their families, or losing their love for Jesus while pastoring churches that can often seem successful on the outside. To turn the tides, Pete says we need more pastors to see the beauty of their limits, to lead out of their marriages, and to believe that following Jesus well is their greatest calling as a pastor.
If you want to serve Jesus faithfully for the long term, we hope you can lean into the words Pete shares and catch a vision for a sustainable, Jesus-abiding, and loving kind of pastoring. Enjoy this conversation between Pete and Jason.
Pete Scazzero
After leading New Life Fellowship Church for 26 years, Pete Scazzero co-founded Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, a groundbreaking ministry that moves the church forward by slowing the church down in order to multiply deeply changed leaders and disciples.
Pete hosts the top-ranked Emotionally Healthy Leader podcast and is the author of a number of bestselling books, including The Emotionally Healthy Leader and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Pete and his wife Geri also developed The Emotionally Healthy Discipleship Course (Part 1 and 2), a powerful resource that moves people from a shallow to a deep relationship with Jesus.
Pete and Geri remain vital members of New Life Fellowship Church in Queens, NY.