Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

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Making the link radically transformed their personal journey with Christ, their marriage, their parenting, and, ultimately, New Life Fellowship Church. Pete and Geri, along with the NLF leadership team, then embarked on a journey of research, study, and intentional personal growth over the next twenty-six and a half years. They dedicated themselves to studying and researching this link between emotional and spiritual maturity – in Scripture, historical theology, church history, family systems theory, monastic movements and spirituality, contributions from the global church, marriage and family studies, interpersonal neurobiology, ministry to the poor and marginalized, and Quaker spirituality. Their goal was simple – to move from a traditional discipleship model to a transformative one in which people experienced deep change in Jesus for the sake of the world. My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this , that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. According to the Bible, all humans are under the conviction of sin. In fact, human depravity is a clear doctrine in Scripture. All but Jesus are by nature depraved. Scazzero avoids the word “depravity” throughout his book as he uses psychologically derived reasons why people behave sinfully. His technique is to eradicate each flaw or sinful behavior category through identifying it in one’s home environment or genealogy rather than in one’s own personal depravity. He evidently does not think people need to die to the old nature, the old self, but rather to keep what they like about themselves, which may indeed be the very worst of sins, that of pride. Thirdly, time, energy and money is invested in your team’s personal development. In other words, we’re not simply talking about the work itself, but them. The Bible never encourages self-love! People may not like their life circumstances or the way they are or feel and may even say they hate themselves, but what they don’t like and/or hate are those things that make them feel uncomfortable and even miserable. People don’t need to love themselves more. They need to love God and others more. In fact, a sign of perilous times in 2 Tim 3:1-2 is that “men shall be loves of their own selves.” And this is exactly what is happening with the psychotherapeutic mentality that is promoted by Scazzero. The Great Commission

Peter Scazzero learned the hard way: you can't be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. Even though he was the pastor of a growing church, he did what most people do:

Early Life & Education

Lastly, Scazzero, as noted already, undermines the authority of Scripture. His constant comments in the vein of ‘Bible studies are not enough’ are compounded by his minimal use of Scripture in the book overall. He quotes much more extensively from popular culture (novels/ films etc) and personal experience than from scripture. A typical line of argument is as follows: Some of the most influential writers who have popularized contemplative prayer in the evangelical church are Richard Foster and Brennan Manning. Both these men have written popular Christian books about contemplative prayer. And both quote the Catholic mystics such as Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating. We'll model a powerful skill called "Community Temperature Reading" and talk about how it applies to real life leadership scenarios.

My inner world was not in sync with my exterior behaviour. The Bible has a word for this gap, a word that Jesus repeatedly used toward religious leaders: hypocrisy…. What is particularly frightening is that this ‘playacting’ is often taught and expected in our churches. The result is that huge numbers of people are totally unaware of the dichotomy between their exterior and interior worlds (55).Before making another remark, we need to say that one of us qualified for the clinical psychologist, educational psychologist, and marriage and family therapist licenses in California, but never applied for one. Psychotherapy with its theories is a bankrupt system and is in direct conflict with the Bible, even when there seem to be some similarities. The words of psychology are from fallen humanity; the words of the Bible are from God. Both of us had the responsibility for a personal soul care ministry in our church in which we relied on what God has said rather than the theories and techniques we had learned from the world. In 2012, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship formally became its’ own formal entity as a non-profit ministry. Once Pete stepped down as Lead Pastor in 2013, he and Geri have given themselves full-time to this ministry and it has mushroomed and prospered beyond everyone’s expectations. Whether married or single, most emotionally unhealthy leaders affirm the importance of a healthy intimacy in relationships and lifestyle, but few, if any, have a vision for their marriage or singleness as the greatest gift they offer. Instead, they view their marriage or single-ness as an essential and stable foundation for something more important—building an effective ministry, which is their first priority. As a result, they invest the best of their time and energy in becoming better equipped as a leader, and invest very little in cultivating a great marriage or single life that reveals Jesus’ love to the world. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Cor. 3:18.)