Scazzero, Peter. The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2015.

“We lead more out of who we are than out of what we do,” writes Peter Scazzero, author of The Emotionally Healthy Leader (48). Scazzero is the founding pastor and now a pastor at large of New Life Fellowship Church in New York City (22-23). After having pastored New Life for twenty-six years, he now writes from the perspective of a pastor who has gone through many personal transformations and, by extension, leadership transformations (23). He uses his experiences as a guide for Christian leaders everywhere to guide them through transforming their inner life and ministry leadership (23).

Scazzero contends that to effectively see the Gospel of Christ transform lives Christian leaders must adopt emotionally healthy habits of personal and leadership transformation (23). This personal transformation begins with dealing with inner life issues such as confronting inner weaknesses, prioritizing the leader’s marriage or singleness, taking more time for intentional spiritual focus, and honoring the Sabbath with rest and spiritual contemplation (23). The leadership transformation takes place in how pastors lead their teams in planning, build their team and organizational culture, deal with power dynamics in ministry relationships, and deal with beginnings and endings in ministries, career, or relationships (23).

In chapter one, Scazzero begins by describing “the emotionally unhealthy leader” so that the reader may begin to recognize traits that need to be addressed and know that there is hope for change (25, 43). He states that “the emotionally unhealthy leader is someone who operates in a continuous state of emotional and spiritual deficit, lacking emotional maturity and a ‘being with God’ sufficient to sustain their ‘doing for God’” (25). In the next four chapters of the book, he begins to address four foundational “inner life” transformations that each leader needs to understand and implement for healthier leadership. The first to be addressed in chapter two is the need to “face your shadow” by learning to recognize, confront, and overcome various personal weaknesses such as driving too hard with no rest, conflict aversion, anger, bitterness, a need for approval from others, and more (48, 54-55). Ignoring these weaknesses will undermine the relationships and effectiveness of a leader, while confronting them will lead to significant growth (61, 66). Facing these shadows comes through recognizing feelings, countering damaging inherited family patterns, and getting feedback from other trusted observers (70-77).

While Scazzero repeatedly talks about emotionally healthy leadership in the title and throughout the text, these first two chapters introduce a broadening of the thesis of the book. Scazzero repeatedly addresses issues which are not rooted in emotional health. While some are issues of emotional maturity, many others are related to spiritual maturity, character development, personality deficiencies and tendencies, bad habits, or even just deficiencies of talent or skill. For instance, in the second paragraph of chapter one, he immediately expands his topic by noting that speaking of emotionally unhealthy Christian leaders includes “emotional and spiritual deficits,” as if the two are naturally connoted by the phrase “emotional health” (25). His immediate illustrations include one individual who is easily offended and one who is perpetually late, though the first is an emotional or sin issue while the second is a character or maturity issue (26). In fact, many of the issues in the book can be described as maturity issues, whether they are emotional, spiritual, relational, professional, or character deficits. Unfortunately, while Scazzero admits that some may be sinful or spiritual (but certainly not all), he spends very little time talking of sin, repentance, spiritual maturity, sanctification, or true discipleship (48). Instead, his focus is repeatedly on monastic isolation and prayer (17, 64, 102, 114, 141, 196, 133-134, 136, 188-189, 196, 205, 288) and a modern psychological approach to healing “wounds” and behaviors inherited from “family of origin” (16, 28, 34-36, 38, 54, 58-59, 61-65, 70, 72-76, 80, 88-89, 97, 154-155, 162, 214, 217, 221, 224, 225-227, 231, 235, 244, 247, 256, 267-268, 277-278, 283-284, 292, 298, 302, 307).

In chapter three, Scazzero addresses the next inner life issue for leaders, which is to lead out of their marriage or singleness (81). Whether married or single, the author maintains that this status is God’s calling on our life, a priority before ministry, and the most impactful message of the Gospel we present (86, 92, 97, 101, 106, 110). While this is another example of a topic far broader than emotional health, Scazzero rightly identifies the priority of a leader’s marriage in a healthy leader’s life. In an effort to value singles, Scazzero tries to handle singleness in parallel fashion to marriage, but fails to recognize the distinct value of both, particularly marriage’s unique picture of the union of the Trinity and singleness’ unique potential for focused passion for Christ. The author credits both marriage and singleness as “your loudest gospel message,” which is another example of looseness in phrasing (97-98, 110). While it is true that a faithful marriage is a testament to the Gospel, the good news is “loudest” when it is proclaimed clearly (a viewpoint he acknowledges on pages 97 and 110 even while persisting with the phrase).

In chapter four, the author advocates for leaders to “slow down for loving union” – slowing down the pace of ministry and making intentional time in their schedule to meet with God in isolation for self-evaluation, prayer, scripture, and listening (133, 135, 139). Scazzero suggests a written “rule of life” to help guide this self-evaluation of priorities and time and includes some prayer practices rooted in monastic tradition that he has found helpful, such as the “daily office” and the “examen” (135-137, 139-140). In chapter five, the fourth and final inner life issue that Scazzero addresses is for leaders to “practice Sabbath delight” – setting aside a 24-hour period each week to “stop work, enjoy rest, practice delight, and contemplate God” (144). He notes that this is a spiritual discipline that shows a trust in God in opposition to powers and principalities, and that it offers an important chance for leaders to play and an opportunity for revelation (156, 158, 160, 163). Chapters four and five are two of the most helpful of the book, even while being the most predictable, for their check on the human impulse to push harder, achieve more, and gain admiration. Scazzero’s affection for and adoption of Catholic monastic traditions are something to be aware of, however, as his guidance on “loving union” with Christ pulls much more from his monastic experience and catholic monastic history than scriptural revelation. For example, after introducing the Rule of Life, a monastic traditions, he begins talking about long periods of sitting in silence in wordless prayer—which is a monastic meditative approach rather than a scriptural value, as well as other traditional monastic structured prayer guides the Daily Office and the Examen (139).

Having reflected on the key inner life issues that leaders must be aware of and address in their life, Scazzero then turns to the “outer life,” important healthy leadership practices (174). The first of these he addresses is how the pastor leads his teams in planning and decision making (177) in another good chapter of the book. He contends that when leaders plan and make decisions out of a healthy inner life, they will make decisions based on God’s direction and His timing rather than based on personal fears and weaknesses. Unhealthy decision-making marks success by surface measures and fails to rely on God’s leadership and limits instead of marking success by obedience to God’s will, preparing the team’s hearts for listening, praying for wisdom, and seeing God in the limitations faced (181, 183, 185, 188, 194, 199, 203). The author’s excellent focus on seeking and listening for God is at odds with his warnings to stay within God’s limits: even as he discusses God’s limits, it is clear that he is talking about human limits exceeded outside of God’s will (185-186). If leaders adequately seek and follow God’s leadership, the question of limits becomes moot as God provides for what He directs.

In chapter seven, Scazzero states that ministry leaders must also pay close attention to maintaining healthy teams and organizational culture, including communication skills, confronting interpersonal issues, spiritual formation, and protecting marriages (216, 222, 228, 233). The main points of maintaining open communication and confronting issues rather than ignoring them are necessary lessons for the Christian leader, often ignored but never without consequence. However, the details of this chapter are less helpful, consumed with contemporary communication skill theory taking healthy communication to an unhealthy extreme, and complicated by a worldly view of church staff and structure. For example, Scazzero told of a supervisor minimizing the impact of an assistant’s mistake rather than confronting her, which at the author’s guidance turned into an elaborately prepared public confrontation at a conference (219-222). While the original issue was not ideal, the author’s solution was wildly out of proportion to the issue at hand. Scazzero presents another example of his own confrontation of a subordinate’s (Mike’s) mishandling of a requested recording of the service (230-231). Though the subordinate did not handle the request appropriately and it needed to be addressed, the author’s own behavior was shockingly worse as he makes a last-minute unnecessary request at the worker’s expense without any grace, demands his own solutions with no actual knowledge of the problems or implications, and gets personally offended to be refused by who he dismisses as a twenty-five-year-old who has only been on staff for one year. He then—instead of taking his offense to the staff member directly—takes advantage of his position to take his grievances, combined with his newfound negative personnel observations regarding this staff member, not only directly to Mike’s supervisor but also all the way to the new Senior Pastor to make sure Mike was appropriately disciplined (231). He notes in the text that he felt disrespected, worried that now that he was not the Senior Pastor he might be treated with less respect by others (231). However, the episode demonstrates a worldly view of authority systems in the text that does not exemplify scriptural care and respect.

The third outer life issue that Scazzero leads the reader to address in chapter 8 is that of power and wise boundaries (239). In this chapter he explains that a wise leader will discern and acknowledge the power that he and other church members wield, whether positional, spiritual, relational, or otherwise (245-246). Wise leaders will maintain clear and transparent relationships that acknowledge and respect power differentials and responsibilities and will weigh the implications of relationships complicated by friendship, power, and responsibility (257, 264). In chapter nine, Scazzero deals with “endings and new beginnings” for his final outer life issue, teaching that healthy leaders must recognize and accept when God is bringing a ministry, relationship, position, or stage of life to an end and must learn to look for and embrace what God is bringing anew in its place (269, 279).

Scazerro’s text The Emotionally Healthy Leader has a lot to offer the discerning pastor from the author’s life experience in pastoring New Life Fellowship Church. The admonitions of self-examination, prioritization of family, and slowing down the ministry in pursuit of Christ and resting in His Sabbath are vital to healthy ministry. The reminders to seek God before our ministry and leadership decisions is both simply obvious and yet still insidiously easy to treat as a formality during staff meetings, committee decisions, and day-to-day strategic decisions. In particular, I found that section convicting and have begun to even more intentionally prepare my heart and focus on God before and during meetings. Scazzero also brings valuable insight into ministry relationships as he discusses team-building, organizational culture, and handling power differences.

However, a book on healthy Christian leadership should have a lot more to offer from Scriptures than from psychology or from monastic tradition, and Scazzero is light on the former and heavy on the latter. Though Christian language is used throughout the book, most of the book reads like a self-help book for Christian leaders, particularly with the heavy focus on family-of-origin issues and the complete lack of focus on sin, repentance, sanctification, or Biblical discipleship. For this reason in particular, I would recommend this book only for the discerning Christian leader who is already Scripturally sound and has a solid understanding of the process of Spiritual growth. A lack of preparation and awareness when reading this book could lead to a pastor with an emotionally healthy but spiritually lost congregation.