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EH Leader Podcast: Emotionally Healthy Culture and Team Building

CULTURE AND TEAM BUILDING We make plans and decisions every day as leaders. One of the primary tasks of a leader is to create an emotionally healthy culture and build a healthy team. For Christian leaders, this task is even more demanding because the kind of culture and teams we create are to be radically different than those of the world. How healthy is your practice of culture and team building in your leadership? Join Pete and Rich in this month’s edition of the Emotionally Healthy Leadership Podcast as they discuss this pivotal leadership theme. We also invite you to continue this leadership conversation at our upcoming 2016 EH Leadership Conference. Click the video below to watch or the link to listen to the audio file. LISTEN NOW

10 Top Reasons Racism Continues in the Church Today

I’m excited to participate in Movement Day 2015 in New York City this coming Thursday to participate on a panel around a frank discussion on bridging barriers of race, culture, and class. In preparation, I thought I would get on paper my top 10 reasons of why racism continues in the church today. Here they are: Failure to capture Scripture’s vision of the church as a multi-racial community that transcends racial, cultural, economic and gender barriers. The gospel is the power of God that bridges the infinite gap between humanity and God as well as the “dividing wall” between races, cultures, ethnicities, social classes, and genders. Measuring success primarily by numbers. We want to grow our churches. We want it to happen quickly. The problem is that bridging racial barriers is slow and will rarely produce “big” numbers. Superficial discipleship. We focus on getting people “over the line” into salvation and connected. We don’t. Read more.

5 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis

There are three main branches of the Christian church in the world today–the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, and the Orthodox Churches located primarily in the Eastern part of the world. There is much we can learn from Catholics and Orthodox believers—even though they have plenty of problems and we do not agree on a number of points. This is especially true when we consider Pope Francis. Here are a few of the top lessons I am learning from him: 1. Humility “I ask you to pray for me. Don’t forget!” Pope Francis says repeatedly. It is disarming. Luis Palau, a friend of his, notes in a Christianity Today article that he was always asking people for prayer. In a visit to prisoners in Philadelphia: “ I come to you as pastor, but mostly as brother. No one is perfect and without need of forgiveness.” He refrained from using the perks of his. Read more.

The Road Less Traveled

My recent discussions with pastors and leaders around the release of The Emotionally Healthy Leader with the continued expansion of The EHS Course has brought to light how massive and all-encompassing a paradigm shift EHS is. This is nowhere more evident than in how we define success and make decisions. The faulty belief that “bigger is always better” is deeply embedded in us. We forget that the most important thing is to do God’s will, in his way, in his timetable. How do we do that as leaders? Consider the following chart, adapted from chapter 6 in The Emotionally Healthy Leader to help you start: Let me also invite you to The Emotionally Healthy Leadership Conference 2016, April 20-21 (The Leader’s Marriage Conference – April 19), to be equipped more fully on what it will look like to bring this kind of deep, beneath the surface spirituality to you, your leadership and your church.. Read more.

Second Hand Spirituality Churches

Most people in our churches are living off other people’s spirituality. In fact, many are imitating a spirituality with Jesus for which they have little first–hand experience. It is easy to live off the life of God in someone else (e.g. the Apostle Paul’s handkerchief, Peter’s shadow, or Elisha’s bones) than to have our own direct experience. Anointed sermons and worship can keep people excited about Jesus and in the pews, but that may still be second-hand. The question is: Are our people developing and growing in their own personal, immediate relationship with Jesus during the week? How can we know? That is much more challenging to measure than numbers and budgets. In our overloaded culture where people are so distracted and busy, this may be our greatest challenge to effectively impact our communities. How can our people give away something (i.e. Jesus) if they do not possess Him? We invest enormous time, energy,. Read more.

The Hardest Task of a Leader

In this famous story from Luke 10:38-42, we find Martha working to provide the meal for Jesus to eat and Mary sitting at His feet listening to what He has to say. Like us, Martha complains about her workload. Nonetheless, Jesus defends Mary’s act of preference. Every generation of leaders since the first century has written about this passage. Consider Johannes Vermeer’s (1632-1675) painting: I recently reread Thomas Merton’s comments on the Mary/Martha tensions in his address to monks in his book Contemplation in a World of Action (pp.244-250). Allow me to summarize a few of his insights here: The conflict of Mary and Martha is in ourselves. Having sufficient time with Jesus to sustain our doing for Him is, perhaps, the primary tension of every leader. You are not alone. The Holy Spirit invites us to prefer “the apparent uselessness, unproductivity, and inactivity of simply sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening. Read more.

Cómo desarrollar líderes de alto impacto en su iglesia

Seminario web gratuito en vivo con Pete Scazzero & Drew Hyun

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