The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World

who you are is more important than what you do. Why? Because the love of Jesus in you is the greatest gift you have to give to others. Who you are as a person — and specifically how well you love — will always have a larger and longer impact on those around you than what you do. Your

Fire What makes a fire burn is space between the logs, a breathing space. Too much of a good thing, too many logs packed in too tight can douse the flames almost as surely as a pail of water would. So building fires requires attention to the spaces in between, as much as the wood. When we are able to build open spaces in the same way we have learned to pile on the logs, then we can come to see how it is fuel, and absence of the fuel together, that make fire possible. We only need lay a log lightly from time to time. A fire grows simply because the space is there, with openings in which the flame that knows just how it wants to burn can find its way. 12 Judy Brown

For example, Jesus’ stunning success in teaching and feeding the 5,000 at the beginning of John 6 is followed just a few paragraphs later by a corresponding numerical failure: “At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him” (John 6:66 NLT). Jesus didn’t wring his hands and question his preaching strategy; he remained content, knowing he was in the Father’s will. He had a larger perspective on what God was doing. Success isn’t always bigger and better. The

We lead more out of who we are than out of what we do, strategic or otherwise. If we fail to recognize that who we are on the inside informs every aspect of our leadership, we will do damage to ourselves and to those we lead.

Throughout the history of the church, Christians have tended to elevate the importance of one over the other. For the first 1,500 years of the church, singleness was considered the preferred state and the best way to serve Christ. Singles sat at the front of the church. Marrieds were sent to the back.4 Things changed after the Reformation in 1517, when single people were sent to the back and marrieds moved to the front — at least among Protestants.5 Scripture, however, refers to both statuses as weighty, meaningful vocations. We’ll spend more time on each later in the chapter, but here is a brief overview. Marrieds. This refers to a man and woman who form a one-flesh union through a covenantal vow — to God, to one another, and to the larger community — to permanently, freely, faithfully, and fruitfully love one another. Adam and Eve provide the clearest biblical model for this. As a one-flesh couple, they were called by God to take initiative to “be fruitful . . . fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). Singles. Scripture teaches that human beings are created for intimacy and connection with God, themselves, and one another. Marriage is one framework in which we work this out; singleness is another. While singleness may be voluntarily chosen or involuntarily imposed, temporary or long-term, a sudden event or a gradual unfolding, Christian singleness can be understood within two distinct callings: • Vowed celibates. These are individuals who make lifelong vows to remain single and maintain lifelong sexual abstinence as a means of living out their commitment to Christ. They do this freely in response to a God-given gift of grace (Matthew 19:12). Today, we are perhaps most familiar with vowed celibates as nuns and priests in the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Church. These celibates vow to forgo earthly marriage in order to participate more fully in the heavenly reality that is eternal union with Christ.6 • Dedicated celibates. These are singles who have not necessarily made a lifelong vow to remain single, but who choose to remain sexually abstinent for as long as they are single. Their commitment to celibacy is an expression of their commitment to Christ. Many desire to marry or are open to the possibility. They may have not yet met the right person or are postponing marriage to pursue a career or additional education. They may be single because of divorce or the death of a spouse. The apostle Paul acknowledges such dedicated celibates in his first letter to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 7). Understanding singleness and marriage as callings or vocations must inform our self-understanding and the outworking of our leadership. Our whole life as a leader is to bear witness to God’s love for the world. But we do so in different ways as marrieds or singles. Married couples bear witness to the depth of Christ’s love. Their vows focus and limit them to loving one person exclusively, permanently, and intimately. Singles — vowed or dedicated — bear witness to the breadth of Christ’s love. Because they are not limited by a vow to one person, they have more freedom and time to express the love of Christ to a broad range of people. Both marrieds and singles point to and reveal Christ’s love, but in different ways. Both need to learn from one another about these different aspects of Christ’s love. This may be a radically new concept for you, but stay with me. God intends this rich theological vision to inform our leadership in ways few of us may have considered. Before exploring the connections between leadership and marriage or singleness, it’s important to understand the way marriage and singleness are commonly understood in standard practice among leaders today.

the love of Jesus in you is the greatest gift you have to give to others. Who you are as a person — and specifically how well you love — will always have a larger and longer impact on those around you than what you do. Your being with God (or lack of being with God) will trump, eventually, your doing for God every time.

You Can’t Do God’s Work Your Way without Paying a Steep Price

Mandamiento enfermizo 2: Lo que haces es más importante que lo que eres

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.

Spiritual deficits typically reveal themselves in too much activity. Unhealthy leaders engage in more activities than their combined spiritual, physical, and emotional reserves can sustain. They give out for God more than they receive from him.

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.” When

Un líder emocionalmente enfermo es alguien que opera bajo un estado continuo de déficit emocional y espiritual, y al que le faltan la madurez emocional y el «estar con Dios» lo suficiente como para sostener su «hacer para Dios».

You would think the church and its leaders would be all for healthy leadership and whatever it takes to achieve it. But the truth is that there are parts of church leadership culture that actually work hard against it.

You Can’t Live at Warp Speed without Warping Your Soul

Your being with God (or lack of being with God) will trump, eventually, your doing for God every time. We cannot give what we do not possess. We cannot help but give what we do possess.

In what ways does my current pace of life and leadership enhance or diminish my ability to allow God’s will and presence full scope in my life?

Watch for the internal signs that you are exceeding your limits, doing more for God than your abiding relationship with him can sustain (for example, lack of peace, irritability, rushing). Make it your first priority and goal to seek his face and to do his will each day.

death is a necessary prelude to resurrection. To bear long-term fruit for Christ, we need to recognize that some things must die so something new can grow.

When it comes to the church and numbers, the problem isn’t that we count, it’s that we have so fully embraced the world’s dictum that bigger is better that numbers have become the only thing we count. When something isn’t bigger and better, we consider it — and often ourselves — a failure. What we miss in all this counting is the value Scripture places on internal markers. What constitutes failure in the eyes of the world isn’t always a failure in the kingdom of God. For

Parker Palmer lo expresa muy bien: Hay al menos una cosa que me ha quedado clara: el cuidado de sí mismo no es nunca un acto egoísta; sencillamente es una buena mayordomía del único don que tenemos; fui puesto en la tierra para poderles ofrecer ese don a los demás. Cada vez que podamos escuchar a nuestro verdadero yo y darle el cuidado que necesita, no lo hacemos solo para nosotros mismos, sino también para los muchos otros cuyas vidas tocamos.

Your shadow is the accumulation of untamed emotions, less-than-pure motives and thoughts that, while largely unconscious, strongly influence and shape your behaviors. It is the damaged but mostly hidden version of who you are.

Whenever I feel discouraged in my own progress, I remember what one Trappist monk said to me as he reflected on his sixty years of life dedicated to prayer, “I am only a beginner.

Just because we have the gifts and skills to build a crowd and create lots of activity does not mean we are building a church or ministry that connects people intimately to Jesus.

Thus, disciplining ourselves to invest time, energy, and money in personal development is not a selfish indulgence, but one of the most loving things we offer to those we serve. Team

¿Cómo podemos esperar que cambiaremos al mundo para Cristo, si nosotros mismos no nos dejamos cambiar por él? Para tener alguna esperanza de tratar debidamente con los miembros de los equipos que sean inmaduros o problemáticos, tenemos que comenzar primero por nuestra propia transformación espiritual.

I set aside time not only to create specific goals but to think through the steps and time required to reach those objectives.

Married couples bear witness to the depth of Christ’s love. Their vows focus and limit them to loving one person exclusively, permanently, and intimately. Singles — vowed or dedicated — bear witness to the breadth of Christ’s love. Because they are not limited by a vow to one person, they have more freedom and time to express the love of Christ to a broad range of people. Both marrieds and singles point to and reveal Christ’s love, but in different ways. Both need to learn from one another about these different aspects of Christ’s love. This

Entitled leaders act as if the world revolves around them. Their thinking goes something like this: I’ve been blessed. I have gifts and influence. I have worked hard and deserve to be treated well. This is what I refer to as “power over” others leadership. The opposite of an entitled leader is a grateful leader. Grateful leaders continually marvel at all they have received from God. But as a leader’s sense of gratitude shrinks, their sense of entitlement grows in equal measure. While the world practices a “power over” strategy characterized by dominance and win-lose competitiveness, Jesus taught a “power under” strategy characterized by humility and sacrificial service. In the world, says Jesus, leaders throw their weight around, “[but it is] not so with you. . . . Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:42 – 43). While Jesus is the invisible God who holds all things together — Almighty, eternal, immortal, and infinite — he became human, temporal, mortal, and finite. Jesus demonstrated his power not by force or control, but by choosing to come under us, humbly washing feet and dying for our sins. He carefully stewarded his power: “[Christ Jesus,] who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6 – 7).

How could there possibly be one cookie-cutter definition of success in so many diverse circumstances? And yet, that is the standard we too often apply when we use only external markers to define and measure success. What you need to remember is that it is your unique situation, and God’s will for you in it, that will define what God considers success — both for you personally and for the church, ministry, or team you lead. The challenge every leader and team must face is undertaking the slow and painstaking discernment work to identify precisely what that is for you at any given point in time.

Mature spiritual leadership is forged in the crucible of difficult conversations, the pressure of conflicted relationships, the pain of setbacks, and dark nights of the soul.