Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
117. Emotionally Healthy Church Leadership
"Your gifts might open doors in ministry, but your emotional health and family life will determine how long you can stay in the room."
In this episode, Jason and Lauren Vallotton dive into the crucial (and often overlooked) connection between emotional health, family life, and sustainable ministry. Ministry isn’t just about being gifted—it’s about being grounded. Whether you're a pastor, leader, or someone pursuing a call to serve, this conversation offers a timely reminder: who you are behind closed doors matters more than what you can do on stage.
💛 Part 1: Emotional Health in Ministry
- Understanding the integration of body, soul, and spirit
- Why self-awareness is a superpower in leadership
- The impact of unresolved grief, resentment, and burnout
- How emotional intelligence often outlasts platform skills
- Why ministry tends to trigger unhealed wounds like rejection, people-pleasing, or perfectionism
- A personal example of how inner healing transformed leadership
🏠 Part 2: Family Health in Ministry
- Why the home is the first and most important ministry
- How ministry should overflow from family health—not compete with it
- Red flags: when someone feels powerful in ministry but powerless at home
- Encouragement to realign priorities and strengthen what matters most
Whether you're just stepping into ministry or you've been leading for years, this episode offers practical wisdom and vulnerable insight into what it really takes to lead with longevity and wholeness.
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We're the valetins and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
Speaker 2:But that's not always what comes easiest.
Speaker 1:We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 1:Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins.
Speaker 2:We are your hosts, jason and Lauren. It's good to be here with you on this Wednesday. Hope everybody's doing well, settling into spring and wow, yeah, we're already like at the end of April, it's crazy Beginning of May, it is crazy, unbelievable. Well, you guys, today for our episode we want to have a conversation about emotionally healthy church leadership, and I'll tell you where this conversation originated.
Speaker 2:Jason and I for most of you listening, you know this, but we live in Redding, california, we are on the senior leadership team at Bethel Church and have spent a lot of years of our adult lives as pastors in the church, and our passion point emphases are often in the realms of emotional and relational health, partly because we have a real desire to see the body of Christ thriving, not just spiritually but as a holistic being, right Like we are body, soul and spirit. We as believers should be the most thriving people in every aspect of our lives because we have Jesus Christ living inside of us. We have the King of Kings leading us in the way of the kingdom, and for too long in church history it would have been normal to thrive spiritually and to operate in signs, wonders and miracles, but then fall apart in the realm of family or in the realm of being able to take care of your inner person. So a lot of church leaders, a lot of revival leaders from the past we've seen their lives blow up on the sidelines and it's confusing right. So we have a passion point, like a personal mandate, to really bring a measure of emotional and relational health to the body of Christ.
Speaker 2:So in that context, at our church we've got a school of ministry and the ministry school. That's why I live in Reading. I originally moved here to be a student at BSSM and both Jason and I have worked in our past lives as pastors in BSSM. Jason spent a lot of years helping to oversee the first year school of ministry and then oversee the pastoral care inside of the school of ministry. So our roots are there, we have a love for our school and it's full of some of the most amazing people on the planet who literally every year, drop everything to come and spend nine months to three years in our school of ministry.
Speaker 2:Well, we have a track inside the second year program for people who feel called to and passionate about career ministry itself. People come to our school, sometimes they're business owners, sometimes they're moms or dads, but a lot of them are pastors or will be pastors someday. And so we were invited to teach a class on emotionally healthy church leadership and it was a really fantastic conversation, and so many of our listeners I know there's a lot of listeners of Dates, Mates and Babies with the Valetins who are in ministry of some sort, either career ministry or you're also in ministry alongside the business that you run or the family that you lead, et cetera and so it feels like a really relevant conversation for us as a community to have because, gosh, it's so true that your gifts and your talents might really open doors for you in ministry or in the realm of helping people, serving people, but your emotional health and your family life honestly, those are the things that are going to determine how long you can stay in the room.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that we would be able to address how to be emotionally healthy as leaders in the body of Christ is such an important topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so true.
Speaker 2:I wonder if we might start, babe, by just talking a little bit about being a triune being and bring a little bit more weight to what I already shared as far as yeah, for sure. We have to be able to thrive across the board. Yeah, we should be able to.
Speaker 1:I mean, ultimately, this is a passion point of both of ours. I've spent 20 years literally this year in church ministry and because of my role being a counselor pastoral counselor, emotional health I carry so much personal passion around this topic, especially for pastors and leaders, because that's the world I've been in for so long and been helping to heal and fix and repair marriages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for years after you were a pastor in the School of Ministry. Your main role was actually to help pastorally counsel our staff. That was your main role.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and guest speakers that came in and their kids, and so I have the privilege of seeing the behind the scenes on our lives on people's lives and what we really see is it's easy for us as leaders to put, especially church leaders, to put a massive emphasis on our spirit, and we should, especially church leaders, to put a massive emphasis on our spirit and we should. We talk a lot in the church about you've got to go pray about that, you've got to go and fast and you've got to go worship.
Speaker 2:Spend time in the presence. Spend time in the presence.
Speaker 1:And golly, that is so massive.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. I mean, I don't want to de-emphasize that.
Speaker 1:Everything should come from that. Yeah, the problem is in the church world we have minored, we have made your soul and your body almost unimportant, less important, for sure, way less important. And so I grew up in a world that tried to solve every problem through the Spirit, that didn't even look at the body or the soul. Honestly, everything was, most everything was around the angelic, the demonic, the presence, the what's happening in the spirit realm, the atmosphere and the challenge becomes. We miss out on how God created us to live sustainably.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And you miss out on the fact that you can't separate yourself, your body from your soul, your soul from your spirit, your spirit from your body. You really can't do it, and when we go into a deep dive of this, you can start to see that if something affects you spiritually, it also affects you physically.
Speaker 2:And it affects you mentally and emotionally.
Speaker 1:And if something affects you physically, then it affects you emotionally and mentally and probably spiritually. We are this triune being, and so here's what happens is people get in ministry and they pour in and pour in and pour in and pour in into the spirit, but they don't pour into their body or their soul and they end up so spiritually heavy that what they chase and what they go after they actually can't sustain with their body or their spirit Right, yeah, or sorry or their soul.
Speaker 1:And it becomes this place where I always say this any place that you export more than you import, you're going to be bankrupt. Right, Just think about this. I want the church leaders to think about this. Any place that you export more than you import, you are going to be bankrupt. You put more money going out than you bring in bankrupt. You give away more emotionally. You actually give away more emotionally. You meet more people's needs and you don't meet your own needs. You're going to crash emotionally. You're going to have a breakdown. You pour out more physically than than what you take care of your body. You're going to crash. Right, it's not sustainable.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's what we see. If we look at church history. That's what we see repeated over and over and over and over again is the call of God in my life is more important than my life or the life of those around me that I'm called to steward.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And therefore the ministry ends up being my mistress.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I end up crashing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely All right, tag you're it, that's great. Yeah, I mean. Ultimately, I think we have to get to know ourselves as that triune being. We actually have to understand how we're created, the physical design of our bodies and our minds and how it connects to our soul and our spirit. We have to learn about that and, like you said, we have to get good at creating sustainable rhythms.
Speaker 2:I think one of the things that we would say to leaders is you really can't effectively lead others very well for a long period of time unless you're leading yourself really well. So my first priority gosh, what kind of fraud am I if I'm meeting with people in our church and I'm coaching them through how to be well in their marriage and how to be well in their emotional world, but I go to bed at night riddled with anxiety and I have no idea how to find the root of the problem and take care of the unmet needs I have that are causing me to be so anxious Right Like that. We can't do that. We can't do that for very long before we start crumbling under the weight. So I think, in that regard, self-awareness is a superpower, and what I mean by self-awareness we will say self-awareness is the ability to know what's going on inside of you at all times.
Speaker 2:So the superpower of self-awareness is I can operate in my life as a mom, as a wife, as a friend, as a leader in our environment, and because I've grown in my ability to know what's going on inside of me, I can go into these different realms of leadership in my life and know what's me, what's somebody else. You know what's due to lack of sleep, what's actually, you know, due to the fact that I haven't been in the secret place with God in too many days time. What's actually? Due to the fact that I didn't eat well yesterday and so I'm feeling like trash. Today I've got a headache.
Speaker 2:You know, we become aware of ourselves not so that we can obsess over ourselves, but so that we can be the fullest version of ourself, the healthiest version of ourself, in whatever realm we're in, and so we have to get good at learning our needs and learning how to meet them in healthy ways, and sometimes that looks like. I love this phrase that you use. But as leaders, we are called to bring order to chaos, and you, I love how you say that as individuals, we're responsible to confront the chaos in our own life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because, ultimately, leadership is confronting the chaos around us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2:And so I think when we talk about self-awareness, we're really talking about the ability to recognize when something needs attention and to confront whatever chaos that is and bring strength to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's real. I mean, ultimately, we know that ministry is triggering. It's going to trigger everything inside of you because it's just a mirror. It's like marriage. If you think about it like this, it's just a mirror. It's like marriage. If you think about it like this, marriage is a mirror. I am going to, I'm going to see really what's inside of me in marriage. Having kids is a mirror. I I am, my kids are.
Speaker 1:Either I'm either finding out in parenting that I have a lot of self-control or I don't, that I feel confident about learning and growing and getting feedback, or that I can't take any. That's marriage, that's leadership, that's ministry, that's life. And to me it says this it says, if you're in ministry and you have a bunch of wounds in a bunch of places that you haven't healed yet, this is why, again, sometimes going into the spirit, sometimes like filling up your spirit, it's almost so much easier than the other places. And I'll tell you why. It's because I don't have to think about me. I just think about God and I think about who he is and what he's doing and what he can do, but I almost don't have to take any personal responsibility for myself. It's just if everything is an angel or a demon or a spirit or God and I'm responsible to steward his presence and I just focus on all of that today. Then I don't think about how uh, I don't think about my own soul in where I'm at.
Speaker 2:Or your own patterns of dysfunction, or the own or your own habits that actually don't lend themselves to healthy relationships with other people.
Speaker 1:So a disconnection in the church is a Leviathan spirit. A relational breakdown in the church is a divisive spirit. Relational breakdown in the church is a divisive spirit. A sexual promiscuity in church is, you know whatever, it's Jezebel or it's Delilah and you get back into like wait, hold on a second.
Speaker 2:I'm like well, I'm sure those spirits are having a heyday, but what habits actually, what patterns of dysfunction actually created a welcome place for those spirits? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it takes off the responsibility. It's like, oh God needs to do something about this spirit, as opposed to like, no, you got to get back in and go. Why are you experiencing disconnection? Why are you experiencing confusion? Why are you experiencing disconnection? Why are you experiencing confusion? Why are you experiencing anxiety in yourself? Why are you experiencing all this pain in your relationship? Because, ultimately, we want to lead from a place of health.
Speaker 1:We want to lead from a place of wholeness. We want to lead from a place of purpose and vision and creativity and strength and ultimately, vulnerability. Creativity and strength and ultimately vulnerability. So here's the beautiful piece is, if you take care of your body, your soul and your spirit, it's easy to lead from a place of authenticity and vulnerability because you have nothing to hide. Right that becomes your superpower, your ability to steward your body, your soul and your spirit becomes this incredible example to the world around us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if a lot of that stuff isn't really in check, as a leader in the church, as a minister, you are subject to people's criticisms, opinions, needs, all day, every day, and so if these things aren't really shored up right, then you find yourself in spots where you're dealing with rejection, you're dealing with perfectionism, you're dealing with people pleasing.
Speaker 2:You don't know how to have great boundaries. And then all of a sudden and here's where we're going next all of a sudden you're obsessing over how to sort out success at work, because you've subjected yourself in purely by your, in your role, you've subjected yourself to so much so much of of your world revolves around how other people are experiencing you that we have to like hyper focus on how to win at work, and what we see so often, which is really sad, is how families at home, things start to break down Because you can't sustain what you're called to. You can't sustain your work world, ultimately, because the skill sets or the habits aren't there to actually keep your soul and your mind well inside of all this spiritual pressure, inside of all this ministry pressure, and you know, yeah, it's the most common thing.
Speaker 1:The most common thing in ministry is that leaders leave their families and focus on what they feel powerful in, which is their ministry. If you're a pastor's kid, often that's your story. Your story is man, my dad or my mom married the ministry and we got everything secondhand. And so I think we have this incredible opportunity. The incredible opportunity that we have is to model, is to lead from a place of modeling. It's discipleship, it's what. Jesus did right. He first said hey, come follow me. Come follow me, and I'll make you fishers men.
Speaker 1:So at first the disciples got to look at how he lived his life body, soul and spirit. I mean, jesus prepared for 30 years before he did any ministry. He just spent time preparing in prayer, in worship, physically, emotionally, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Like Jesus was prepping, he was preparing himself and he allowed his disciples to come and to watch how he lived his life because he was the model for how they were going to live their life.
Speaker 1:And although I don't know that Jesus' pace is what I want my pace of life to be. He only ministered for three years and so we have to think about that right, like I can't just travel every single week, I can't just be at the pulpit every single day, I can't whatever my outflow has to match my info, but we have this incredible opportunity to go okay. My first ministry is actually to the Lord and out of that, god's going to help me, he's going to search me, he's going to know me, he's going to lead me, he's going to guide me, he's going to be my great counselor. I've got to minister to my family, like my family. One of the things I love the most is that when my dad was young, god told him you're never going to outgrow your. Ministry will never outgrow your family, and if you get that backwards I'm going to shut down what you're doing over here. I think I was just so thankful God told my dad set your priorities straight.
Speaker 1:You have to be well personally and you have to lead your family well and out of that, lead my sheep, lead my people, lead the people that I've given you to a place of wholeness, to a place of health. I'm a guide. I'm going to take you where I have gone.
Speaker 1:I can't take anybody where I haven't gone. I'm going to take you where I have gone, and so I think, as leaders, we have this awesome opportunity to get our life in order to really look at the areas of our life that we need to shore up and to go. Okay, I want to be the best leader for my family, for my church, for myself as possible, and I want to grow strong habits possible and I want to grow strong habits. One of the big challenges that I'll say in closing is if you're a leader and you're struggling in an area, where do you go? If you're struggling with pornography, where do you go If you're struggling in your marriage?
Speaker 2:where do you go?
Speaker 1:If you're struggling with your self-esteem, where do you go? There's so much pressure to be the guy or to be the girl who has it all together. There's so much pressure to do that. And one of the things that I really feel like God has called me to this year is to help leaders, is to help leaders, is to help pastors and leaders to really grow that inner culture to a place of health.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I've been there myself. I've been in nervous breakdowns. I mean, I've been through so much pain, so many challenges and, more importantly, I've helped hundreds and thousands of people and leaders build strong internal structure, rebuild their marriages, rebuild their relationship with their kids, heal themselves. And so I really did. I felt like I had a really powerful dream this year about three months ago and in the dream basically in the dream, I'm not going to go into it the Lord told me my number one target this year is for pastors.
Speaker 2:You're supposed to help pastors.
Speaker 1:You're supposed to help leaders, which was it really caught me off guard, but I was so happy about it, and so Kolzik and I are starting a lead strong pastor cohort. So this is for any pastor. If you're listening to this and you're like man, I really want to get an area of my life stronger.
Speaker 2:This is specifically for men?
Speaker 1:No, not necessarily actually. Okay, cool, yeah, we didn't even think about that. Good to know. Just pastors, just leaders.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great.
Speaker 1:Through Braveco. We're doing that.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And it starts May 8th and we're going to put the link in the show notes. So it's four weeks long and basically we know that pastors are pouring out so much. You're standing firm for your church, but even the strongest leaders need to be refreshed.
Speaker 1:They need to be recharged and resharpened. So we're going to do this four week Brave Co, lead Strong. It's a pastor's cohort and we want to help pour into you. We want to if you're going like do this four-week Brave Co, lead Strong. It's a pastor's cohort and we want to help pour into you. We want to if you're going like, yeah, well, how do I meet my needs? How do I offload burdens? How do I get out from underneath this crazy weight? How do I help solve my marriage problems or my whatever? The way that I talk to myself? How do I build a stronger soul and a stronger spirit?
Speaker 1:We're going to cover those, and it's in the middle of the work week and so we tried to make it as easy and painless for pastors. We know that you guys are so incredibly busy. So it starts May 8th, from 1 to 2 pm Pacific Standard Time. So basically, our idea was you could be right in the middle of your work week, pastors. You're not having to take time out from your family and show up.
Speaker 1:If you don't have the money to pay for it I think it's $90 or something like that If you don't have the money to pay for it, it doesn't matter to me. Just send me a message. Send me an email, jasonbravecoorg or whatever. Send us an email dates, mates and babies and we'll we'll get you in. If you can pay for it, awesome, that's great, we love it. But I really feel like we're supposed to help pastors this year. We're supposed to pour into them. If you're listening to this and you have a pastor that you that you go, man, I just want to, I want to pour into you. Pay for your pastor to come. Yeah, pay it forward. Yeah, pay for your leaders to come. So if you've got some church leaders that you feel like would really love this, pay for your leaders to come and let us pour into them and help them. That's great.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad you're doing that. Me too Amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's awesome. All right y'all. We hope this week this episode has blessed you. Please share it with a leader or a pastor.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Please just take two seconds, grab the link.
Speaker 2:Share it with the leader, Especially if your leader is falling apart. No, Just kidding. No, if you want to pour into them help them get sharp.
Speaker 1:Do that, guys. Thank you so much for your time. We will see you next week on Dates. Mates and Babes, bye.