Hi, my name is Pete Scazaro. I want to welcome you today to the Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast. Our topic today is the scandal beneath all the church scandals and what to do about it. All right, let's begin now. Our focus today of scandals. And uh scandals have been going on for the decades since I've been a Christian, since the 1970s. And it's not just any more so today than it was then. It's been continuous through my decades of walking with Jesus. And it's not just here in the United States, in North America and Canada, it's not just a Western church issue. It's a global church issue from Africa to Latin America to Asia to the Mideast, Australia, New Zealand, you name it, it is a global issue. Now, I heard a statistic recently that only 30% of leaders finish well. I don't know how true that is. However, uh, in my own experience, I'd say that's probably about right. Uh, but we want to get today at the scandal beneath the scandal. And so uh uh a unique moment we are living in is because of social media and global communications, when there's a a high-level scandal, uh, it's now you know spoken all over the world. It goes everywhere. Uh, the lack of integrity in the church, of us claiming to be something countercultural but not living up to it, now becomes secular news. And so we all have a vested interest in this topic. It's so critical, not just for pastors, board members, uh leaders and churches, all of us who name the name of Jesus, because the very name and mission of Christ, the glory of God is at stake in this. And it applies to every minister. I don't care how small or large your church is, the future of the mission of Jesus is at stake and the next generation of leaders that we're forming. So scandals don't begin the day they're exposed. They they begin years earlier, very, very quietly. They in in small decisions made, whether it's boardrooms, staff teams, behind closed doors, and in small compromises and ignored red flags and poor decisions made. Um and if we're going to address what's happening today, we've got to get this beneath the scandal. So I want to I want to suggest to you, I want to suggest something, a very simple answer uh that you can take to the bank, and that's this. And it's a very serious answer that church scandals are not about public relations. It's not about structures, it's not about the pressure of living in the 21st century. It's not financial. It's way bigger and clearer than even that. It's about formation, it's about insufficient formation of our leaders and pastors around the world. Uh, and Jesus told us that there's going to be great pressure on the church. He in Matthew 24, for example, you read about him talking about the end of history and which which we're in the end times before he returns. And he speaks about wars and rumors of wars and false teachers coming out and deceptions and the love of many growing cold and that many will fall a well. And he speaks about this what's called in Greek phylipsis, intense pressure that's going to be on the church. Um, but he says, don't be alarmed. This is God's plan and it's necessary. And he describes it as birth pangs, that these are, these are, these are agonizing, it's bloody, but something God is birthing is happening here. And uh, so he puts the anguish and the pressure in the context of labor birthing, of something is ending and something new is coming forth, which is a a new heaven and a new earth, and the glory of God will fill the earth as we know it. And so so the church will be besieged at the end, he says, by false time teachers, and and many will even be deceived. And so he says at that time, uh the love of many will grow cold. And so it's happened. Many have uh, because of scandals, become so discouraged by you know the church that they've left uh in great numbers. And we're actually seeing that uh today. So and actually Jesus refers to the fact that much of which is despicable in the church is going to be exposed. And that's why he calls it intense pressure. But he says, listen, I've told you this ahead of time. So, so relax, he says, and and uh you know, he says almost be calm, you know, relax. I'm telling you ahead of time. And then secondly, he goes, do your assigned task, do what I've given you to do faithfully. He who he who perseveres to the end, he says, will be saved. So stay faithful, stay firm, stay anchored. And so again, because it can feel very destabilizing uh what's going on around us. But Jesus is not wringing his head, his hands in heaven, frustrated. So the question is, how do we form leaders in the midst of great pressure so that leaders don't collapse over time, a long period of time? So scandals happen when people's power and authority outpaces their character. Scandals happen when their people's influence grows faster than their formation. Scandals happen when gifting grows faster than people's maturity in Jesus. And scandals happen when ministry expands faster than people's inner life expands with it. And so scandals reveal, they they reveal what's happening underneath, this the shallow discipleship, because all leadership is really high-level discipleship. It's Jesus with the 12, he's making disciples, he's forming leaders. So I put discipleship in the same category as leadership development. It's just intense leadership development. So the structure I want to give for our podcast today is going to come out of a book I wrote actually 11 years ago called The Emotionally Healthy Leader, because it's a great structure. And I stand by those, uh, what I wrote there in that book about the inner life informing the outer life. And I give four core inner life issues that have got to be addressed. If anything, my thinking these last 11 years has only expanded and matured from these four principles. And I'll share that more at the end towards the podcast, and you'll fill it. So I take the image uh in the emotionally healthy leader book from uh a New York City skyscraper, because Manhattan is built on sky, it's built on rock. And you have all these massive 80, 90, 100-story skyscrapers filling the skyline. But the to build these skyscrapers, they have to put steel beams or pilings deep into the rock. And the higher up that building's gonna go, the deeper in the rock they must go. And uh, so I had a friend who was a construction engineer, and he told me about when they did not put the steel beams or pilings in properly, that when they started to build the skyscraper, the building started to lean to the right or to the left, or or cracks began to appear in the walls, or they couldn't open the windows. And so I either had to knock the skyscraper down and redo the steel beams going into the rock, or they had to um knock the, you know, knock the building down, lift it up, uh, and redo it all over again. And so um, in the same way, I found there's four core steel beams that must go into the rock uh in our inner lives if we're gonna build outer ministries, planning, decision-making, team building, exercising power, fueling mission around the world. But these four issues are core. And I want to take them one by one here today uh and expound on them. If we're gonna get to the scandal, we need the scandals and really address the insufficient formation that I believe we're engaging in leadership development all around the world in all contexts. The first one is this that we've got to uh in our formation, we've got to really equip people to face their shadow. We've got to help leaders face their shadow. Now, I'm gonna define shallow very simply uh is the accumulation of untamed emotions, less than pure motives and thoughts, and they're largely unconscious, not all the time, but they influence our and shape our behaviors. So it's this damaged version of who we actually really are. So another way to look at it is wounds from our histories, from from living in a sinful world. We all get wounded. And sometimes the wound or trauma, you can call it also, we all have trauma. There's big T trauma, then there's small T trauma. It's just part of living in a broken, fallen world, regardless of the kind of family you grew up in or context. And those wounds are things that happen to us that should never happen to anybody or as a child, or things like, for example, abuse. I know that was the case with me, emotional, uh, physical abuse that really damaged me, and some dynamics of my family growing up that really impacted and wounded me deeply. I had to do a lot of work to actually deal with it and look at it and break its power over my life. But then less obvious wounds are good things that should have happened to us, but didn't. Good things that we should have gotten that we never did get. And it and a wound creates a scar tissue. Scar tissues get hard. They don't feel, they they they don't have end, they don't have endings to grow. And so people get stuck in their wounds. And when you're in leadership, if we don't face our shadow, we end up casting that shadow, impacting all those around us. But if we have light flowing out of our inner being, we also cast light to all those around us. So facing our shadow, we're talking about these sinful tendencies inside of us or wounds that they they come out in sinful behaviors. They come out in things like perfectionism, overfunctioning, outbursts of anger, severe anxiety, jealousy, resentment, uh, triggers or defensiveness or isolating ourselves. Um, a need to be liked, um, rigidity. So, for example, a person like me, or many of you are listening to this podcast, you're you're public figures, and you speak in front of folks and you're in, you're leading. Um, but a shadow side of that is you have you may have this great need for affirmation and validation from other people. So you may have a great drive for excellence and high quality. Well, that that's a good thing, but the shadow side of excellence is that there's no room for mistakes and you're perfectionistic. Or you're zealous for God's work, but uh the shadow side is you don't listen to people. Uh, you don't let people disagree with you because you're on fire going forward. Or uh you you have a you have a great desire to achieve, you're a three on the Enneagram. That's a good thing. You'll have objectives, but the problem is when you end up setting a pace for all those around you where you're working a pace that actually exhausts people. So, and again, if we're not aware of our shadow, we end up impacting everybody around us, not just ourselves. So, how do we face it? We we we face it uh in a number of ways. We face it the my my number one way is is we actually do we actually look at our geneagram to explore the impact of the past on the present. The geneagram is a tool we developed over a 17-year period. It's a way of getting at the shadow. I yeah, I mean, uh many of you are familiar with the Enneagram. I think it's a great tool. We have things like um all kinds of tools out there, you know, my exactly enagram, I think is great. But the nothing like the geneogram gets at the shadow. And there's different levels of doing the geneogram. And if you I hope you're engaged in the emotionality, spirituality, and relationships course where you do a geneagram, you look at your family from different angles. Um, it took us 17 years to develop that tool to help people face their shadow, especially leaders. But by getting at it, it begins to help us look at things from our past that are hindering us in the future. It helps us face our shadow. A second way to uh do it is to find trusted people to give impact and to give um uh uh a sense of feedback to us. It can be in a form of therapists, which I I think I think every leader should do therapy at some point, things holding us back from what God has for us, or spiritual directors or mentors, uh, finding men and women who are spiritually ahead of you, who can speak into your life, who can reflect back to you what it's like to be with you. Um I'm just a believer throughout your whole life you need mentors. And so I trust you have a way to get at your shadow is having these people ahead of you in your life. And thirdly, is to do a 360. 360 is a tool used often in business, but it's a way of getting people around you who are maybe ahead, above you, below you, next to you. And they they is it's a it's a structured process where they give feedback of what it's like to be around you in different kinds of relationships. It's very powerful, but you've got to be open to it. Uh, and I would encourage you to look that up for your team, for you personally, you go first. But it's it takes courage. This summons courage from all of us because when we do this kind of work, we have to allow ourselves to be asked tough questions and to be able to hear feedback that is difficult. And so when we lead a team, facing our shadow is so important because to the degree that we have faced our shadow, we can help those on our team face theirs and help them grow through it and mature in Jesus. Because you can't take people where you haven't gone yourself. Um, that is that is just the principle. How could you take people where you haven't gone yourself? So you ought to know the vulnerabilities of those on your team that you're supervising, volunteered or paid. And then you shape your supervision and feedback to them, not just for their performance, but also for their formation. You're doing formation and you're integrating this now into your supervision. So, for example, you're asking people as part of their your supervision, you're asking about areas where their shadow is be. So for example, I think if one person was a high perfectionist and and um did not, so they didn't take any risks. Uh, they didn't want to fail ever or look weak. And so part of, I'd ask them each week, where have you failed this past week? Where have you taken a risk, you know, for God? Or someone else who who was very, uh, again, back to his wounds, uh would not share vulnerably or would not express any weakness. Uh, very smart guy, very gifted. So every week, his supervisor would ask him, where were you vulnerable this week? Where did you uh, like Paul, embrace weakness versus using your gifts and intellect to basically do the ministry? Uh another person was, you know, uh she she was an excellent leader, uh, but she had uh some real abuse growing up. And so she had challenged really difficulty using her voice. And then being a female pastor, another challenge uh with that. And so every week, asking her about she'd be asked in her supervision about self-care, because that was her shadow was she didn't allow herself to take care of herself. She didn't allow herself to feel, she didn't allow herself to dream, she didn't know, she would just take care of everybody else. And so part of her shadow with caretaking is good, but you need to do that out of a full cup. So she'd be asked that weekly. Uh and another fellow I knew who was a uh another excellent pastor on staff, but he didn't, he didn't um uh he was he was a task, do, do, do, do, do. And so he had it, he had to he had difficulty connecting with his spouse, with his wife. And so to put marriage as a priority was really a shadow for him to shift his life to where connection with her and then other people became now primary, not something tertiary after all the work was done. And every week I'd ask him, how's it going with your you know, leading out of your marriage, which is our second point. Uh, and he grew. And then finally, another fellow I knew who never did anger, he was a gifted guy, pastor, overseeing other pastors, but he didn't do conflict. He didn't do anger, he didn't do disagreements, but he came from a family where nobody got angry except his father. And so he could never, I asked him, was, could you ever fire anybody? He said, No, never. And so it was a huge limit to his life because he was so averse to conflict, but it was a shadow and he worked through that. So let me ask you this. Based on your history, your commandments of your family of origin, what does someone need to ask you every week? Think about that. What does someone need to ask you every week so they make sure that you're facing your shadow and in a sense, conquering it? Listen, we all are like Jacob. We have a limp, but we want to be walking to what God has for us. Let me encourage you, just before I go to point two here, uh check out the Emotionally Healthy Leader book. We in our website, there's a there's a free study guide. There's some free short videos. Uh just go to emotionallyhealthy.org slash leader. It is a book used in seminaries and leadership schools all over the world. It is worth your team uh taking week by week over the nine chapters and discussing it uh chapter by chapter, uh, each of the topics to four, at least the four I'm gonna mention today. There's others that how this builds out into a church leadership team, the emotionally healthy leader. But just go to emotionallyhealthy.org slash leader. Lots of free resources there for you, and I think you'll you'll find it really helpful. Okay, so so if we're gonna address the insufficient formation in ourselves and of our leaders, we've got to face our shadow. But and that's emotional health. The second one is is another core I call emotional health piling or steel beam, and it's leading out of your marriage or singleness, leading out of your marriage or singleness. The church's greatest failures happen behind closed doors in homes for singles and marriages. Uh, and yet the issue of singles and marriage is probably the greatest neglect in our formation of people, both in our churches and of course in leaders, because our marriages or our singleness is actually the loudest gospel message we preach. And if our private life is thin, our public life erodes. Uh, every marriage and every single person is meant to be a missional sign and wonder to the world. Uh, it's the truest window into our integrity and the quality of our walk with God. That's why Paul makes it in 1 Timothy 3 what are the requirements for an overseer. Our whole life is to bear witness to the love of God. Uh, what it'll be signs and wonder to that. But in our marriage and singleness in particular, uh we are we are to do that as in a sense, we're called to Jesus and we're called to be married or single, or we are for a season. And it's our it's meant to be our first ambition as followers of Christ is to integrate our walk with Jesus into our marriages or singleness. It's our first ambition that we might be signs and wonders that taste of heaven, that our singleness or our marriages are suffused with heaven. They they taste of heaven. They're a concrete, visible sign of the kingdom of God here on earth, because we'll all be married to Jesus someday. That's the there's a picture given in scripture from Genesis to Revelation. We will spend eternity one with him, married to him. We'll see him face to face. There will be no earthly marriage. And so we are signs and wonders while on earth, uh, bearing witness. We're like a, I like to call it a we're trailers, like a like a free book chapter on Amazon. You read a chapter, it's a trailer to buy the book or a trailer of a movie. It's meant to you watch two, three minutes and it tastes of something. Say, I want to watch that whole movie. Well, our marriages and singleness are meant to reveal the depth and the breadth of a love of God in different ways. And they are meant to give people a taste of God's love in the world, of something of heaven concrete on earth. We're small working models of God's new creation, of the kingdom of God here on earth, in us in the church, and our marriages and singleness. But that requires training, that requires equipping, that requires formation. I know I didn't get that uh in my formation, uh, in my first 17 years. Uh, but we but it's something we desperately need to address in our church. And we're making something concrete that is invisible. So again, facing your shadow and leading out of your marriage or singleness are are, I call them, these are core emotional health anchors. Okay. This numbers three and four are actually more contemplative or slow down spirituality. The third one is so this one is the next one is slowing down for loving union with Jesus. We've got to live our lives where we slow down our our our the pace of our lives so that we are abiding, we're remaining, we are uh we're we're praying, praying always, we're always remembering Jesus all through our days. We are in loving union, oneness with our Lord to whom we're married. That's a you know, it's one of the best images of our relationship with God. Um we're we're loving union, nice definition is we're giving Jesus full access into our life and our will. We're praying always. Uh the great image of that is uh to me, one of the great stories is Acts 19, the sons of Skeva. Uh, they these seven sons of Skeva had watched Paul's powerful ministries of signs and wonders. They're like, they're like, wow, they saw his quote success and they wanted it. And so they began to preach, and they would say uh they would, they would uh try to cast out evil spirits in the name of Jesus. But the problem is they didn't have a relationship with Jesus that of loving union. And so at one point, you know, the seven sons of Skeva, a demon screams back at them and says, Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you? In other words, we know Jesus. The demons say, We know Paul, because he has a he's one with Jesus, but we don't know you. And then a Demons, you know, take them and beat them up, you know, and and uh Acts 19, it's a great story. But they don't have a relationship of loving union. When we don't do the work of Jesus out of a relationship of loving union with Jesus, uh, it ends up really bad. We see that Moses, the same thing in Moses, and uh uh as he approaches the promised land in the book of Numbers, he gets really frustrated and angry with the people uh because they're complaining and bitter to him. And he's so frustrated. It's been 40 years he's been leading these people. He he wants to go to the promised land, and it's just to the very end, they're giving him a hard time. And he strike, God says, speak to the rock, you know, and I'll I'll I'll take care of them. Uh, but no, he strikes the rock twice. He's so frustrated, uh, and he gets out of loving union with the Father. And as a result, he doesn't go and see the promised land. But I'm talking here about slowing down your life for loving union with Jesus, spaciousness, um, being with Jesus, being with yourself so you can be with others and discern what he's doing. This this is so big, and uh, you know, it this has to be addressed in our formation because uh to be busy, to not have sufficient loving union with Jesus, it just is a crack and it influences everything. It's uh and if anything I've learned over these decades is that this is so massive that we've got to make some kind of a drastic shift. Now, you've heard me in other podcasts talk about scripture and silence and stillness and daily offices and sabbaticals and a rule of life and all this, and drawing from the riches of 2,000 years of monasticism in the church to form us so that we're active, but we're in a sense, we've gone to the desert as you know, monks, all of us. Like we're living a con we're contemplatives with God. We've we've made such a shift in our lifestyle that we're so deeply anchored. It's almost like we're living, you know, daily offices, anchored three, four times a day. We're Sabbathing, we're we've got rhythms, but we're we're we're not, we're in the world, but we're not part of it. I really actually believe the scandals we're living in are a kairos moment because there's such a hunger and thirst from the, especially the young generation, 20s, 30s, uh, 40s, of those who are pastoring and leading around the world saying, I want something more. And I think we've seen it in emotionally healthy uh discipleship, the enormous numbers of people coming to us and saying, what is this order of emotionally healthy leaders that you guys are piloting? We've heard something about that. What is this rule of life for pastors and leaders? How do I get in this thing? Because there's a need for community. That's why I think it's a kairos moment. I think it transcends denominations and races and cultures and movements and networks. It's it's folks, leaders saying, I want to walk in loving union with Jesus, and I I want to, I need community for that. And that's that's one of the great learnings I've had. And it's taking me to church history and learning from the past and what the church has done in similar moments as ours, which is gathering together as leaders around the rule of life for the sake of mission in community. So, again, one of our big initiatives is community. And that's why we're having this emotionally healthy leaders conference, September 30th, October 1st, for two days in New York City, so we can begin to form community on a wider scale around the world. So this insufficient formation has one more, one more topic, and I'll just touch on one more steel beam. So it's face your shadow, it's lead out of your marriage or singleness, it's slow down for love and union, and finally, it's practice Sabbath delight. Practice Sabbath delight. It's it's it's it's a 24-hour time frame where each week I stop, rest, delight, and contemplate God through what I do. But Sabbath is about a rhythm in my days. That's that's first. Uh, and we learned this, of course, from from Judaism, 3,500 years. It's a spiritual formation practice, it's not all legalism. It's like prayer and Bible study. Uh, you're not if you're not praying and reading scripture, you're probably not growing very much. Well, same way, if you're not Sabbathing, you know, weekly, you're you're too busy. You got too much going on. Uh, and not just weekly, but quarterly, annually, sabbaticals every seven to eight years. I've had four. Um, but in in Sabbath, we break something. We break that addiction to doing, to task. It's like getting off crack, heroin. It's, it's, it's, it regulates us. We were wired to work, paid and unpaid work, six days, and we were wired to Sabbath to the Lord our God. There's a lot to Sabbath. And and uh I like what Walter Brigaman says. It's resistance. Sabbath is resistance to the powers and principalities. We are warring against powers and principalities as leaders. Uh, Ephesians 3.10, we we're making, we're manifesting the powers and principalities that the eternal purpose of God, that Jesus is Lord. And we do this by this transformed lifestyle. And so Sabbath is just a foundational pillar in that. So it's one of the ways that we're also a sign and wonder to our people. And so again, we're building a culture, we're modeling culture uh to those that we lead. And it's for us, it's for our folks we love and love us, and it's for those we lead. It's for the sake of mission in the world uh that we practice Sabbath delight that of God's gifts that come to us every day. And so I want to encourage you uh to get that anchor in place because we're headed to an eternal Sabbath where we see Him face to face. But every week we're invited to taste it, to swim in eternity on a 24-hour period. Uh so again, it's face or shadow, it's lead out of your marriage or singleness, it's slow down for love and union, and it's practice Sabbath delight. These are anchors. And we want to invite you to get on this journey with us in emotionally healthy discipleship and get part of a community and you're part of the world uh to walk this radical way out because it is a kairos moment. God is doing something, it is a new day that in the midst of what seems like uh fragmentation and death, God is birthing and resurrecting some new things. I believe we are actually one of those new things. So uh let me invite you again to go to emotionallyhealthy.org slash leader and uh check out the discussion guide for the emotionally healthy leader book, get with some people and uh go through each of the chapters. I've mentioned four of the chapters here today, uh, but begin to dig into some of the, maybe watch the free videos, use the discussion guide. But this all it's it's a meaty book. It needs to be discussed and talked about, but more importantly, it needs to be lived. And that's again why we're inviting you to connect with us at Emotionally Healthy Discipleship. So I pray God's blessing on you. May his face shine on you, may the spirit of God fall on you, may God grant you energy, power, the power, the immeasurable power of God that is for you, that is for me, that is for his church, that the world might know that Jesus is Lord. So God bless you and have a wonderful, wonderful day!