Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

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I truly believe the greatest gift we can give the world is our true self living in loving union with God. In fact, how can we affirm other people’s unique identities when we don’t affirm our own. Can we really love our neighbors well without loving ourselves? (Bold added, 67.) Through the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Father Keating and Father Bennington met together with an effort to understand the mass defection of young Catholics at the time these people were drawn in part to the East’s meditation practices. Their research led Keating, at the time an abbot at a Massachusetts monastery, to begin unearthing a similar meditative method based on a Christian tradition [the Desert Fathers]. The East was mixed with Catholicism to yield new appeal to the defecting younger generation of the time. Yet, in over 4 decades of leadership, I've found that so much of this pain is completely UNNECESSARY. At the same time, the church launched a highly effective Community Development Corporation in 1989 to serve the poor and marginalized in the community through a variety of ministries such as: homeless outreach, a food and clothing pantry, a community health center, tutoring, English second language classes, and youth mentoring. The Launch of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship

The title and subtitle are metaphoric symbolism. Crossing the Tiber River near Rome is often used for Protestants returning to Roman Catholicism. Scazzero is an Italian name for Peter Scazzero who is senior pastor of New Life Church in Queens, New York City. Rev. Scazzero has not claimed Rome for his official residence, but makes many trips across the Tiber. Scazzero’s stated mission is to introduce Catholic contemplative prayer and practice to evangelicals. Scazzero avoids the term Catholic for obvious reasons but uses “Contemplative Prayer” freely, assuming probably correctly, that evangelicals will not know the meaning of the term. In today's podcast episode, my wife Geri and I share more about the skill of emotional discovery we call "Explore the Iceberg" in Emotionally Healthy Relationships. While Scazzero does use one valid Bible passage in building his doctrine of suffering, as usual he quotes favorably and gives more space to “John of the Cross,” which precedes the James verse. Who is John of the Cross? Britannica describes him as “one of the greatest Christian mystics” and “a patron saint of mystics and contemplatives” (bold added). [3] In today's podcast episode, my wife Geri and I share more about the skill of emotional discovery we call "Explore the Iceberg" in Emotionally Healthy Relationships.you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness’ (Eph 4:22-23). The greatest commandments, Jesus said, are that we love God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul and that we love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40). (P. 214.) My work has always been done in local, intimate settings such as our local church when I was Lead Pastor and now in my work mentoring leaders/pastors. While I have done some traveling to speak in the past, it was always difficult for me. The increasingly alien and impersonal nature of it finally grew to this point when I realized this season was over. Six months before graduation, Pete married Geri who was also an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship staff member. They then moved as newlyweds to Costa Rica for one year to learn Spanish before returning to New York City. The following year, they moved to Queens where Pete served as an assistant pastor in a 300-person, Spanish church and taught in a Spanish-language Bible Institute in the Bronx.

Some of the most influential writers who have popularized contemplative prayer in the evangelical church are Richard Foster and Brennan Manning. Both these men have written popular Christian books about contemplative prayer. And both quote the Catholic mystics such as Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating. The third deadly commandment is that superficial spirituality is okay. 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. I love the Lord’s instruction to Samuel, “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (see 1 Samuel 16:7). That deep sense of “sentness” applies also to giving visionary leadership to EHD in her mission to “transform church culture through the multiplication of deeply changed leaders and disciples” as well as delivering weekly EH Leader podcasts and occasional speaking at EHD events and webinars. There is a prayer practice that is becoming popular within the evangelical church. It is primarily known as contemplative prayer. It is also known as centering prayer, listening prayer, breath prayer and prayer of the heart. The practice is now widely embraced and taught in secular and professed Christian seminaries, colleges, universities, organizations, ministries and seminars throughout the United States. Academic promoters have introduced these practices in the fields of medicine, business and law, while countless secular and Christian books, magazines, seminars, and retreats are teaching people how to incorporate these techniques into their daily lives. Promoters promise physical, mental and spiritual benefits.In his book The Emotionally Healthy Church, Peter Scazzero is similarly concerned with the matter of change and transformation in the Christian life. As a pastor in New York City he raises what he believes to be a pressing need in most churches – emotional health. Scazzero’s thesis is that many Christians need what amounts to a second conversion. “Something is desperately wrong… We have people who are passionate for God and his work, yet who are unconnected to their own emotions or those around them’ (37). Much of the basis of this conclusion stems from personal experience; Scazzero had trained and pastored for a number of years before he came to these conclusions. For the first 17 years of my Christian life, my emotional life was completely divorced from my spiritual life. Or so I thought.

While it is called a “Commission,” it is also a commandment. We searched through EHS but did not find any reference to the Great Commission. We are not surprised that there is no reference to the Great Commission, because EHS is a psychologically self-oriented book that encourages readers to focus on self. My inner world was not in sync with my exterior behaviour. The Bible has a word for this gap, a word that Jesus repeatedly used toward religious leaders: hypocrisy…. What is particularly frightening is that this ‘playacting’ is often taught and expected in our churches. The result is that huge numbers of people are totally unaware of the dichotomy between their exterior and interior worlds (55).First, Pete was overworked, harried, and frustrated as a pastor/leader. Secondly, the Spanish congregation split with two hundred people leaving to start a new church. This left him “angry, bitter, and depressed –preaching love and forgiveness on Sundays and cursing alone in (his) car on Mondays.” Thirdly, his wife Geri was lonely, tired, and feeling like a single mom with four young daughters. And finally, he could no longer deny that the discipleship and leadership formation in his own life, along with that of the church, was shallow and unsustainable long-term.