CNLP 690 | Pete Scazzero Questions the Mid-Life Crisis, Discusses How Leaders are MisFormed for Ministry, And Outlines The Revolution Needed to Transform the Church AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (CNLP 690 | Pete Scazzero Questions the Mid-Life Crisis, Discusses How Leaders are MisFormed for Ministry, And Outlines The Revolution Needed to Transform the Church) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Go to PodExtra AI's podcast page (The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast) to view the AI-processed content of all episodes of this podcast.

The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast episodes list: view full AI transcripts and summaries of this podcast on the blog

Episode: CNLP 690 | Pete Scazzero Questions the Mid-Life Crisis, Discusses How Leaders are MisFormed for Ministry, And Outlines The Revolution Needed to Transform the Church

Author: Art of Leadership Network
Duration: 01:28:19

Episode Shownotes

Is the mid-life crisis real? Pete Scazzero questions the mid-life crisis and explains what really happens to most leaders in their thirties and early forties. Plus, he and Carey discuss how leaders are mis-formed for ministry and outline the revolution needed to transform the church. 🔗 Show Notes 📩 On

The Rise Newsletter 🗣️ Preaching Cheat Sheet 🧠 The Art of Leadership Academy 🎥 Watch on YouTube Follow @careynieuwhof Follow @theartofleadershipnetwork This episode is sponsored by: STATE OF THE CHURCH What would you change if you could know exactly how your people are doing across your church? Barna is releasing incredible new research every single month, and Gloo is introducing powerful tools to help you pinpoint the State of Your Church. Text “carey” to 46816 and you’ll be subscribed to all the latest info on State of the Church. Brought to you by The Art of Leadership Network

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_00
The Art of Leadership Network.

00:00:03 Speaker_02
A few that did leave, it was primarily because I stopped lying. That was a really big decision. In other words, I wasn't afraid to tell people or say to people like, no, this is unacceptable. You're proud, you're unteachable. Yeah, you're a very anointed

00:00:25 Speaker_02
and gifted, but you're arrogant, and you're unteachable, and you're not allowed to be in leadership here anymore.

00:00:37 Speaker_04
Welcome to the Kerry Neuhof Leadership Podcast. It's Kerry here, and I hope our time together today helps you thrive in life and leadership. So is there such a thing as a midlife crisis?

00:00:47 Speaker_04
Well, Pete Scazzaro isn't quite so sure, but there is something, and this happened to me, that happens to you in your late 30s, early 40s. We break it down. We take a good look at it. We look at why people in leadership are so misformed, malformed.

00:01:04 Speaker_04
for the task ahead of us. And we're going to talk about the revolution you need to really transform your church. How do you get to a place where you're spiritually mature and emotionally healthy? Hey, it's Pete Scazzaro on the podcast today.

00:01:18 Speaker_04
We are so glad you joined us. Thank you so much. Today's episode is brought to you by The State of the Church. What if you could know exactly how your people are doing? Well, we've got the State of the Church launching with Varna and Glue.

00:01:30 Speaker_04
Text MYNAMEKERRY to 46816 and you'll be subscribed to the latest info on State of the Church.

00:01:37 Speaker_04
While Pete Scazzaro, after leading New Life Fellowship for 26 years, co-founded Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, a groundbreaking ministry that's transforming church culture,

00:01:48 Speaker_04
and really creating deeply changed leaders and disciples for the sake of Jesus' mission to the world. He hosts the top-ranked Emotionally Healthy Leader podcast.

00:01:57 Speaker_04
He's author of a number of best-selling books, including the Emotionally Healthy Leader, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, and Emotionally Healthy Discipleship.

00:02:06 Speaker_04
He and his wife, Jerry, also developed the Emotionally Healthy Discipleship course, a groundbreaking course being used by over 1,400 churches in North America, and others around the world. And everywhere I go, people talk to me about Pete.

00:02:19 Speaker_04
So it's a thrill to have him back on the podcast today. Hope you really enjoy this. Hey, I know your time is valuable.

00:02:25 Speaker_04
We strive on this podcast to bring you the best conversations, the stuff that you would be talking about Pete with if you were at dinner with him. etc. So I hope this is really helpful.

00:02:37 Speaker_04
If you enjoy it, please share it with your team, send a link to somebody, or leave a rating and review. That would really mean a lot to us. Today's episode is brought to you by the State of the Church.

00:02:49 Speaker_04
So we're starting to hear more news about the upcoming State of the Church movement. Barna and Glue are supporting it, and this time there are hundreds of ministries and thousands of churches participating. I'm here with Brad Hill from Glue.

00:03:02 Speaker_04
Brad, can you share what's coming up and why church leaders should take notice?

00:03:07 Speaker_00
Yes. Hey, Kerry. We are so excited about what's about to happen. State of the Church 2025 is really all about this one big idea. If you could know exactly how your people are doing across your whole church, what would you change?

00:03:23 Speaker_00
And Barna is releasing incredible new research every single month. These are really compelling topics, fresh insights for every leader.

00:03:31 Speaker_00
And then behind that, Glue is introducing powerful new tools that are going to help you and your church pinpoint exactly the state of your church.

00:03:38 Speaker_00
So as a leader, you're going to have free access to all these insights, research, so your church can thrive and your people can flourish.

00:03:46 Speaker_00
And Kerry, the official launch is spring of 2025, but we wanted Kerry listeners to stay in the know and get kind of the latest research and see how this might serve your church.

00:03:57 Speaker_00
And we'd love to encourage even people to make a plan on how you can get a pulse on your people sometime even between now and January, which, by the way, is a great time of year to do this.

00:04:08 Speaker_04
So, I'm excited to see what comes out. In the meantime, if you want to stay on top of things, just text my name, Cary, to 46816, and you'll be subscribed to all the latest info on State of the Church, as well as some other updates for leaders.

00:04:23 Speaker_04
That's Cary, C-A-R-Y, to 46816. And now, head on over to today's episode with Pete Scazzaro.

00:04:32 Speaker_02
I've been playing around with a monastic order. One of your questions could be, where's the future of the church? I'm doing a pilot novitiate, and I'm just in a basic pilot of this thing. Jason's in one of my pilot novices. Drew's in it.

00:04:46 Speaker_02
It's like a pile of folks who've been with you for a long time. But I began to flesh out, what am I looking like? I have a monastic order for pastors and leaders who are leading missional churches. That's my focus.

00:05:02 Speaker_02
I love the church, passionate for the church, but she needs to be revolutionized.

00:05:07 Speaker_02
But when you get all down to it, unless the lead pastor and the leadership internally has been deeply transformed, it's just program, it's just strategies, it's not gonna change anything.

00:05:19 Speaker_02
So it's kind of like, I've had this long journey, Carrie, of moving back to say, yeah, it's their being. You can't give what you don't possess, et cetera, et cetera. It's gotten deeper, it's gotten so much clearer.

00:05:32 Speaker_02
And so Jerry looked at me and I said, I'm enjoying this pilot, learning, being with these guys, we meet once a month, and it's got some structure too. We have a rule of life. I wrote a very specific rule of life for pastors.

00:05:50 Speaker_02
I never wrote one that's specific, lest it be legalistic, but it's a long story how I got there and they loved it. very tight, like you're doing Lectio Divina four or five times a week, 20 minutes of silence every day, day alone with God every month.

00:06:02 Speaker_02
I mean, everyone does Ignatian exercises with a spiritual director. I mean, very tight about where, so like, it's a calling, and you're gonna lead from that deep place.

00:06:12 Speaker_02
That was basically, so anyway, and Jerry just said, Pete, you know, we never really, just, Forget about it. Just enjoy what you're doing. Everything we've done is organic. We didn't plan to have a global movement. We didn't plan courses.

00:06:32 Speaker_02
We just did it life on life. We went slow. We embraced our limits. And then it's exponential because all of a sudden God just breathes on it and lives are changed and it kind of begins to move. And she goes, just, hey, just forget about it.

00:06:47 Speaker_02
It's not time. You're still learning. You're enjoying it. Just life on life, just do it. And maybe it'll be five, 10 years. Then it'll just emerge.

00:07:01 Speaker_02
God will just produce the structure, the answer, what it's supposed to be, but you don't have to worry about it. So forget it. And I was like, Darn, honey, you're right. Forget it. I just felt so free. It was like, absolutely.

00:07:16 Speaker_02
Because I can write documents. I've been writing documents and imagining and I can see the bullseye way down the road and God's just like, I just gave you a step here and you went crazy on me. Just take your next step and just let it all go.

00:07:31 Speaker_02
I said, what is it going to really impact our strategic planet because it's going to set My confusion just got clear, just was all clear. I get ahead of myself, always been a temptation. I'm a visionary, I could see things.

00:07:43 Speaker_02
But Jerry's reminder was so good. hey, you know, we didn't plan all this. So I wasn't planning all this to be saying, Carrie, I wasn't planning on EH discipleship, having a future beyond Pete's Cazara. That wasn't a plan. I stepped down from new life.

00:07:58 Speaker_02
We set up a 5013C to basically be custodian of Jerry and I and helping other pastors, but with a commitment not to build anything. So then all of a sudden, the thing got gigantic, grew all over the world.

00:08:11 Speaker_02
And I was the one really resisting like, I don't think we want this to go on beyond Pete and Jerry. So let's just like, let's not even think about the future. But about two, three years ago, my board was like, Pete, this is way bigger than you.

00:08:22 Speaker_02
This is not about you. This is about a piece for the global church.

00:08:27 Speaker_02
that there's a charism here that you're carrying that needs to go on it's not about you and i was like make a long story short i finally saw it was like yeah this is because other people of course are off shooting and doing a lot of good stuff because but there's a level of.

00:08:39 Speaker_02
R&D and quality happening here that others are taking and you know doing other stuff because but this movement.

00:08:48 Speaker_02
Needs to be preserved and i'm like how do you do succession of a pirate church of this of a global movement we've kept it very small infrastructure wise it's a miracle how jason and to me and drew emerged. It was just so natural. It was a God thing.

00:09:08 Speaker_02
I got a tremendous board. I'm like, this is really amazing. Again, it just came. God's timing. In the next two years, I'm in the middle of mentoring these guys quite a bit. They bring gifts I don't bring to the table that I can continue to write, mentor,

00:09:34 Speaker_02
Dream up and not run any organization and already doing so many things i better than me and it's wonderful so.

00:09:42 Speaker_04
No, you know, it's interesting, by the way. I have started recording, so we can decide at the end whether we leave this in or not. But, you know, this is a good conversation a lot of leaders need to hear. So I hear a couple of things in that, Pete.

00:09:57 Speaker_04
You know, and you are, we've interviewed you a few times, a lot of people are familiar with you. By nature, you're a driven person. You make things happen, right? Like, that's what you do. And I think most of the people who listen to a show like this

00:10:10 Speaker_04
find themselves in this category. And I'd love for you to reflect a little bit on the difference between making things happen in your last 18 years or so where they've happened more organically.

00:10:24 Speaker_04
What are some of the, you know, when you look at Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, your whole Emotionally Healthy movement, what is the difference about how you approach that versus how you approached

00:10:37 Speaker_04
say, the early days of ministry, when we're all trying to make stuff happen.

00:10:41 Speaker_02
Me too. Absolutely. So actually, my critical turning point was actually 29 years ago. And so it's when I got on this journey, which we call now Emotionally Healthy Discipleship or Leadership. But it was that

00:10:56 Speaker_02
shift where, okay, yes, I have got to give me some giftings as a leader. Yeah, I'm type A, but I was very unaware. I didn't have spirit self-awareness. I didn't even have secular self-awareness, let alone spirit self-awareness.

00:11:17 Speaker_02
And so at the time, we're talking 29 years ago, that was revolutionary, because I was driving. I was planning churches. We had six churches, five, six churches in five, six years. It was terrible.

00:11:29 Speaker_04
Yeah, and the nutshell is, your wife said, I hate this. I quit.

00:11:32 Speaker_02
Yeah, she quit.

00:11:32 Speaker_04
And I'm not sure I love you.

00:11:34 Speaker_02
Yeah, I quit. So that was a huge transition. And that is when I began to stop things, making things happen. in two big reasons. One is I began to lead out of my merits. That was revolutionary.

00:11:49 Speaker_02
In other words, that we were actually one flesh and that I was no longer going to make decisions out of what I felt God was saying. That was revolutionary. That was a huge slowdown.

00:12:04 Speaker_02
Secondly, I began to pay attention to my insides, what I was feeling, and of course, lots of anxiety. Then I got in touch with my family. I started Family of Origin work.

00:12:14 Speaker_02
which led me into the whole contemplative monastic movement stuff, Ignatian spirituality. So it was revolutionary, this journey. Now it's deepened, as you know, truths deepen, they continue to deepen as the decades pass.

00:12:30 Speaker_02
But I have, I recognize I have this God-given, it's a gift, it's a power, but it's also got a huge shadow and dangerous without, a serious formation, so, you know, in Jesus.

00:12:47 Speaker_02
And so, again, I'd say we're about, when I say emotional health has many different facets to it, but we're about a slowed down spirituality.

00:12:57 Speaker_02
And so, I've been very fortunate in that Jerry and I are walking together and have been all these years, so she's able to say things like she said to me yesterday, like, hey, Pete, everything's been organic, like, reminding me, hey, just relax.

00:13:10 Speaker_02
God will birth it when it's time, and maybe it'll be 75 when it's birthed, but that's fine.

00:13:15 Speaker_02
But let's enjoy, monitoring joy, monitoring my level of being on the inside, that was just, and stopped, success was no longer the evangelical definition of success. I saw, fortunately, it was a terrible yoke to carry.

00:13:37 Speaker_02
and getting free from that and saying, no, we're about like Jesus and doing his will. That's success, first of all. And then secondly, doing it his way. And I think the temptations opened up to me.

00:13:49 Speaker_02
I, to me, it's one of the most important texts for every elite pastor.

00:13:52 Speaker_02
We should all have to pass through the temptations before we start even of like saw money and influence and size and all that people applause, like all that stuff that before we even get started, like,

00:14:07 Speaker_02
that getting pulled out of us, but we don't, we just want to get, I got pushed ahead in the, you know, as a seminary graduate and church planner, I'm like, hey, this guy can do it, go make it happen, you know, and I, it almost destroyed me.

00:14:20 Speaker_02
I am very grateful for being where I am today by the grace of God, because as you know, and you mentioned in one of your emails here, the question, we've been around scandals for almost, for me, I've been around scandals for almost 50 years.

00:14:38 Speaker_02
It's not new. What's new is the social media exposure. But it's not new. And it's not going to stop either until the whole way we do training and formation of pastors and leaders changes.

00:14:53 Speaker_04
If I got the math right, you were around 35 when you had your epiphany, the crisis, the transformation into who you became today. I was 41. There's a lot of leaders listening to this episode who are in that stage of life.

00:15:11 Speaker_04
Is there something about your 30s, early 40s that really, you know, the way to say it is the jig is up. Like, it's kind of like I can't keep, I knew for me, I didn't declare a finish line, so my body did.

00:15:25 Speaker_04
It's just like, you know, 100 to zero in 3.8 seconds. That's what happened to me. And you had a wake-up call with Jerry. And I must say, Tony is so grateful that that happened to me.

00:15:36 Speaker_04
We are way more on the same page today than we were, you know, 20 years ago when that happened, 18 years ago. So I'm just curious as to whether there's something about that season of life.

00:15:50 Speaker_04
And then what happens if you don't change, if you get the signs but there's no wake-up call?

00:15:54 Speaker_02
Well, first, let's go to the first question first. I don't think, I think, No, I'm actually quite convinced. It's not about the midlife crisis, which is written about in many, many different places. I think it's faulty formation.

00:16:11 Speaker_02
So we're formed by our families of origin, which is very broken. It's not the new family of Jesus. And then we get trained to be disciples and then leaders in a movement that has formed us in a faulty way. So now we have two layers of bad formation.

00:16:30 Speaker_02
So yeah, it's going to hit most pastors and leaders in their 30s and 40s because it's a bad theology. God didn't build us to lead that way. It's actually biblically off. And because it's biblically off, you are going to hit a wall.

00:16:47 Speaker_02
Now, some people, as you know, Kerry, You and I are headstrong, they are so headstrong. I can think of one person, I mean, he pushed to 80 until he took the whole church down.

00:17:01 Speaker_02
And I was like, there was no way he could do succession, but most of us are like, we just don't quit. We'll hit a wall, yeah, hit it again.

00:17:11 Speaker_04
Give me the next wall, give me the next wall.

00:17:13 Speaker_02
Jesus, I'm committed, I'm gonna be solid and stable for everybody else to hang their hats on so we can go forward. We have such strong sense of even calling from God, but mixed in with some unresolved stuff.

00:17:27 Speaker_02
But I think it's that we have to address that the formation that we had was poor.

00:17:35 Speaker_02
It was shallow, it had unbiblical aspects to it, it was very Western, and it was only a matter of time before it hit reality in that the way, I was not equipped to lead a church.

00:17:45 Speaker_02
There were so many unresolved aspects of my discipleship, my formation, and like you, I went to great seminaries, I went to the best leadership conference, I read all the books, it didn't matter.

00:17:58 Speaker_02
It was life on life, I never had the kind of formation that was needed. And I was an accident waiting to happen. So fortunately, we both came out. We got some adjustments to our formation that were very painful, it's taken us many years

00:18:15 Speaker_02
But I am convinced at this point that the whole way we form the leaders in their teens and their 20s and their early 30s who are going to be the future leaders of this church in the next 10, 20, 30 years, that's the people I'm really concerned about.

00:18:28 Speaker_02
Because everybody's tweaking, all the seminaries, Bible schools, all the churches, we're all doing formation better. We're making tweaks, we're making adjustments. It's not a little adjustment. This isn't like, let's tune up the car.

00:18:44 Speaker_02
This is, the engine needs to be replaced. Evangelicalism, birthed out of American, North American history, has got such gaps, holes, that unless we do a serious reworking of how we do formation of leaders and pastors,

00:19:09 Speaker_02
I don't see the church being revolutionized to address the challenges that we're facing now and the next five, 10, 20, 30 years. That's the revolution needed in the church where I'm concerned about, which goes back to how we form leaders and pastors.

00:19:21 Speaker_02
So yeah, that's a long answer, Kerry. I think it's more than the midlife crisis thing, much more.

00:19:27 Speaker_04
No, that really resonates at a deep level. And now, a quick word from one of our partners. Today's episode is brought to you by Preaching Cheat Sheet.

00:19:37 Speaker_04
A recent study showed that 46% of pastors say one of their biggest struggles is feeling like attendees don't absorb or use what they preach. Did you hear that? 46% of pastors feel that way. Look, I get it, okay?

00:19:51 Speaker_04
We've all been there, but if you feel this way more often than not, I would love to help. I have a free 10-step preaching cheat sheet that outlines, you guessed it, 10 simple steps to help you get the most out of your sermon prep.

00:20:05 Speaker_04
Each step ensures that your sermon and delivery are clear. In other words, you're ready to go before you get into the pulpit. You don't sit there at lunch going, you know, could have done this, could have done that. Get that done first.

00:20:17 Speaker_04
Over 30,000 pastors have downloaded a copy to help with their sermon prep. It's something I still use to this day, even after decades of preaching.

00:20:25 Speaker_04
I love filling out each of the steps as I write my sermon, and then I sit down to review the message the night before, and I can go in with reasonable confidence that this message is going to land, or at least that I have done my best.

00:20:37 Speaker_04
So I'd love to get a copy for you for free. If you want to be more confident on Sunday mornings, visit PreachingCheatSheet.com. That's PreachingCheatSheet.com to download your copy for free. And now, back to the conversation.

00:20:52 Speaker_04
But what happens when you do hit the wall and it changes your life, like it did for you, it did for me, and it's done for many other leaders where you're fundamentally different. You're Jacob wrestling the angel.

00:21:03 Speaker_04
You never walk the same way again, right? That can usher in a period of very disorienting. Your compass, you don't even know which way is north anymore. And I don't know that I'm entirely out of it yet.

00:21:20 Speaker_04
But it still feels like 18 years later, these are new clothes. It's definitely much more integrated into who I am.

00:21:29 Speaker_04
But I wonder if you can speak to leaders, because I'm thinking of one guy in particular that I track pretty closely with, has had a long sabbatical, knows that there are some changes that have to be made, but still has a fear.

00:21:46 Speaker_04
that if he really goes deep, he's going to lose the magic that makes him a great leader. And I had that fear too. Ironically, for you and for me, God grew our leadership far beyond anything we would ever imagine and our reach and our influence.

00:22:00 Speaker_04
But I wonder if you could speak to that period, season of disorientation. Did you experience that? If so, for how long, what happened, etc. ?

00:22:13 Speaker_02
Yeah, I think to your person who's concerned about losing the magic, I think, yeah, he, that's part of what needs to happen is you lose the need to have the magic. In other words, that's the core issue that you actually need this.

00:22:31 Speaker_02
So I think whether you're, wow, it's, it's, Do you know the story of this? It's one of the Desert Fathers stories. It's one of my favorite ones. A guy comes to the desert. I'm going to give you a paraphrase that

00:22:50 Speaker_02
to make it simpler to grasp quickly and for the listeners. So a guy comes to the desert, you know, third, fourth century, goes to one of the Abba, says, hey, you know, what do I need to do to be, you know, basically holy?

00:23:00 Speaker_02
You know, it comes for the weekend, it comes for the weekend. And to be a holy man, be saved, you know.

00:23:06 Speaker_02
And so the Abba says, the wise desert father was there, says, you know, go to the cemetery and spend the night cursing all the, and cursing all the graves. So he spends the night cursing all the time, you're no good, you're a bum, you're a hypocrite.

00:23:25 Speaker_02
And he comes back the next day to the Abba and the Abba says, what did they say? He said, they didn't say anything. He said, okay, now tonight go back and praise them, tell them they're fantastic, tremendous, awesome.

00:23:35 Speaker_02
And all night, so he does that, and you were the best apostle that ever lived, you changed the world, you were incredible. And he comes back the next day, the Abba says, what did they say? And he says, they didn't say anything. He goes, great.

00:23:48 Speaker_02
He goes, when you are dead to both praise and criticism, then we can start. And I think there's something there to that. And I think, again, that's the exact opposite of what we're taught, which is, how can I make the biggest impact with my life?

00:24:10 Speaker_02
I had a leader who's been around for decades say to me recently, he said, Pete,

00:24:15 Speaker_02
I'm working my life, he's actually, he's got a very large ministry, and he goes, and I'm looking for convergence of this decade, of how I can make the best impact for the kingdom of God. I'm working on them, I'm all excited.

00:24:28 Speaker_02
And I said, you know, I'm not sure that's the first question you should be asking. I said, maybe it's the second, maybe it's the third or fourth question. I said, the first question is, what's God's will for you?

00:24:44 Speaker_02
I suppose God wants to ask you to go and join a monastery or go work in Zimbabwe with orphans. I mean, the point is, Jesus, I have no agenda but yours. And are you in a place where actually my success for me is to do the will of Jesus?

00:25:10 Speaker_02
And he says, that is such a radical thought. And I'm thinking to myself, I said, point is you have no agenda. Ignatius spirituality would call that you have to be indifferent.

00:25:23 Speaker_02
And if you're not indifferent when you come and ask God for his will, you're really not asking for his will, because you've already got an agenda. I'm asking for your will, but I really want this to happen.

00:25:33 Speaker_02
And he goes, until you get to a place of like, I'm dead to everything, I really just want your will, you're really not doing discernment even. But the fact that he said to me, he's a friend of mine too, he goes, Peter, he said to me, this is radical.

00:25:47 Speaker_02
I'm like, It is radical based on our formation. It's radical. And I think, again, that's bringing out some of the cracks of our definition of success is, I want to do what's going to have the biggest impact. And that's not the first question to ask.

00:26:06 Speaker_04
The first question, in your view, is what is God's will?

00:26:10 Speaker_02
Yeah. That's why the church is asking, Jesus, what's your will for me? And what's your will for our local congregation? Why'd you raise us up?

00:26:18 Speaker_02
Yeah, we're about, of course, we want the world to know Jesus and his glory, but what's our particular place in that larger plan of God in the world? That's the question. And not, I don't wanna fulfill that. We wanna fulfill that.

00:26:32 Speaker_02
But why do I want something 10,000 people or 20,000 people or this size ministry, whatever, if that's not what God has for me to do, maybe he's got you to do that. or Joe to do that down the street.

00:26:47 Speaker_02
I've got maybe a piece to support him underneath him. Now again, I'm taking into account my gifts and callings and passions and all that.

00:26:53 Speaker_02
But the first question I think we're asking all the time is, it's Meister Eckhart's thing of we've lost our lives so we can gain them. I don't even say we have goals anymore. We have priorities that we think we believe are God's priorities.

00:27:15 Speaker_02
But, you know, we hold them lightly because God is so full of surprises.

00:27:20 Speaker_04
He is full of surprises. You know, when Jerry said that to you, back to where we started in this conversation about the whole idea for a monastic order and, you know, we're going to build this, scale this, we have documents.

00:27:32 Speaker_04
And then she's like, why would you do this? And you're like, you're right. You're right. We need to let it go organically. was there, what was the part of you that was still driving at that point?

00:27:46 Speaker_04
And then what was the part of you that when you heard that from Jerry kind of went, of course, I just would like you to break that process down a little bit more.

00:27:55 Speaker_02
Yeah. I mean, I, I was aware I was in a process of discernment, but the way I, the way I, um, function in discernment on being a visionary that I,

00:28:11 Speaker_02
I see something like this that I've been pondering for, actually, I have been pondering this for like 23 years, believe it or not. So that's a minute. Listen, Kerry, I write something, it's years. It's years. So I'm just that kind of guy.

00:28:27 Speaker_02
So, but I like to work it all out, like what would it mean to actually have a monastic order for pastors and leaders that's global?

00:28:36 Speaker_02
And then I start fleshing it out, oh, you got these three stages, you're gonna have these introductory retreats, you've got, and I start like playing around all this stuff.

00:28:44 Speaker_02
And then, so I had it all out, like in three pages, four pages, like an outline. I have a spiritual director who leads a monastic order. I bounced it off him and we chatted about it.

00:28:53 Speaker_02
I looked at what other people were doing, and I've been studying monastic orders for decades, but it felt like such a heavy yoke. It felt so unenjoyable to me. I was listening to God inside of me.

00:29:10 Speaker_02
How can I be so excited about this vision and yet have such a desolation in the thought of executing it? And that's what I brought to Jerry. I said, Jerry, she didn't even look at the document. She didn't need to. I said, I'm really struggling.

00:29:25 Speaker_02
I'm like, you know, I'm like, I just, this thing, but I, and she had said to me, she goes, I believe it's God. And a couple of times, every young person, every young pastor in the world that we talked to and like, how can I get in on that thing?

00:29:39 Speaker_02
And I'm like, I don't want to open the door to this thing. I want us to manage that. But she just was able to say so quickly about the, why are you even, that's, why is, just drop it. And I was like, yes.

00:29:53 Speaker_02
But that's generally my process of discernment, Kerry. I go down a road and then I'm listening to, why does this feel like what started out so wonderful ends up being so terrible?

00:30:04 Speaker_02
And yeah, can you come speak here, you know, you're gonna get an airplane at my age. I've done, you know, I don't need to be in front of anybody at this point.

00:30:11 Speaker_02
I want others to be in front and you can, you know, really it's a much, my, my time is much better spent. And what I gives me great life is.

00:30:20 Speaker_02
prayer, being with Jesus, writing and mentoring, like to be on a stage, like that's not, I don't, that's gonna be a life, it gives me actually death, you know?

00:30:31 Speaker_02
And so, yeah, well, I do it occasionally for the sake of, it'll serve others and a larger movement of God. Yeah, but not too much. But you know how it is, you say yes to something, and then you start doing it. You're like, I don't like this.

00:30:42 Speaker_02
But when you first got the invitation, this happened to me before I stopped traveling. Pete, I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll be glad to come. My friend, yeah, Carrie says, come on over. I can't speak. Yeah, why not? We'll have dinner. We'll chat.

00:30:54 Speaker_02
And then I'm on the airplane. I'm like, I don't want to do this. I may love Carrie, but I don't like this. So I got in tune enough to finally, I'm listening and trusting God's inside of me. And he's speaking.

00:31:10 Speaker_02
And so, you understand, to try to make this thing happen, it's like resisting the Holy Spirit. And I've done it. And so I'm so deep in listening to God inside of me, not externally.

00:31:23 Speaker_02
Prophetic word, what other people think, what's the opportunity, and especially, what's the biggest impact? Because I have to do it because it's going to save people. It's like, oh, you have to do so many things.

00:31:35 Speaker_02
And all of a sudden, life's one big should. And there's not spaciousness and joy.

00:31:46 Speaker_04
There's a lot of, you know, I'm smiling and resonating with you because this past summer, I spent a lot of time thinking, I have a big birthday coming up in 2025. So milestone year, and I'm not like freaked out about it.

00:32:01 Speaker_04
Not like, oh my gosh, how did this happen? I know how it happens. And I'm feeling very comfortable with my age and stage in life. But I'm also increasingly drawn to the idea of doing less, not more. Higher quality, lower quantity.

00:32:20 Speaker_04
The idea of solitude, if not seclusion, to be able to come back to the public. sphere with better ideas, not just ideas. And really feeling drawn to that as a direction for the next decade.

00:32:37 Speaker_04
So, you know, I've even thought, we're not acting on it in 2025, but about dialing back the podcast, fewer interviews. deeper interviews, and something may emerge on that. I don't know.

00:32:48 Speaker_04
I'm just like really reflecting on what would be, and I feel drawn into it. You know, the more I pray about it, the more I discuss it with a handful of close friends, the more appealing that seems.

00:33:00 Speaker_04
And that idea of unburdening myself, you know, we grew this team that supports everything I do to about nine people at its peak two years ago. And that was a lot. And now, we've dialed right back. We're down to four of us, plus my wife.

00:33:18 Speaker_04
And we have lots of independent contractors on top of that. And it's a delight. It's a joy. It's fun. It is enjoyable. And we're able to do as much or more. We've had better years, actually, on many accounts since we've dialed back.

00:33:32 Speaker_04
And the burden isn't heavy. Do you know what I'm saying?

00:33:36 Speaker_02
Totally. You know, here's a verse I've been pondering. You know, it comes from Psalm 18, 19. It says, he brought me into a spacious place because he rescued me because he delighted in me. And so the question is spaciousness.

00:33:57 Speaker_02
You know, there's spaciousness out of which I have spaciousness with myself, spaciousness with God, spaciousness with other people. even just relational spaciousness, intellectual spaciousness, where God can birth things?

00:34:14 Speaker_02
And to ask yourself the question, it means to ask you this question, Kerry, you know, because it's in spaciousness we get clarity, right? And so, because he delighted in me.

00:34:26 Speaker_02
So if I asked you the question, if you list for me three things that God might delight in you about, Like, he just delights in you. He said, okay, no, not that, oh, I serve you, but like, he just delights in you.

00:34:42 Speaker_02
You have to answer the question, but it's a really great question to think about.

00:34:46 Speaker_04
It is a really great question to ask, and I must admit, not one that I've asked myself very often, if ever. He delights in me.

00:34:54 Speaker_02
I thought to myself, yeah, he delights in me.

00:34:56 Speaker_04
How would you answer that for yourself?

00:34:58 Speaker_02
Well, it's funny, I started laughing. I said, yeah, I'm a four on the Enneagram. Which means I'm like sky high and then 15 minutes later I'm down. The ups and downs of being a four. I said, he just laughs at me. He just smiles, teacher all excited.

00:35:15 Speaker_02
He just knows, three hours later, you're all depressed and the world's coming on in. He just smiles and laughs. That's the idiosyncrasies of my personality.

00:35:29 Speaker_04
Yeah, my mind went to, I think he appreciates my creativity, how I like to think about things, how I like to ponder things, small and big. Yeah.

00:35:40 Speaker_04
I think he laughs at how stressed out I get about really stupid and pedantic things from traffic to lining up for things to whatever. And the other thing that came to mind is I think he really delights on the progress we've made in our marriage.

00:35:56 Speaker_02
Mm, that's awesome, that's great, that's lovely, that's lovely. Yeah, and what that had for me, too, was like, God just delights, and I'm just willing to take risks. I'm just like, whatever, and go outside the box.

00:36:07 Speaker_02
Because in some ways, this journey we're talking about, about for leaders to get retrained, in a sense, retooled for the 21st century, and coming out of some of the Western culture-isms in our formation and leadership, That's like leaving shore.

00:36:25 Speaker_02
It's quite scary. Am I going to lose my magic? Well, hopefully, you will lose your magic. We don't need your magic. But you're right. It's really good. You're out there, aren't you? What are you holding on to?

00:36:36 Speaker_02
Hopefully, you're holding on to nothing but Jesus. It is weak. You don't have control and you're following him. We're Jesus followers, and so life's always unfolding, and we're open.

00:36:51 Speaker_02
I mean, like, that to me is what it means to be a follower of Jesus, let alone a leader. And the best gift we can give our people is to actually have spaciousness in our walk with Jesus, out of which we lead out of a cup that overflows.

00:37:08 Speaker_02
But we weren't taught to do that. Like, you weren't. I wasn't taught that. I was taught to make it happen.

00:37:16 Speaker_04
I talk to a lot of leaders who would say spaciousness feels like a dream or something that's saved for heaven in their leading churches.

00:37:25 Speaker_04
And they have no space in their calendar, no margin in their personal life, no spaciousness really in anything from time to work out, time to tuck their kids into bed, time to really prayerfully think through a sermon.

00:37:39 Speaker_04
Yes, we all know how to write sermons, but let's be honest. Sometimes we whip them together pretty quickly.

00:37:47 Speaker_04
For the leader who feels like they have no, and business leaders listening who have no spaciousness in their business, when you take yourself back to that moment where you went from probably almost no space,

00:37:59 Speaker_04
to where you are now, what does the journey into spaciousness look like? Because you led for a decade or more at New Life with some newfound spaciousness.

00:38:10 Speaker_02
No, I led for, yeah, well, 15 years, 17. 15 years with spaciousness. 20 years, yeah, yeah. But again, there's spaciousness of when I've got small children. Pastoring a church is really challenging.

00:38:27 Speaker_02
I mean, let's not, I did 26 years as lead pastor of a church. I mean, it's, I don't care if the church is 50 people, leading, being a shepherd, like John 10 shepherd, we actually care about the sheep.

00:38:37 Speaker_02
I'm not talking about you're pastoring a church, but you're kind of building your own thing out there and you're not really, if you're shepherding sheep, And doing it in Jesus' name, pastoring a local church is extremely demanding.

00:38:52 Speaker_02
Let's not kid ourselves, it's a unique calling, it's high. But I think the way we do it needs adjustments, huge adjustments, for example. But the number one, let me say,

00:39:05 Speaker_02
Number one person you have to lead is yourself, and that's the most difficult person to lead.

00:39:09 Speaker_02
So you're right, how do I create a life with spaciousness so that I'm leading from the inside out, with Jesus and me outside other people, not the outside in? That is gonna require a team. serious retooling.

00:39:25 Speaker_02
I know you can preach, everyone can preach about it. We don't read the books. I'm talking about actually under the pressure and you've got to learn how to make, how to do discernment personally really well.

00:39:36 Speaker_02
So you can resist all the external pressures coming against you. I mean, it takes a serious walk with God. So the real first question is, I got to get serious on my walk with God, and what do I need for that?

00:39:44 Speaker_02
Well, it's therapy, spiritual directors, mentors, shifting, sabbaticals. We can go into great detail. Let's not even go there.

00:39:51 Speaker_02
But I think the pressure to be a certain kind of person as a lead pastor, or a pastor on staff, or even a business person is enormous, so externally. But the question is, can you get to a place in God where you're free

00:40:05 Speaker_02
from the pressure, and you're okay. And then you begin to make some decisions, like I eventually do, saying, I don't wanna preach this much. This is not, because preaching's very taxing.

00:40:15 Speaker_02
And I said, make or break, I gotta figure out how to do a preaching team, because this is killing me, and taking a life out of me. And so that was a huge shift.

00:40:24 Speaker_02
I think many pastors find themselves trapped in, I'm preaching 45 weeks a year, and it's just a lot. Just so even the job is such that it's takes a superhuman to do it. So how do you divide it differently?

00:40:39 Speaker_02
It's going to take such courage to change systems so that people flourish. So let's not kid ourselves. The number one issue is leading for that leaders. You're, you're the, you've got to make some shifts as a leader.

00:40:52 Speaker_02
And it's really their internal, um, where you have the differentiation level. to say, no, we're not going to plant this other campus the way they want to.

00:41:07 Speaker_02
It'll grow the church because what that would mean I'm out, you know, just, it's going to be on our infrastructure and my personal life. It's just not, it's not good. It's not sustainable.

00:41:18 Speaker_02
And we want to live lives that are, that are overflowing or cups overflowing. So I'm, I'm sick. I just turned 68 and I really do feel like I'm spacious as now as my kids are grown. I'm not leading a local church, I'm leading a para-church, sodality.

00:41:36 Speaker_02
But it's not the, I think there's a weight of a local church that is very unique to do that, because I consider the church around the world the most important institution, or God-given gift to the world.

00:41:51 Speaker_02
And creating a community and a new family of Jesus that's radical, counter-cultural, shepherding these people, wow.

00:41:59 Speaker_02
Again, size is irrelevant, but it's radical, and that requires that you're at a place of maturity, and you're getting so many resources coming into you, because you need them, and you deserve them.

00:42:08 Speaker_02
You need sabbaticals, you need space, you need rest, you need pampering, because you don't get it.

00:42:14 Speaker_02
And so I think in a whole model of how we do pastors and leadership, Kerry, I just have a longing, I know you do too, to shift the paradigm so that the folks coming up in their 20s and 30s will love it and want to stay in it for decades.

00:42:33 Speaker_02
You can be flourishing. I consider my 60s and hopefully my 70s my best years. It's wonderful, but I think I'm pacing myself. I love Jesus. I love his church. I love serving him.

00:42:50 Speaker_02
I'm happy in life, but I think it's been the fruit of decades of deepening this journey growing. I'm learning a ton. I love scripture and it's all been a great journey.

00:43:10 Speaker_04
Yeah, you know, when I think about the next decade ahead for me, I am thinking a lot about the joy in the projects I want to tackle.

00:43:17 Speaker_04
There are some really big questions, and I think we'll be on parallel tracks attacking the same problem from different perspectives and different angles. I'm really concerned about the health of the church and the health of its leaders.

00:43:30 Speaker_04
And, you know, you have a tremendous contribution in that field. I hope to make some kind of a contribution in that field. But it gives me joy to think about the deep work ahead.

00:43:41 Speaker_04
It gives me joy to think about the difference that it could make in the lives of others. But I want to go back to the hurdles that leaders would face. Because yeah, okay, you and I, you know, I got basically assaulted by burnout.

00:43:58 Speaker_04
You had a wake-up call. But even after that, there are hurdles that leaders, maybe they don't have a catalytic moment where the wife says, I quit. Maybe they don't burn out, but they're listening and they feel trapped.

00:44:11 Speaker_04
What are some of the hurdles that leaders will encounter to try to make that journey to inside-out leadership? I start what's in here, and it flows out of me. What are some of the hurdles that they're going to encounter along the way?

00:44:25 Speaker_02
Well, the most obvious hurdle is people aren't going to like this. There's nothing in what I'm doing right now, and people are not going to say, oh, yeah, we want to give you more time to go learn and grow and have spaciousness.

00:44:44 Speaker_02
And I mean, it's just the demands of around you are enormous and they're not gonna change. You need to change. So I think that's the first hurdle. People say, well, Peter, I could lose my job. Like, yeah, I mean, you're following Jesus, so it's okay.

00:45:06 Speaker_02
I mean, you're open. If they don't want you, to be overflowing with Jesus and following Jesus for yourself, there's a fundamental problem. So hopefully, your leadership is now helping, leading them to understand you so that you can serve them better.

00:45:26 Speaker_02
I mean, by my third sabbatical, I'll never forget, there was a woman in church. And before I went on my third sabbatical, mine were three to four months. And she said, I can't wait till you leave. And she was like, I can't wait.

00:45:37 Speaker_02
I said, gee, that doesn't sound very nice, you know? And she said, no, no, I really, because every time you come back, it's so blessed. You're a different person. You're a better person. So please go.

00:45:49 Speaker_02
And then it became part of the culture, you know, of New Life or pastoral staff. And because I saw the fruit of it, you got disengaged from your identity being in the role of pastor. And so actually, you're freer to see what God's saying and doing.

00:46:05 Speaker_02
You got a longer perspective. And time to learn and grow was just indispensable. So like a pastor leader who's just busy all the time, I mean, you're not doing anybody any favors. So again, here's my three little sayings.

00:46:21 Speaker_02
You cannot give what you do not possess. You can only give what you do possess. So that's very important. The state you are in is the state you give to others.

00:46:29 Speaker_02
So think about if you're in turmoil internally, or exhausted, you can preach on rest and Sabbath, but what you're giving is your being. And then who you are is more important than what you do. And those three statements, that I'm gonna be before I do,

00:46:53 Speaker_02
which is what Jesus, how Jesus lived his ministry, models it for us. No one can do that for you. There's no board that they can tell you, be before you do. But I mean, it takes great courage in a world like we have in the 21st century.

00:47:11 Speaker_02
You could be Instagramming and scrolling on Instagram half your life. I mean, you're building a great following.

00:47:16 Speaker_04
It's not that hard.

00:47:18 Speaker_02
The dopamine fix, the quick fix. This is dying with Jesus and resurrecting with Jesus. This is a different way. We're called to something revolutionary here. Our lives are first.

00:47:34 Speaker_02
And that's why, again, Carrie, I'm curious of what you see as the greatest challenge in the church. I've shared with you, I'm still curious of your answer. I see the greatest challenge being the formation of the lead pastor in their being.

00:47:47 Speaker_02
And that's why I keep getting, as I get older, I am more clear and less afraid to say what needs to be said. And not about tinkering, I'm like, who cares? I mean, who am I trying to impress?

00:48:03 Speaker_02
And this fundamentalism of God's in a box, it's just, it's so absurd to hang on to something that is so clearly not working and there's not life in it. I'm not trying to convince you, you can continue.

00:48:19 Speaker_02
But I know where the life is and I know where the young generation is longing for. And I just want to go for it. So I'm curious, what would you say?

00:48:28 Speaker_04
Yeah, I think we're on very similar pages. I like the idea of it being spiritual formation, that we were not formed for this.

00:48:37 Speaker_04
We didn't have the reservoir, the habits, the disciplines, the practices that would produce fruit, healthy fruit, in the long term. It produces a lot of what Galatians 5 would say is the fruit of the other spirit.

00:48:54 Speaker_04
division, factions, anger, hatred, jealousy, fits of rage. I mean, you see that in leaders who follow Jesus, business and church, and it's not good, and I definitely have those characteristics.

00:49:07 Speaker_04
I am obsessed with the question of why, you know, scandals and abuse notwithstanding. If you're going to be a serial abuser and groom people, that's a different category. But I'm talking about well-meaning people who actually love Jesus.

00:49:25 Speaker_04
who end up being spit out by the very churches that they lead and or start. Why does this keep happening? What is it about our system? What is it about our culture? What is it about the way we do church that is so fundamentally unhealthy?

00:49:41 Speaker_04
It's rejecting the leaders who love it because we just can't keep up. We create this treadmill that is exhausting the set of expectations that is just so draining for us, as you say, right?

00:49:57 Speaker_04
Like, well, I could build this thing, but it's exhausting, and I don't know, and it's a heavy yoke. And I feel like the church has become a heavy yoke. It's a good metaphor for a lot of people.

00:50:08 Speaker_02
Yeah, excellent. And let me throw this out to you as you're researching, as you go down your road. I'll give you some pieces I've put together, too. One is we don't train our boards.

00:50:20 Speaker_02
We have boards, we were taught, let's get on our boards, people who are successful business people or corporate executive, because we're trying, again, we're back to a faulty definition of success.

00:50:32 Speaker_02
And so we're kind of like, we're measuring it by everything's numbers. And so that you got to find certain kind of board members for that versus board members that know how to discern and have wisdom and hear God's voice.

00:50:45 Speaker_04
You're right. Usually we usually recruit gas pedals, not breaks. That's good.

00:50:51 Speaker_02
So I begun to dabble as well with a rule of life for board members. And as I've, I've been working on this emotionally healthy success, what is success for the last few years?

00:51:01 Speaker_02
It'll be a book at some point, you know, and, but I, I, it, it led me to, you've got to address boards. Boards need a formation plan.

00:51:10 Speaker_04
Right, because it can't just be not this. There has to be a positive, right?

00:51:16 Speaker_02
Yeah, because when there's a crisis or difficulty, they have the power. And they're sent by God to do that, right? To provide oversight and safety for the larger body and the lead pastor. So people don't talk about that very much.

00:51:32 Speaker_02
And then secondly, I think we do need to up the discipleship in the church. I think we have to recognize that. So we've got to hit it on different levels.

00:51:38 Speaker_02
That's why, for me, I've tried to produce a couple of courses of high quality for the church, most of the spirituality, most of the relationships. But the problem is, They're serious discipleship formation courses.

00:51:54 Speaker_02
And evangelicalism wants, I need something for like 30 minutes for our small group. I just need something to benefit a small group. So it's not really serious formation. It's kind of, and we want to plug and play kind of thing.

00:52:05 Speaker_02
And so, I mean, we're a top-selling discipleship curriculum for HarperCollins, but I'm very aware that

00:52:13 Speaker_02
Evangelicalism has a model of discipleship in general that is very shallow and is structured in a way that will have the maximum number of people and it can scale and grow.

00:52:27 Speaker_02
That depth is not a priority, which then leads you back to the leader, because a leader has formation with some depth. they then make room for it for everybody else. But if we don't, then the church is, again, we're back to being doomed.

00:52:43 Speaker_02
So we got to hit the church, we got to hit the board, and we got to hit the leadership as well. So you got to kind of tack it on all the levels because they're interrelated, we're families. But we're touching on, like I said, a massive problem.

00:52:57 Speaker_02
The wonderful thing, Carrie, is the generation behind me, or behind you, you're younger than me, 20s and 30s, they're so hungry and ready to be ecumenical because they recognize we got to look outside our tradition.

00:53:12 Speaker_02
And we got to look globally at what's going on. So the Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, what's happening in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Oceania, as well as it's all important. So I'm part of this large church, but North American,

00:53:30 Speaker_02
Evangelical Pentecostalism is this narrow shoot in global church history that it's only in the light of the big hole that you begin to say, oh, there's a lot of gaps here, but I can learn from the rest of the body of Christ.

00:53:42 Speaker_02
But we generally don't have time for that either. But none of us have the whole Jesus. We have a piece from our vantage point. So that's why it's so critical to be connected across traditions and be learning. So that's very threatening to some people.

00:54:04 Speaker_04
Yeah, yeah. When you started to undergo your transformation and you were leading New Life Church, Did you have people push back? People leave? People go, Oh, we liked it. We liked the unhealthy Pete better than the healthier Pete.

00:54:20 Speaker_02
Um, yeah, a couple, but not many. The biggest thing was I know, I think the biggest thing, the folks who, a few that did leave, it was primarily because I stopped lying. That was a really big decision.

00:54:33 Speaker_02
I, uh, in other words, I wasn't afraid to tell people or say to people like, no, this is unacceptable. You're proud, you're unteachable.

00:54:45 Speaker_02
Yeah, you're very anointed and gifted, but you're arrogant, and you're unteachable, and you're not allowed to be in leadership here anymore. That was huge for me. And so I made a big switch that I was going to live honestly.

00:55:02 Speaker_02
So again, I had to do my own work about not being afraid of being disliked. So I think some of those people did leave, but that was good because we were not the right church for them, and they needed to be in power.

00:55:19 Speaker_02
But no, I'd say no, everyone, listen, my sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me, but I don't follow a stranger's voice.

00:55:26 Speaker_02
I think, you know, the first part of John 10 is about not just Jesus, the good shepherd, about the under shepherds, the real, the good, the Pharisees were not good shepherds, they were another voice. They didn't come in through the gate.

00:55:38 Speaker_02
But if we're true shepherds, you know, under Jesus, our sheep are gonna hear, they're gonna hear us and say, that's Jesus, that's God. and they're gonna wanna stay. So I wouldn't, but if they leave, it's okay.

00:55:49 Speaker_02
My wife and I, we said, if everybody leaves, it's okay. We'll just keep, no, we did. We said, the church goes to zero. It's okay. And I feel like the way, that's what it means to have an open hand. I think even, I think we've had that posture always.

00:56:03 Speaker_02
It's like, if it's okay, I'm really okay if that, I mean, I don't want it to happen, but it's okay.

00:56:10 Speaker_04
But if this all goes, even if emotionally healthy all falls apart overnight,

00:56:15 Speaker_02
I remember just going to our board, and I started the New Life Fellowship Church. I went there for the call from God, and I remember, as I got on this journey, and I said to the board, I said, you know, I want you to understand that

00:56:28 Speaker_02
Yeah, I feel cold here, but if Jerry at any point says to me, I no longer have the grace to live here in Queens, New York City, in this difficult environment, for her especially, now 40 years was no small task, but she came from a nice little suburb, quiet.

00:56:49 Speaker_02
But my marriage, I was leading out of my marriage, and so even just biblically, We're in this thing together. Now, she wasn't the lead pastor. I would love for her to be my co-pastor, but she didn't want to be. But we're in it together.

00:57:01 Speaker_02
And if she said, I really need to leave New York, then I told the board, I'm resigning. I'm going to go. Not that I don't love you and feel called to do my fellowship. My first calling, however, is to Jesus and to her. And so I would go somewhere else.

00:57:16 Speaker_02
But I was OK with that. I was really, and I really meant it, that's been my posture ever since.

00:57:22 Speaker_02
Even with the EH discipleship, I mean, Jerry's personally in it, but if she felt like, no, I don't want to do this anymore, and I just feel like, and I'd rather you didn't, because I'd like us to do this, I would take that super seriously, and it would really impact my discernment, because we're one flesh.

00:57:37 Speaker_02
So that was a shift of saying, I'm willing, my values trump everything, which is, I'm going to do the will of Jesus, And I made a covenant of vow with Jerry, marriage, out of which life flows. So I'm not going to live like I'm single.

00:57:57 Speaker_02
And so it just informs a lot of things. And I need a lot of time to be with God, to do anything. So that's another limit. I need time for spaciousness. to be good for anyone.

00:58:10 Speaker_04
That's good. Really a lot to reflect on. One of the things, you and I were talking about it before I hit record, and you've hinted at it a few times since, you seem to have gotten quite comfortable, more comfortable with saying no.

00:58:25 Speaker_04
You know, you were saying, I don't do a lot of these podcast interviews. It's like, I know, this took a year to set up, and we got it all set up, and thank you for doing it. That's awesome. You turn down speaking invitations.

00:58:36 Speaker_04
You say no to a lot of things. Perhaps you've said no to building a whole monastic order, you know, structurally. I think the internal no's are one thing. The external no's kill a lot of leaders, right?

00:58:49 Speaker_04
It's like, well, I could go speak at this conference. Oh, they want me to write a book. Oh, I could do this. Oh, we could launch another campus. Oh, we could do this. How have you become more comfortable with saying no?

00:59:00 Speaker_04
What does that process look like for you?

00:59:02 Speaker_02
Great question. You know, it's a really great question. And again, the key, I believe, is listening to God inside of me in joy and delight. And so what I'm passionate about and what gives me such a life explodes in me.

00:59:29 Speaker_02
So let's just take, for example, I'll just use this season, a moment of my life. Speaking to large crowds, doing a lot of, let's say, podcasts and external speaking, doesn't bring me life.

00:59:50 Speaker_02
But what does bring me life is writing, thinking, pondering, praying. I just feel God's hand.

01:00:00 Speaker_02
When I have a day of writing, and I'm a really slow writer, so I could be a day, and maybe I've written two sentences, because I'm praying and pondering, but I feel at the end of the day like I've had a vacation. Like, that's how it feels.

01:00:14 Speaker_02
It feels wonderful. The way I lead EH Discipleship, it's two full-time employees, so it's very slim. It's been, it's joyful for me. But I think where it needs to go and where it's going, I'm not the guy to take it. Jason and Drew are going to do great.

01:00:32 Speaker_02
They're going to do great. But it's not mine to do. I'm really clear. I want to write books, but I write only what burns inside of me and I cannot not write it.

01:00:46 Speaker_02
And the publisher, I have a very good relationship with Zondervan, and they know, like, they'll get the book when it's done. Like kind of Rilke's letters to a young poet, like, it's like, I have to do it.

01:00:56 Speaker_02
And like, when I wrote Emotionally Healthy Leader, I had this in me. I just stepped down from the church. I've been thinking about it for decades. And they said, the last thing the church needs is a leadership book.

01:01:05 Speaker_02
I said, there's a million leadership books out there. I said, I know. I said, but I really, I just have to write it down. I said, even if only two people read it, I said, I just,

01:01:15 Speaker_02
I have to write this and they really wanted a marriage course and a book and i said listen i said i know that i'll be a massive so i do want to do some day i hope i get to what i said but i just i have to write i said so not running for the market i just i'm writing to get it on paper because i believe it needs to be done.

01:01:32 Speaker_02
And so I wrote it, in a sense, against their wishes. They, quote, did me a favor, but they felt like there's a zillion Christian leadership books out there. So I wrote it, and it took me a few years to actually get it in print.

01:01:48 Speaker_02
So I'm always frustrating them in slowness, because to me, it's a prayer document. And to make a long story short, you know, it's been like, it came out 15, I think it's, what's the 20, nine years ago.

01:01:58 Speaker_02
I mean, it's like, they're one of the best-selling books on leadership out there. I mean, for them, and they like, they, they apologized to me, said we were wrong.

01:02:04 Speaker_02
Like I, but I think it's, I think it's just, it's like following the gut of like, again, free from money, free from market, free from pressure, free from all the experts who know better for your life than you do.

01:02:17 Speaker_02
And it's like that whole Quaker thing of I'm leading from within. I'm actually listening to God inside of me.

01:02:24 Speaker_02
The Quakers brought that better than anybody to the global church in terms of, that's why they got rid of slavery in the early, you couldn't be a Quaker in the early 1700s and have a slave. But they were listening to God from inside.

01:02:36 Speaker_02
They weren't looking about, oh, the fugitive slave law, you have to report the slaves. They're just like God. And they were just free from all that. I think that's the level of freedom

01:02:47 Speaker_02
I think we all got to work to, for me, that's been what's been so freeing and helps me a ton.

01:02:53 Speaker_04
I hope young leaders can hear this, and I don't know that I would have accessed this well at 32 if I was listening to this conversation from two people who were older and in a different season of life.

01:03:04 Speaker_04
But I got to tell you, when it comes to writing, I definitely have another book or two in me that I want to get to in the next five to seven years.

01:03:13 Speaker_04
But I am taking greater and greater... I don't have a current publishing contract, and I'm finding that thrilling. I want to be able to write the book on my timeline, see how it develops. Is it going to take a year? Is it going to take two years?

01:03:27 Speaker_04
Maybe we can turn it into a project. Maybe I'll go to a publisher. Maybe not. Maybe I'll use an agent. Maybe not. Maybe I'll do something else with it.

01:03:37 Speaker_04
There's a joy and a freedom in that because otherwise you sign a two or three book deal and suddenly your next book is due. And you know, well, I don't have anything to say. It's like, well, your book's due anyway, right?

01:03:48 Speaker_04
And there's so much freedom in that. I'd love for you to reflect a little bit more. And I think You know, under this, Pete, to some extent, is agency, right? A lot of us feel like we've surrendered our agency.

01:04:00 Speaker_04
The church requires, the contract requires, the fame and success require, the platform I'm building requires. Does it? Maybe it doesn't. I don't know. That kind of agency is such a joy if you can get it back or discover it.

01:04:17 Speaker_02
Again, we're back to idols. When I stepped down from New Life, and I was 56 when I stepped down from New Life, and there wasn't any age discipleship.

01:04:26 Speaker_02
And a mentor, a wise mentor of mine said to me, Pete, you better make sure you don't get seduced by money. And I'm like, gee, it'd be nice to have some money.

01:04:37 Speaker_04
And he goes, no, Pete, you don't see it.

01:04:40 Speaker_02
You don't realize you're going to be able to cash in on this thing. And he goes, don't. He goes, don't do it. You'll regret it. He said, you basically listen to God and do what's meaningful for you, what's meaningful work. And that's the choice you make.

01:04:58 Speaker_02
And so that was tremendous advice to me because I think so often we indirectly make decisions for money. I'm not, I listen, I'm into, you know, save for retirement, be a good financial student.

01:05:12 Speaker_04
Yeah, you've cashed some royalty checks along the way.

01:05:14 Speaker_02
Every pastor leader should have a financial advisor. I totally agree with that. But, you know, as Jesus said in Luke 12, to the two sons arguing about the inheritance, watch out for greed. All kinds of greed, it comes in so many, greed is so subtle.

01:05:33 Speaker_02
And I, you know, we lived among, you know, in Queens. So I know a lot of poor people that are very greedy. You can be rich and be greedy. You can be poor and be greedy. It's a, it's a deep thing.

01:05:42 Speaker_02
And indirectly and almost unconsciously we make decisions for money, big decisions that get us into all kinds of troubles. It's like we make decisions to be, to get people's praise, like gets us in all kinds of trouble.

01:05:53 Speaker_02
So that's why, again, we're back to internal freedom and So, I'm sorry, your question, but I go off your question.

01:06:02 Speaker_04
It was about agency, but I like the direction it's going.

01:06:04 Speaker_02
I think the power of saying, I'm free. I'm not beholden. Yeah, I think it's the freedom from, it's the temptations. It's Trey's platform. A platform is deadly, deadly. Need for platform, the need for security and resources. Huge temptation.

01:06:30 Speaker_02
And I've got to get free from these things so I can actually live the life God's given me. God has a dream for you. God's got a dream for your life. And your role is to listen to God and his dream for your life and offer it back to him at the end.

01:06:46 Speaker_02
Listen to God inside of you and the dream he has for your life. There's only one unrepeatable you on the earth at this moment of history. And we need you to have the courage to follow that God-given dream. That's guts.

01:07:03 Speaker_02
Not live out someone else's expectation of you until you end up living out of a false self that's not really who God made you to be. And living out of a false self is heavy. It's a weight. It's like soul's armor. It just doesn't fit.

01:07:23 Speaker_04
I am experiencing the shedding of that over the last 20 years. And you know what? I wouldn't even say that. I didn't feel like anyone else put that armor on me. I put it on myself. But I'm like, I like this better. This is better. This is more joyful.

01:07:45 Speaker_04
I wake up every morning, and I'm like, I get to do this. This is good. And there are days that, you know, hey, yeah, there is a deadline, or I'm jumping on a plane. Hopefully, I still want to do the event.

01:07:58 Speaker_04
You know, nine times out of ten, I do, which is great. But there is a freedom there that, it's funny, Jesus spoke of that a lot of people in leadership just never experience. Hmm.

01:08:14 Speaker_04
I'd be remiss because a couple of people, friends, knew I was talking to you and they said, make sure you ask Pete about grieving your losses. You've got some really rich material.

01:08:24 Speaker_04
My season of burnout came with a month of where I basically, in addition to work, if I wasn't at the office, I was crying or sleeping. And it was just letting go of a lifetime of loss and grieving what had happened.

01:08:40 Speaker_04
grieving what walked away, and now I'm much better at grieving in real time. I lost a colleague slash friend last week, and it really hit me. This one really, really hit me.

01:08:52 Speaker_04
And, you know, I just took a bike ride in the middle of the afternoon, went to bed a little early, stayed in bed a little bit longer the next day, and just kind of, you know, processed it.

01:09:03 Speaker_04
over the course of a few days, whereas before I would have been like, oh, that's too bad, you know, back to work. Can you talk about grieving losses, what it is and why it matters?

01:09:15 Speaker_02
Wow. Listen, our culture, let's just say Western culture, we don't do grief and loss. We do medication, we numb ourselves, we get busy, something, some way to medicate the pain and not feel too deeply. And we go into a kind of a Gnosticism.

01:09:34 Speaker_02
And so, again, we're back to bad theology.

01:09:36 Speaker_04
So, so- Gnosticism, like a disembodied faith?

01:09:40 Speaker_02
Yeah, like I went to spirit, I mean, good, praise the Lord. But like, we don't engage, our spirituality is not very earthy, yet biblical spirituality is very earthy.

01:09:49 Speaker_02
And so we've got two thirds of the Psalms are laments and a whole book called Lamentations. And you can't read the Bible and the history of God's people without seeing that grief

01:10:00 Speaker_02
Embracing grief and loss in God, and there's a way to do it biblically, is critical and foundational to maturity.

01:10:08 Speaker_02
So I like to look at grief and loss as, and I've kind of grown into this, it's such a fundamental part of life, because life is all about loss. Think about it, I mean, in every sense of the word.

01:10:21 Speaker_02
Every season you, even just as you chronologically, you're older, you're grieving, one season's over, you're entering a new one.

01:10:27 Speaker_02
So there's an ending, there's a kind of a waiting on Godness in between, then there's letting the old birth something new, let God bring the new, the resurrection. So it's this ending, it's over, it's not coming back.

01:10:39 Speaker_02
I'm like, I'm in this confusing disorientation in between, I don't know what's happening, the old is gone, the new hasn't come yet, but yet I'm waiting on God,

01:10:46 Speaker_02
that let him birth something new, but it's a very painful, difficult process to do on all levels.

01:10:51 Speaker_02
So I like to look at it as, and I came into this later, so you have to learn to feel again, because feeling sadness and anger and fear, we don't do well with that.

01:11:05 Speaker_02
So that's, I need space for that, and I'm doing it before the Lord, and it opens up all kinds of scripture, but I see the grieving of, without grief, and loss and be able to enter into it God's way.

01:11:20 Speaker_02
We are doomed to immaturity, because there's no other way to grow up in Jesus. And again, American, North American, Western evangelical Pentecostalism, which is my tradition, we just, we don't do this.

01:11:34 Speaker_02
We do up and to the right, bigger, better, faster, and we see losses as interruptions. Why is this happening to me? This does not fit, and so I want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Get over it, move on.

01:11:47 Speaker_02
You know, power, we want to power through it. And that's just not Jesus's way. He didn't power through Gethsemane. He didn't power through the cross. Jeremiah didn't power through the exile. Neither did David in the Psalms.

01:12:03 Speaker_02
That's not the biblical, that's a Western thing. So again, we're back to revamping my spirituality where, oh, this is God, like God's coming to me in this. So I like to look at it as like, I have a, my son-in-law is a master Mason.

01:12:19 Speaker_02
Master electricians master carpenters you know in the trades and think of it you start out as an apprentice.

01:12:26 Speaker_02
For a couple years and you become a journey man or journey woman for like five six seven years and you're practicing and then at some point you become a master. Arbiter is a master mason master electrician well in the same way.

01:12:40 Speaker_02
The art, grief and loss is an art. And so we've got to get used to the textures and the tools. And so we start out as we begin to feel, we're like apprentices. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm feeling it. I'm trying to journal my feelings.

01:12:51 Speaker_02
I'm sad, I'm angry, I want to kill somebody. And then you kind of grow into a journeyman, a journeywoman. And then over years and years, then you become a master. Like you're really able to feel like you're a father, mother of the faith.

01:13:04 Speaker_02
Like you're a man. You can just feel people's grief. You can be a father, mother to them. You've been around this. You're a master musician, violinist. You're a master griever. And you can enter anybody's grief because you've entered your own.

01:13:21 Speaker_02
That's where we want to get to. Can you grow into a mother, father, the faith without grief and loss? No. No, no. So is it important? Yeah. It's foundational to maturing as a leader. I don't know if that helped. That makes sense.

01:13:40 Speaker_04
That really helps. Yeah. What do you, you know, I don't know that you'd consider yourself a master griever, but I don't know either, but yeah. Okay. So we're somewhere between journey people.

01:13:49 Speaker_02
I mean, I, you know, I, I, I don't have master, but I know my own grief and I can, I remember a woman came to my house a number of years ago and she'd been raped in daylight, not far from our house.

01:14:01 Speaker_02
And, uh, her marriage actually disintegrated over it. It was just horrific. And, uh, she was in our church. And Terry and I could go there. Like we could enter her pain. Not that we've ever experienced that, but we've entered our own.

01:14:24 Speaker_02
And we realized once we'd enter ours fully, we could enter anybody's. And I think that's the great key to it. And that's why Christians

01:14:34 Speaker_02
I don't believe the church will be known as judgmental once we get grief and loss, because all that comes out of you is compassion. Compassion flows out of your own grief and loss.

01:14:46 Speaker_04
And if you haven't grieved, I mean, that's a very extreme, sad situation, but you can run into somebody who got a cancer diagnosis, which again is sad or traumatic and just kind of over-spiritualize it, or, I'll pray for you, or, you know, let it bounce off you, etc.

01:15:04 Speaker_04
But to profoundly enter someone's grief to... I had somebody who's not involved with the church, but I grew up in the church. And he was coming alongside someone who was going through a really painful period in their relationship.

01:15:18 Speaker_04
And it was really moving. He told me, he said, you know, I'm not at church right now, but I just told the people in the community because they were amazed that I could just come alongside and empathize with people going through a difficult time.

01:15:34 Speaker_04
But he said, look, This is what the church does. This is what Christians do. We don't just discard people. We embrace them. And I found that so moving. But I think you have to be comfortable with your own pain to be able to embrace someone else's.

01:15:48 Speaker_04
Is that what you're saying?

01:15:50 Speaker_02
Absolutely. Yes. You have to be present. I like the word present with your own pain to be present with other people's. I think presence is love. I could be present with someone. We don't get trained in that either, presence.

01:16:04 Speaker_02
And so that's how, again, we're back to, there's a lot of retooling needed in our formation so we can bring it to our people and then bring it to the world.

01:16:15 Speaker_02
But yeah, grief and loss is pretty central, just like limits and making love the criteria for maturity, redefining maturity. So yeah, it's a very key thing. So tell your friends, thank you for reminding you to ask.

01:16:35 Speaker_04
So we covered a lot, and I imagine that people are resonating pretty deeply, but they're feeling, I have no space, I'm trapped, I want to start this journey, or I've tried it before and I got to step one and then it all fell apart and I'm back in the rat race.

01:16:53 Speaker_04
Advice, practical things, people, changes people can make, something they can do that points them in the right direction. We'll obviously link to all of your resources, et cetera.

01:17:03 Speaker_04
But if someone's like, you know, if you're like, you know what, here's just try this shift, maybe two or three things, it'll start you down the right path. What would you suggest?

01:17:15 Speaker_02
Yeah. Well, it's really good. Uh, Yeah, boy, let me think about that for a second here.

01:17:23 Speaker_04
Take your time.

01:17:24 Speaker_02
It's smart. It's a big question. It is. I would say you need, I would start with Sabbath. what would it look like for you to take a 24-hour period once a week to actually stop and rest and delight? I mean, learn about Sabbath. You can go to our resource.

01:17:49 Speaker_02
We've got some great resources on our website, and check it out at emotionallyhealthy.org. But I learned a lot of good stuff written out there, but that's number one.

01:17:58 Speaker_02
But I think you probably need either, you need a mentor, a spiritual director, somebody externally from your system can begin to coach you out. Like, I don't know what it will be for you, depends on where you're at, what your life season is.

01:18:13 Speaker_02
For me, it was beginning with a therapist actually, you know, and that was helpful. Somewhat spiritual director, it's been a mentor. Sometimes it's all the above, but you've got to start resourcing yourself. What do I need?

01:18:25 Speaker_02
What do I, so if you're saying I want spaciousness, So you're looking at your life saying, I got so much coming at me, my schedule's so full, so you probably need someone, again, mentor, director, coach, someone who's ahead of you.

01:18:43 Speaker_02
And I say, whatever it takes to get to them, whatever it costs, it doesn't matter. This is the most important thing you can do if you love your people and if you love the world, because you can't give to the world something you don't have.

01:19:00 Speaker_02
So therefore, whatever it takes, your first job, I don't care what your role is, is to mature as a disciple of Jesus, which means getting free from being swamped. Because basically, if you're, and I know the feeling very well.

01:19:16 Speaker_02
It happens in a nanosecond in our culture. You're gonna need help to get out of that quicksand. Because, hey listen, I read you the verse earlier. He brought me into a spacious place He rescued me because he delights in me, Psalm 18.

01:19:28 Speaker_02
He's got a spacious place for you. But I can't get there, I know. That's why we have the body of Christ, and there's so many resources. I'm sure Carrie's got some as well.

01:19:41 Speaker_02
I would encourage you to obviously access some of ours, but you gotta get started on this journey and say, it's life or death. This isn't a small thing. Just think, do you want people to live like you? Like Paul says, imitate me as I imitate Christ.

01:20:00 Speaker_02
I remember preaching saying, I know I'm not experiencing a lot of joy, but I'm preaching about you having joy. My life's out of control, I'm so busy, but I want you to have rest in Jesus. It doesn't work. You might as well just skip the sermon.

01:20:16 Speaker_02
It's not worth it, because it's your being that matters when you stand up. And that is your sermon. That is your preaching preparation. It's getting the help you need to begin to get free. I like Sabbath. I start with silence as key.

01:20:31 Speaker_02
And you want to get into some new networks that can help slow you down.

01:20:35 Speaker_04
Yeah, because probably your friends right now are part of that existing system that perpetuates the status quo.

01:20:42 Speaker_02
Or they don't know how, and so you've got to fight. And honestly, it's not just emotionally healthy discipleship. There are other good ministries that are helping pastors and leaders right now, because it's a huge problem. Right.

01:20:54 Speaker_04
And it's not just a retreat. It's not just a sabbatical, because this has to be a 24-7, 365-day way of life. There's one other practical thing I think I want to touch on before we wrap up, Pete, and I don't know the answer to this question.

01:21:10 Speaker_04
When I was, it was funny, this came up very recently in my family. I was talking to my younger son, I think, one of my sons. And long story short, we'd had a really bad sleep one night. And, you know, I just didn't sleep particularly well.

01:21:26 Speaker_04
There were a couple of things going on. And he was around and I just said, you know, I think this is how I used to live. I think before I burned out, I was just tired all the time.

01:21:38 Speaker_04
I remember I couldn't even drive more than an hour without having to tap someone else and go, I need to rest. Can you drive? Because you're just sitting there quietly. The fatigue would hit me. I'd fall asleep reading a book. I'd fall asleep.

01:21:51 Speaker_04
watching a movie, that kind of thing. Yeah, it was my younger son. And we're up to one o'clock in the morning with friends in the backyard. They had their friends over. And they're like, this is the guy who used to fall asleep at seven o'clock.

01:22:04 Speaker_04
And I'm like, yeah, I know, but I'm so much better rested. So when you said take a Sabbath, my mind went to get a few nights of really good sleep to start because you can't even think

01:22:16 Speaker_04
Properly like they show like, you know, the difference between having a couple of drinks and being chronically sleep fatigued is about the same on your cognitive performance. That's true of operating motor vehicles.

01:22:26 Speaker_04
It's true of trying to do your daily work. Have your sleep rhythms changed since you've gotten healthier?

01:22:34 Speaker_02
Um, maybe they haven't. I know that. I mean, I, I think I, I obviously I'm not, I'm sleeping more. I just, I'm not as driven. I'm not waking up. So I gotta get up. I gotta get this thing moving. So I'm not living like that anymore.

01:22:47 Speaker_02
And so, yeah, it's been so long, I would say no, not really. But if something's bothering me, like I had something bother me with a person, I got up early, four o'clock, I just need a time, I need like hours to just, how am I gonna trust this?

01:23:00 Speaker_02
And I- What did you do?

01:23:01 Speaker_04
You just processed it?

01:23:02 Speaker_02
I went down, I went down, it was a staff issue and I went to my basement and I had some silence for 20, 30 minutes. I did a little scripture. And then I began to really lift this up before God and take some notes. And then I, it took me three hours.

01:23:23 Speaker_02
I just, I rewrote this person's job description. I said, God, what are you asking me to do? And took leadership, differentiation. Like I heard God pretty clearly. I know what I need to do. Talked to my board chairperson later that day.

01:23:36 Speaker_02
I said, this is what I've done. I'm going to have a conversation with this person. But it came, I got up early, I got up four o'clock in the morning, and I normally, I don't get up four o'clock in the morning.

01:23:44 Speaker_02
But I just responded, I said, okay, God, you're in this. And it was bothering me, and, because it happened late in the day, this conversation, I said, this is not good.

01:23:53 Speaker_02
And so I'm okay doing that, but I don't, obviously, I can't remember, it's been, I can't remember if I got up four o'clock in the morning to deal with an issue. I didn't feel bad about it or guilty. I was like, okay.

01:24:05 Speaker_01
I took a nap.

01:24:06 Speaker_02
It was all good. Again, I think the key is I'm not legalistic about anything. There's flexibility, but I have a structure. I've got a rule of life. I've got a way I'm operating. I've been resourcing myself since I started this journey.

01:24:24 Speaker_02
30 years ago, and so I've got a mentor who's six years older than me, led a large organization, and I call him, he's great, and he was a professor, he was a PhD, he was a pastor, he's done a lot, and it's been great, and I've got a spiritual director, I meet with him once a month, it's been great, and I've got some peers, so I'm always resourcing myself, I'm growing, I've gotta learn, I've never been here before,

01:24:52 Speaker_02
Nor have I. I'm curious, and I want to always be a learner.

01:24:56 Speaker_04
That's great. Pete, this has been great. Is there anything we haven't touched on that you want to touch on? I want to give an invitation.

01:25:02 Speaker_02
I think for those of you who are leading and pastoring, you're in leadership in a church or pastoring a church,

01:25:09 Speaker_02
I, we came to a place realizing, you know, we, we, we had produced and we developed over years as curriculum, emotionally healthy discipleship course for churches.

01:25:18 Speaker_02
We realized if pastors aren't living it, like it's just a program and the church does not need program. Church needs life. So we developed a school of emotionally healthy leadership, a two semester school for pastors and leaders. And we, and, um,

01:25:33 Speaker_02
It's all around the world and it's limited and who can get into it, but it's a serious opportunity for you to experience formation.

01:25:41 Speaker_02
It's not strategies about your life and about what does it mean to build a culture that's completely transformed by Jesus because you've been completely transformed.

01:25:50 Speaker_02
So it's making the applications of your inner life's going to impact how you approach a planning and strategy meeting. how you build a team, how you run a team meeting, like, but it all flows out of the inner life. So it's all about your inner life.

01:26:01 Speaker_02
And I would encourage you, whether you're in wherever you're living in the world, um, it's not all on our website yet, but we've been doing it. It's out there. It's called a school of motion. I think leadership. And I would check it out on our website.

01:26:13 Speaker_02
And you have to apply, it's a serious, it's all through Zoom. Different time zones, Latin America, Europe, UK, Australia, New Zealand, those areas. There'll be an Africa next year.

01:26:30 Speaker_02
I don't know another way to even get started as a pastor leader unless you're led into something somewhat structured for a period of time to introduce you to, oh, this whole new way of living.

01:26:42 Speaker_02
And it's like entering a new universe, new language, new paradigms. It's only a start, but it's a big start, because I don't see how you can give what you don't have.

01:26:54 Speaker_02
And Kerry, you know, you can read a book, you get a lot of good ideas, but the question is, how do I experience and actually live this thing out where it can make a dent?

01:27:04 Speaker_04
Pete, this has been a joy. I want to thank you so much. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for who you are. And thank you for so generously sharing with people.

01:27:14 Speaker_02
And thank you, Kerry. I thank you for everything you do. And I enjoy your podcast when I listen to it. I listen to it all the time, but I listen to it. I enjoy your writing. I enjoy, honestly, your ministry is very important to the global church.

01:27:29 Speaker_02
You're bringing so many things that are so significant. I know they're outside of my calling, but so important for leaders. So thank you very much. And it's an honor to be with you. Well, thank you. It's fun having a conversation with you.

01:27:41 Speaker_04
It is great having a conversation with you, Pete. Really appreciate you taking the time today. And all things Pete are found at, what website would you direct people to?

01:27:50 Speaker_02
EmotionallyHealthy.org. There you go. Lots of free resources there. Check that out and check out the Leadership School as well. Thank you.

01:27:58 Speaker_04
Love this conversation with Pete. Probably my favorite one we've had so far on the podcast. And if you want more details, including the show notes, go to kerryneuhoff.com slash episode 690. We've got everything there for you.

01:28:12 Speaker_04
And make sure you check out the offer from our partners. If you could know exactly how your church was doing. how your people were doing? Wouldn't you want to know?

01:28:21 Speaker_04
Barna is releasing incredible new research every single month, and Glue is introducing powerful tools to help you pinpoint the state of your church.

01:28:29 Speaker_04
Just text my name, Cary, to 46816, and you'll be subscribed to all the latest info on state of the church. That's Cary to 46816. Next time on the podcast, I've got some teaching on progress-making leaders versus excuse-making leaders.

01:28:46 Speaker_04
This is a really helpful framework that you can run yourself through or use it as a hiring matrix. Also coming up, we got Tim Ross, Al Gordon, Will Gadara, Bob Goff, Chad Veach. Brett Hagler, had a really great conversation with him.

01:29:01 Speaker_04
And then, well, some really exciting guests for next year as well. Hey, before you go, if you have left a rating and review, thank you. If you haven't, we'd love to hear from you. And I'd love to give you a free gift, my preaching chi-chi.

01:29:13 Speaker_04
Over 30,000 leaders use it on a regular basis. And basically it's 10 questions you can run your message through before you deliver your message. So go to preachingcheatsheet.com, get your free copy today and we'll catch you next time on the podcast.

01:29:27 Speaker_04
I hope our time together today has helped you identify and break a growth barrier you're facing.