The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter.What if you could succeed brilliantly at something God never asked you to do? Is it possible to succeed at the wrong thing?I spent a good part of my ministry answering yes to that question without knowing it. I built something big at New Life Fellowship while becoming increasingly unhealthy. The numbers were up. My joy was down. It took a church split and two years I never would have chosen for me to face what I'd been avoiding: who am I when I can't prove I'm successful by the world's standards?This episode opens a seven-part series walking through the book Emotionally Healthy Success, three and a half years in the making. I'll tell you the story that forced me to ask what success actually looks like to God, and why I think this question is one you're already living with every time you set a priority or lead a team.If you've built something that looks impressive while quietly wondering if it's the wrong thing, this one's for you. Listen in.If you're ready to go deeper with the ideas shared on this podcast, the School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is your next step. It's where leaders slow down, do the inner work, and come out equipped to lead from health instead of hurry. Learn more and apply for the upcoming Fall semester at emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter.For years, I measured ministry impact by one word: bigger. I remember walking into one of the largest churches in America, watching thousands of people fill the room, and thinking, this is it, this is critical mass. A staff member who'd been there since it was a thousand people told me something shifted at 7,500. Point people in a direction, he said, and it felt like a tidal wave.Jesus never built his kingdom that way. He picked twelve. Pulled three in closer. Sent seventy out two by two. The crowds came last, if they came at all. He called it yeast, a small amount, buried deep, working quietly until the whole loaf rises.In this episode, I walk through the fourth of four reversals from my new book: the move from critical mass to critical yeast. If you've ever measured your ministry by the size of the room, this episode will show you a slower, harder, far more fruitful way to measure it.A leadership formation intensive for pastors and leaders. Grow in practical EHD skills such as incarnational listening, clean fighting, and understanding your family of origin to build honest, life-giving relationships rooted in the love of Jesus.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter.  For my first seventeen years in ministry, I led for Jesus without listening to him. My prayer life was mostly a list of requests. When a door opened, I walked through it and called it faithfulness, following my best ideas and telling myself it was discernment.In this episode, I walk through the third of four reversals from my new book: the move from our best ideas to discerning God's voice. Even Peter, James, and John struggled here. Peter watched Jesus transfigured on the mountain and responded with a plan: let's build three shelters. God interrupted him mid-sentence. "Listen to him." Not "help him." Not "build for him." Listen.If you've ever assumed your best idea for God was from God, this episode will show you a better way. Discernment isn't a bonus skill for the spiritually elite. It's the difference between leading for Jesus and actually listening to him.If you're ready to go deeper with the ideas shared on this podcast, the School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is your next step. It's where leaders slow down, do the inner work, and come out equipped to lead from health instead of hurry. Learn more and apply for the upcoming Fall semester at emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/successFor most of my early ministry, I led from my gifts. Teaching, vision-casting, faith, I had those in abundance, and little else. So I built my leadership on them, hid my weaknesses, and made sure no one saw me struggle. Then a painful church split exposed the whole thing. I spiraled into a two-year depression before I hit rock bottom, and found Jesus waiting for me there.In this episode, I walk through the second of four reversals from my new book: the move from charisma to weakness and limits. Jesus was born to a peasant girl, lived thirty ordinary years, and refused the power offered him in the desert. Paul, facing leaders with every credential he lacked, chose to boast in his weakness instead. "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness."If you've been measuring your ministry by the world's scorecard- gifts, platform, impact- this episode will show you a better one. Weakness isn't a hindrance to what God wants to do through you. It's the doorway.If you're ready to go deeper with the ideas shared on this podcast, the School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is your next step. It's where leaders slow down, do the inner work, and come out equipped to lead from health instead of hurry. Learn more and apply for the upcoming Fall semester at emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/successI was taught that no one rises above their intercessory prayer life. If revival wasn't happening, that meant I hadn't prayed hard enough. So I prayed. We held five morning prayer meetings a week and monthly half nights of prayer, pleading with God to move. He did, slowly. Not the outpouring I was hoping for. Prayer turned into duty, something I dragged myself through rather than something I wanted.Two things changed that. Time with Trappist monks who taught me to listen more than talk. And years spent inside Luke's gospel, watching how Jesus actually prayed.This week, I open the first of four reversals from my new book, EH Success: The Move from Praying for Results to Praying for Communion. Jesus didn't pray to get things done. He prayed to stay with the Father, to hear him, and to receive strength from him. That's a different kind of prayer than most of us were taught, and it might be exactly what your prayer life is missing.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

Free Resource: Craft a Rule of Life for Emotionally Healthy Leaders → emotionallyhealthy.org/ruleIn 2004, I stood in front of a building we couldn't afford to renovate, a staff team with the wrong people in the wrong seats, and a list of problems that all traced back to my own failures as a leader. I thought about resigning. I thought I'd taken the church as far as I could.Most of us know that feeling. Not enough hours. Not enough margin. Not enough emotional or spiritual energy for one more thing. And under that kind of pressure, we get reactive, anxious, driven.This week, I go back to 701 BC and a king named Hezekiah, surrounded by the most powerful army in the world, with no way out. What he does under that siege is still exactly what we need today. Four practices, not theory, that show you how to find rest when the pressure won't let up.This isn't about managing your calendar better. It's about what you do the moment the walls close in.Listen now, and grab the Rule of Life resource above to start building this into your own life.If you're ready to go deeper with the ideas shared on this podcast, the School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is your next step. It's where leaders slow down, do the inner work, and come out equipped to lead from health instead of hurry. Learn more and apply for the upcoming Fall semester at emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

Free Resource: Rule of Life for Emotionally Healthy Leaders → emotionallyhealthy.orgYou were made for glorious work. But you were also made to stop.Most of us know how to produce, build, plan, and push through. What we struggle with is the hidden life. The stopping. The surrendering. The trusting when no one can see it.In this episode, Pete Scazzero explores one of the most countercultural truths in Scripture: you are not God. And that is the best news you'll hear all week.Drawing from Genesis, the life of Jesus, and two ancient disciplines (Sabbath and the Daily Office), Pete unpacks why our refusal to stop is rooted in the same rebellion as the garden. And why living in God's rhythms isn't weakness. It's the path to freedom, fruitfulness, and true maturity.If your calendar is driven by fear, your ministry by insecurity, or your pace by the crowd's demands, this episode is for you.Stop. Listen. Be free.If you're ready to go deeper with the ideas shared on this podcast, the School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is your next step. It's where leaders slow down, do the inner work, and come out equipped to lead from health instead of hurry. Learn more and apply for the upcoming Fall semester at emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

Most leadership teams know how to brainstorm. Very few know how to discern together.After more than 40 years of leading, one of my deepest regrets isn’t moral failure. It’s how many things I led that God never actually asked us to do. We had the money. We had the momentum. We had the energy. But we were moving fast  and we were missing God. In this episode, I share what I’ve learned the hard way: adrenaline is not the Holy Spirit. And brainstorming is not discernment.I walk through five practices that can transform how your leadership team makes decisions  not out of anxiety, urgency, or ambition, but out of quiet listening, surrender, and communal hearing.This is slow work. It’s countercultural work. But it produces what every exhausted leader is desperate for: more peace, more freedom, and more alignment with Jesus.If your team is making big decisions right now, don’t miss this episode.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

Most of us were trained to read the Bible the way we were trained to lead — move fast, cover ground, extract what's useful, and get back to work. But what if that approach, by itself, is keeping you from the very transformation you're trying to produce in others?In this episode, I want to share a practice that has shaped my life for almost thirty years. A practice I cannot live without. It's called Lectio Divina — holy reading — and I believe it may be the single most important shift a Christian leader can make in their relationship with Scripture and with God.I'll take you through the history of this practice, the ancient monastic stream of reading that treated the Bible not as a text to be mastered but as a sacrament — a place of encounter with the living God. I'll share the four movements that structure it, and exactly what it looked like in my own devotional life this past week.This isn't theory. I'll be honest with you about the years I spent reading the Bible the way I approached leadership: achieve, produce, get it done. What that approach cost me — in my prayer life, my preaching, my soul — is something I wish someone had told me at 30.Lectio Divina interrupts the cycle of leading from information rather than formation. It doesn't just inform your sermons — it transforms the person preaching them. And it begins with something shockingly simple: slowing down long enough to let the Word read you.If you're ready to go deeper with the ideas shared on this podcast, the School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is your next step. It's where leaders slow down, do the inner work, and come out equipped to lead from health instead of hurry. Learn more and apply for the upcoming Fall semester at emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

Most of us were trained to look for God in the big moments — the breakthrough, the open door, the dramatic call. But what if God is most consistently present in the ordinary moments we rush past every day?In this episode, I want to share a 500-year-old practice that has quietly transformed my leadership, my marriage, and my relationship with God. It's called the Examen — and I believe it may be the single most underused tool in the modern pastor's spiritual formation toolkit.I'll take you through the history of this practice, born out of the life of Ignatius of Loyola — a soldier brought low by a cannonball who discovered that God speaks through our interior movements. I'll share the 2-question version you can start today, and the fuller 4-movement practice the Jesuits have done twice a day for five centuries.This isn't theory. I'll be honest with you about the years I spent pushing past the heaviness in my chest — misreading desolation as something to overcome rather than something to hear. What I missed cost me. You don't have to miss it too.The Examen interrupts the cycle of leading from wounds and repeating old patterns. It teaches discernment, not just decision-making. And it begins with just two questions.If you're ready to go deeper with the ideas shared on this podcast, the School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is your next step. It's where leaders slow down, do the inner work, and come out equipped to lead from health instead of hurry. Learn more and apply for the upcoming Fall semester at emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

⚡FREE E-BOOK: Spaciousness: Avoiding the 8 Traps That Steal Your Margin - Download at emotionallyhealthy.org/spaciousness In this powerful replay of one of our most listened-to episodes, Pete Scazzero invites pastors and leaders into a radical, countercultural way of leading: unhurried, unrushed, and deeply rooted in Jesus. Are you constantly running at a pace you can't sustain? Exhausted, overextended, and wondering how much longer you can keep going? This episode is for you. Pete explores the cultural and spiritual forces that keep us trapped in busyness and offers practical, time-tested rhythms that create space for rest, reflection, and deep communion with God. Drawing from his own journey and decades of leadership, Pete names the lies we believe about productivity and success and points us back to a slower, more spacious life anchored in emotional and spiritual health. This episode will: Help you identify what's driving your pace Offer 15 practical practices to embrace a slower rhythm Encourage you to lead out of your being, not just your doing This is more than a podcast. It's an invitation to freedom.  If you're ready to go deeper with the ideas shared on this podcast, the School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is your next step. It's where leaders slow down, do the inner work, and come out equipped to lead from health instead of hurry. Learn more and apply for the upcoming Fall semester at emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/

⚡DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK: 8 Marks of Emotionally Healthy Preaching & Teaching - https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/preaching/ In this episode, I invite you to rediscover an ancient path of powerful preaching and teaching — one that's been largely lost in the modern church. We're not talking about TED-style talks, clever soundbites, or performance-driven content. We're talking about preaching birthed out of deep, slow formation in Jesus. The kind of teaching that carries weight because it has been lived. This episode explores the story behind the phrase "monks in the pulpit" — how early church leaders, shaped by the deserts of Egypt and the rhythms of monastic life, became the world's most transformative preachers. We'll trace their journey, unpack 8 core practices of Emotionally Healthy Preaching, and reflect on what it means to teach from being, not just knowledge. If you're a pastor, teacher, or spiritual leader of any kind, I want to challenge you: the most urgent work you can do is not just preparing sermons — it's preparing your soul. Slow down. Be with God. Then preach.  If you're ready to go deeper with the ideas shared on this podcast, the School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is your next step. It's where leaders slow down, do the inner work, and come out equipped to lead from health instead of hurry. Learn more and apply for the upcoming Fall semester at emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool.Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/