The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast

By Pete Scazzero

Many pastors and church leaders today feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and frustrated that their churches don't seem to be making mature disciples. The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast explores the p

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The podcast currently has 509 episodes available.

Best of The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast

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Number 1: Reversal No. 4: From Critical Mass to Critical Yeast
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.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/
September 01, 202631min
Number 2: Stillness Under Siege: Finding Rest Under Impossible Pressure
Free Resource: Craft a Rule of Life for Emotionally Healthy Leaders → emotionallyhealthy.org/rule In 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/
July 07, 202633min
Number 3: Reversal No. 3: From Our Best Ideas to Discerning God's Voice
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/
August 18, 202632min
Number 4: Power and Wise Boundaries: What Church Leaders Must Learn
Take your team through the Emotionally Healthy Leader Book. Download the FREE discussion guide: http://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leader Let’s get honest. Power makes most of us uncomfortable. So we avoid it, minimize it, or misuse it. In this episode, Pete Scazzero shares a defining leadership failure—one that cost him deeply: relationships, trust, and a 20-year community. At the center of it? Unclear boundaries and dual relationships. You’ll discover:Why every leader must name and steward their powerThe danger of trying to be both a friend and a supervisorHow blurred roles quietly damage teams and cultureWhy the burden of boundaries always falls on the leaderWhat it means to do the inner work required for healthy leadershipThis is not about leadership theory. It’s about formation. Because if you don’t deal with power and boundaries, they will deal with 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/
March 31, 202633min
Number 5: Lectio Divina: A Slower, Truer Way to Hear God
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/
May 26, 202628min