When Pete Scazzero, the cofounder of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, was starting out in ministry, he was “sloppy” in how he led church staff meetings. He described his approach as “unhealthy” and “immature,” as well as characterized by “bad stewardship.” Part of the problem was that Scazzero had a “sacred-secular divide” in how he saw aspects of his job as a pastor.
“In my early days, I really had a very compartmentalized spirituality. Preaching and teaching, that was holy and on God’s heart,” Scazzero said, “but leading a staff meeting—all that kind of thinking that needed to go into an agenda and all the stuff around it—to me it was secondary. It wasn’t quite as holy.”
Pete Scazzero: ‘We’re Modeling Community Life’
Pete Scazzero and his wife, Geri, are the founding pastors of New Life Fellowship church in Queens, New York City, and the cofounders of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, a ministry that helps people to learn that spiritual maturity cannot exist without emotional health. Scazzero is also a bestselling author whose books include “The Emotionally Healthy Leader,” “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality,” and “Emotionally Healthy Discipleship.”
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In the most recent episode of his “Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast,” titled “5 Distinctives of an Emotionally Healthy Staff Meeting,” Scazzero said that while he used to see church staff meetings as less important Sunday sermons, he has since come to see these meetings as just as “important as a sermon or a teaching of Scripture or as a prayer meeting.”
“Why?” Scazzero asked. “Because we’re creating a culture where we’re modeling community life. We’re living out certain values that are going to be transmitted throughout the whole ministry. We’re stewarding resources, spiritual formation with the people in the room.”
Moreover, he said, “We’re learning as we’re leading the meeting. We’re listening for God, where we’re discerning together. We’re modeling how we treat people.”
While various churches will structure their staff meetings differently, Scazzero said that most congregations have staff meetings that take place weekly and last for an hour to an hour-and-a-half. These meetings are comprised of “the paid and unpaid core people of either a pastoral team or leadership team.”
The first characteristic of an emotionally healthy church staff meeting is that the leader takes time to “prayerfully prepare.” Scazzero said that most church staff meetings begin and end with prayer, but the prayer is rushed. The preparation he is referring to involves intentional work that leaders do prior to the meeting.
“This is holy work,” he said. “It needs thought, it needs time, it needs spaciousness” because the inner state in which leaders enter a meeting will impact the entire meeting.
“We don’t take for granted that we are ourselves in a relaxed state of loving union with Jesus,” said Scazzero. “Whereas if I come into a meeting—and I have—with anxiety, with fears, with my own inner life in turmoil—well, no matter what I say, that’s what I’m transmitting in the room because our being is what we transmit in the room.”
