After an introduction – Part I, Part II, Part III, and looking at the five mega shifts happening in our Western Culture – Part IV ,Part V, Part VI and Part VII, and Part VIII, now it is time to re-imagine leadership in this context. Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV Part XV, Part XVI starts the re-imaginging process and this post continues it.
The Soul Healer [Pastor] seeks to cultivate a healing environment where people can take off their masks and be themselves. When the church is more like a machine – always having more programs that people have time for – there begins to be an overemphasis on work and ministry with no time to play, relax, or let your hair down. A master programmer’s approach always has to keep people busy with meeting after meeting and program after program. After all, it is for the sake of the kingdom! In this way, instead of creating space for healing to take place, ministry and busy-ness become a way to avoid facing our true selves. When there is all work and no play, there is no family atmosphere.
When a soul healer lives as an environmentalist, he recognizes the need for creating space in the life of the congregation for people to pursue emotionally healthy living. They help to create patterns of life where the congregation can develop rhythms of life, some of which involve people engaging in habits that refresh them physically, recharge them emotionally, and renew them spiritually. They help people engage in the six principles of the Emotionally Healthy Church that Peter Scazzero writes about. Which are listed here below.
The Emotionally Healthy Church Overview by Peter Scazzero (Review found in his workbook.)
The following six principles are interrelated and build upon each other.
Principle 1: Look Beneath the Surface
Becoming aware of how we respond, relate, and react in our daily life often involves more than our first-glance thoughts and intentions of the moment.
Principle 2: Break the Power of the Past
Realizing the degree to which our families of origins have shaped how we see the world, handle conflicts, and deal with emotions.
Principle 3: Live in Brokenness and Vulnerability
Realizing that we are all very broken people and that none of us comes to Jesus Christ with a :Get-Out-Of-Discipleship-for-Free” card. We all must be profoundly retrained, retaught, reworked, and reshaped under his lordship and grace.
Principle 4: Receive the Gifts of Limits
In our brokenness, we begin to see that God has blessed us with limitations that we must learn to embrace and receive instead of fight and deny. We were all born with certain limits, others were thrust upon us, and still others were a result of our own choices.
Principle 5: Embracing Grieving and Loss
In seeing the limits of our life, especially the ones over which we have no control, we enlarge our soul by grieving the reality that we can never do and be all that we’ve hoped for on this side of the new heavens and new earth.
Principle 6: Make Incarnation Our Model for Loving Well
Getting better acquainted with our own limits, our own past, our own brokenness, and ourselves, we can hold onto to ourselves and love others more freely by entering into their world without losing our true self.
In the next post in this series, we will take a look at the Teacher [Light Giver].
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