For many years, I worked closely with not only one of the most successful church planters in my former denomination but also one of the most effective leaders. Dave Schieber had two qualities that never ceased to amaze me:

1. He could accept and love everyone just as they were, even if he knew their faults and shortcomings well.
2. In every situation, however busy, he could be entirely present for the person in front of him.

I’ve often shared stories about walking down the hallway with him on the way to a worship service, just a few minutes late, when someone approached us with a problem. Dave would immediately direct 100% of his attention to that person without hesitation, irritation, or distraction. This didn’t occur just once, but often enough for me to remember and internalize this quality.

Love and Leadership

It wasn’t until several years later, when I read The Emotionally Healthy Leader and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, that I realized Dave was instinctively in touch with one of the most essential spiritual qualities leaders can have: genuine empathy born of loving concern for the other. [1] For those of us who are introverted, or who may have been damaged in childhood and have difficulty connecting with people, this quality must be developed as a part of the broader task of achieving emotional health and the ability to lead people truly.

It doesn’t take a lot of experience in business, government, the church, or any other form of social organization to realize that many people who exercise leadership positions care about nothing but themselves. The fact that leaders struggle with narcissism has been well documented, perhaps too well documented. One reason why narcissistic leaders are tolerated, and even occasionally celebrated, comes from the mistake of equating the position of a person with the authentic leadership of a person. If all that matters is getting a position, then the person’s internal health doesn’t matter. However, if the accurate measure of leadership is the ability to love others and build an organization conducive to their flourishing, the character and spiritual development do matter.

Signs of Trouble—and the Solution

If we are honest, we can see signs that we may pay attention to, and they warn us that our leadership is not optimal. For example, in meetings, do I speak more than I listen? Do I get angry with those who don’t immediately grasp my thoughts? Am I able to talk about the truth to other people in a way that they know that I love them? Do I try to avoid unnecessary conflict? Do I sympathize with the weaknesses, failures, and misdeeds of others even when I can neither agree with them nor allow the behavior to continue? Am I continually comparing myself to others? Am I jealous when others succeed? All of these characteristics warn us that we are both emotionally immature and inclined toward self-centered narcissism.[2]

On the other hand, emotionally healthy leaders recognize, manage, and take control of their natural human tendencies toward narcissistic behaviors. They can respect and love other people unconditionally, and without the expectation that they will change as a result. They give people the opportunity to make mistakes and not be perfect. They appreciate people for who they are, with their strengths and weaknesses. Because they are deeply in touch with their emotional world, they can enter into the emotional world of other people. In other words, they are empathetic. In cases involving conflict, they can maintain their emotional self-control and resolve conflict maturely. [3]

Sitting behind this capacity to make decisions and maturely resolve conflict is the ability to enter other people’s emotional world. Scazzero puts it this way:

As emotionally mature Christian adults, we recognize that loving well is the essence of true spirituality. This requires that we experience connection with God, with ourselves, and with other people. God invites us to practice his presence in our daily lives. At the same time, he invites us “to practice the presence of people,” within an awareness of his presence, in our daily relationships. [4]

You can see why Dave Schieber has made such an impression on my life. He embodies the ability to maintain an awareness of God while being fully present to others.

Overcoming “I You” with “I Thou”

We human beings are inevitably self-centered. We have no choice but to see the universe, including others, from our center within ourselves. That center and our natural self-concern incline us to view other people as objects. The great Jewish theologian Martin Buber wrote a book entitled “I and Thou,” which I’ve had opportunities to talk about before, and which Pete Scazzero uses in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. [5] At the very heart of the I/Thou relationship is the ability to see another person, not as an object, but as a person to be accepted and loved as they are.[6]

Truly transformational leaders can see others not as objects but as individuals motivated and loved to accomplish tasks within their abilities, talents, and interests. Although we occasionally treat other people as objects (something every leader has experienced), the capacity to transcend a merely objective approach and love all human beings defines a truly transformational leader. In discussing this within the context of Christian spiritual formation, Scazzero provides an excellent graphic of two concentric circles: one representing my world and the other representing your world, with a sacred space between them. [7]

Conflict and the I-Thou Relationship

Every leader, sooner or later, must deal with conflict. It is a natural tendency to avoid such conflict. However, avoidance is not always a good strategy. If the conflict is inevitable, and a decision must be made where people disagree, there will inevitably be a type of conflict. A mature leader can accept the reality of that conflict and manage it without engaging in, minimizing, ignoring it, or settling for a false peace. [8]

Listen and Ask Questions. As a pastor, I’ve often marveled at how much conflict is merely the result of misunderstanding. Many times, I’ve experienced conflict in a board meeting where everyone was really saying the same thing using different words. This is where listening is essential. I don’t mean just superficially listening to the conversation while you’re doodling on your notepad. Instead, one must pay attention to the meaning behind the words used. Are people talking past each other?

Avoid Mind Reading. A second problem in dealing with conflict is our tendency to believe that we know what’s going on in other people’s minds. I find myself especially inclined to judge people’s motivations without knowing what they are. Based on my understanding of the person, I assume I know what motivates them. But people are infinitely complex. At any given time, a person may reveal a new aspect of their personality amid this conflict and understand that deeper motivation requires asking questions, listening to conversations, and engaging in a dialogue concerning the matter under discussion.

Clarify Expectations. People often have unrealistic or impossible expectations of how a conflict will be resolved. Much of the time, people want their side to win and the other side to lose. Unfortunately, this sets the organization up for failure and one party up for complete failure. A better approach is to motivate people to verbalize and own their expectations so that they can come to their own conclusions concerning how realistic their expectations are in achieving the desired result.

For example, I was once involved in a lengthy conversation about when worship services should be held and what their nature should be. The session unanimously agreed that they wanted the church to prosper and grow. Unfortunately, there were two differing perspectives on how that would happen. One group believed it would involve embracing contemporary worship, while the other thought it should focus on continuing the traditional worship we enjoyed. Most importantly, many people felt attached to the worship time they were currently experiencing. It took considerable time for everyone to understand their motivations and recognize where they needed to adjust their perspectives in order for the group to prosper. Interestingly, the solution finally chosen was not the one that I and the other pastors desired; however, it worked marvelously.

Conclusion

This week, Christians celebrated Easter Sunday. This year, Kathy and I were priviledged to celebrate Easter in a new way, from Maundy Thursday and the Last Supper, with its emphasis on Christ giving his life for his disciples and the footwashing seen in John, both of which celebrate the servant leadership of Christ, to his crucifixion, death, and burial on Friday, to his descent into Hell while in the Tomb on Saturday, to his glorious resurrection, which we celebrated just after midnight on Sunday morning. The various Easter Vigil liturgies are one constant reminder of the true nature of God, and the true nature of Christian leadership, all of which is summarized with the words, “Greater love has no one than this: that he give up his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

There can be no Christian maturity without self-giving love—and there can be no Christian leadership without cross bearing. This is why Jesus told his disciples, who would share the gospel to the ends of the earth, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).Leaders, of all people, must be cross-bearing lovers of those they lead.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] As mentioned previously, these blogs are based on Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), hereinafter EHL. See also Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality,Updated Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/. The materials needed to guide individuals through emotionally healthy discipleship training are available on the website and most Christian and secular online book retailers. The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationship Courses are offered as the “Emotionally Healthy Disciples Course,” which includes books, study guides, teaching videos, devotional guides, and teaching aids.

[2] EHS, 167-168.

[3] EHS, 169-170.

[4] Id, at 170.

[5] Id, at 172, see Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958).

[6] Buber, 14-15.

 ⁷ EHS, 171-172. If I were to prepare a similar graphic, I would depict the two worlds overlapping in the I-Thou relationship, indicating the true entry of the I into the being of the Other.

[8] EHS, 172-175.

For the next several weeks, we’ll discuss developing a leadership lifestyle conducive to wise and loving leadership. In our Emotionally Healthy Spirituality course, Kathy and I must take time to do devotionals twice a day, incorporating times of silence during each pause. We’ve taken the course before, but for some reason, the silence has become a central feature this time. Additionally, Kathy and I decided to regularize our Sabbath habits in preparation for leading the course. It has also been a pleasant and transformative experience.

Many years ago, I preached a sermon on the Ten Commandments. When we got to quotes,

“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,” I observed that this was the only commandment among the Ten Commandments that almost anyone could violate at will, and no one would think less of them for doing so. If this observation was accurate thirty years ago, it is even more accurate today. Unfortunately, the advent of the Internet and working from home has made it even easier for people to ignore sustained periods of rest and recreation. (Notice I said rest and re-creation, not recreation.)

For most of my professional career, I worked in occupations that demanded long hours. When I practiced law, it was customary for everyone to work on Saturday and high performers to work on Sunday as well. That meant we did some work seven days a week, fifty or so weeks a year. The only difference between me and the highest performers in the firms was that I was a Christian and did not work on Sunday unless a client demanded it.

When I became a pastor, I continued this “work ethic,” completely unaware that what I termed a work ethic was actually workaholism. Our marriage, our children, our social relationships, and even my physical health, especially toward the end, paid a price. As I mentioned last week, it was only late in my professional career that I seriously acknowledged the need to slow down. As everyone will see as this blog unfolds, I believe the spiritual necessity for a Sabbath applies not only to Christians and Jews but to everyone else. We are all mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual beings. Therefore, we all need time for rest and recharging.

A Rhythm for Life

Many people take time to rest. Many individuals practice mindfulness, which helps them center themselves during certain periods of the day. In Christian circles, we typically refer to this as “quiet time.” Quiet time is a period, usually in the morning, dedicated to prayer, Bible study, and perhaps some meditation. For many years, this quiet time lasted between fifteen and twenty minutes and primarily involved Bible study. In later years, I began to include a more significant prayer component, praying for needs beyond our immediate family. It was only after the turn of the century that I started practicing a form of silent prayer. Unfortunately, like many others, I struggled to maintain this discipline.

In Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and The Emotionally Healthy Leader, Peter Scazzero suggests an alternative to the inadequacies of quiet time.[1] He suggests that Christians, including evangelical Christians, rediscover Sabbath-keeping and some ancient practices of the Roman, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox churches, particularly the Daily Office. Before discussing both, it’s essential to make a point: The purpose of rediscovering the Sabbath-keeping and the ancient Daily Offices is not to create a new legalism but to help Christians and Christian leaders develop a healthy rhythm of life.

In keeping with the purpose of these blogs, I would say that discussing Sabbath keeping and the daily office for secular people involves encouraging everyone to reach into the Christian and other traditions to find ways for them to create a balanced rhythm of life conducive to their health and wholeness, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

What is a Sabbath?

I’m afraid to admit it, but during my entire Christian life until recently, I took at most one day off. During that day off, I had to mow the lawn during the spring and summer until the grass went dormant. I had to do certain chores around the house. I had to do things like balance a checkbook. Ultimately, my “Sabbath” was simply a day when I did work for which I wasn’t paid. It wasn’t until I read The Emotionally Healthy Leader that I realized I had not been keeping a Sabbath at all!

Being a pastor, I usually took off Fridays and part of Saturday afternoons before I had to begin working on the sermon for the final time. A good bit of the time, my Thursday, the time I usually prepared sermons, was interrupted by meetings. Therefore, it was not unusual for me to write sermons on Friday. For a good bit of the time, I would go into the office to do this. Once the children ran out of the house, at least I would stay home. But I wasn’t enjoying a Sabbath.

Scazzero defines a “biblical Sabbath” as a 24-hour block of time during which we stop work, enjoy rest, practice, delight, and contemplate God.[2] Notice that a biblical Sabbath is not merely a time when we don’t go to the office. It’s not just a time when we refrain from our daily responsibilities. It’s a time to focus on God and enjoy His presence.

Genesis tells us that God created the world in six days, and on the seventh day, He rested (Genesis 2:2). Many scholars, including Scazzero, note that the Sabbath is the unique contribution of the Jewish people to the world’s civilizations. They were the first to observe a day of rest, devoted not to transient pursuits but to ultimate truths. Our world needs to reclaim this practice because we are wholly dedicated to material and fleeting things, rarely taking time to ponder eternal matters. Christians, Jews, and every other type of human being can benefit from setting aside time to reflect beyond the present and the immediate demands of our lives.

For Christians and Jews, the Sabbath holds a deeper purpose. By taking a day off, we acknowledge that we are not ultimately in control of our lives, our successes and failures, our prosperity or lack thereof, or any other aspect of our existence. Whatever control we have achieved through our work, great or small, remains limited compared to the vast forces of chaos that can and do periodically disrupt our lives. Much of the frenetic busyness of our society could be alleviated if we would just stop once a week and meditate.

Four simple principles underline a good sabbath:

1. Stop working and rest
2. Delight in things like Sabbath meals, enjoying nature, worshiping God, etc.
3. Meditate on ultimate things. [3]

There are many ways that Christians can organize their Sabbath, but these are the main components of a good Sabbath habit. Notice that, if possible, there needs to be an additional day off when we conduct business for which we are not paid.

A Daily Rhythm of Life

Some years ago, while still employed as an evangelical pastor, I had the opportunity to spend a week at a monastery near Atlanta, Georgia. It was one of several opportunities I took to retreat in monasteries and retreat houses. For evangelicals, this may seem like an odd thing to do. However, one cannot live in a monastery with the rhythm of the daily offices, most of which involve reading scripture and liturgy based upon scripture, without recognizing that modern society, and even modern evangelical Christian Society, often mischaracterizes the monastic life.

The purpose of the monastic life was to create an order or rhythm of life through which members of the order could order their lives around the ultimate. They still worked, most of them with their hands, raising crops, cooking food, cleaning, and taking care of the common life of the monastery. Only a very few were involved in leadership. Even fewer were involved in scholarships. The purpose was to order their lives as an example to the world of how it might be organized peacefully and conducive to human flourishing.

The Daily Offices consist of a structured sequence of prayers, readings of the Psalms, Bible readings, canticles, and the Lord’s Prayer. The entire Psalter is read over time.  For priests and monastics, seven daily offices have developed: Matins, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. St. Benedict’s Rule (ca. 540) establishes a common pattern:  Nocturns and Lauds (midnight), Prime (6:00 AM), Terce (9:00 AM), Sext (noon), Nones (3:00 PM), Vespers (sunset), and Compline (before bed). [4] In the Anglican tradition, morning and evening prayer have persisted as part of the Book of Common Prayer across all Anglican groups.

In his books, Peter Scazzero suggests that lay people attempt to create two or three times of prayer and silence consistent with the ancient daily office. The most common of these would be morning, noon, and evening. In the courses he developed, there are two periods of time involving a short Bible reading, a meditation, a time of prayer, and silence.[5]

Conclusion

Over the next three weeks or so, I will have additional opportunities to describe what a rule of life, or “order of life for human flourishing,” might look like. Modern life, especially modern American life, is relentlessly busy, acquisitive, and hedonistic. Taking time to step away from the pressure to conform to our culture’s demands allows one to rest, gain perspective, and flourish mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. For Christians, this is important, and the Christian tradition provides many examples that help deepen and nurture our growth. Other religious traditions offer their own examples and support. Even in the secular world, we can find examples and guidance in the pursuit of a more balanced and healthy life. Each of us must begin the journey in whatever way we feel called. As a Christian, I do not desire to do more than encourage people to step out in the search for a more emotionally healthy spirituality and lifestyle.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] As mentioned previously, these blogs are based on Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), hereinafter EHL. See also Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality,Updated Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/. The materials needed to guide individuals through emotionally healthy discipleship training are available on the website and most Christian and secular online book retailers. The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationship Courses are offered as the “Emotionally Healthy Disciples Course,” which includes books, study guides, teaching videos, devotional guides, and teaching aids.

 

[2] EHL, 144.

[3] EHS, 134-160.

[4] The Episcopal Parish of st. John the Evangelist, “Praying the Daily Office,” https://www.stjohns-hingham.org/praying-the-daily-office(downloaded, April 12, 2025). There are many other introductions to be found online and in books.

[5] These are found in the two devotionals accompanying  Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Emotionally Healthy Relationships.

At the root of this week’s blog is the importance of leaders understanding their limits. We all have physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual limitations. Some of us may have higher limits, different or more socially acceptable limits, but we all have limits. As we grow older, these limits become more evident in our lives. [1]

Pete Scazzero begins his discussion of the importance of limits in a chapter devoted to enlarging your soul through grief and loss. Our culture doesn’t like losses. It doesn’t like defeats. It doesn’t like failure. This is actually somewhat enterprising. If you ask highly successful people about the most important contributors to their successes, many of them will answer, “My defeats.” Many people will say that their limitations or defects were instrumental in their success.

When I was younger, I was a debater. As a debater, I paid special attention to great orators. In the 20^th century, there was no greater orator than Winston Churchill. Churchill had a speech impediment. His remarkable ability to communicate and lead the British people through the Second World War began with overcoming a physical limitation—a speech impediment. The same might be said of Theodore Roosevelt, a sickly child. His great physical and mental energy and stamina were cultivated by overcoming his limitations. Limitations are an essential source of success. Every child should be taught this truth: Your limitations may lead to success.

On the other hand, those who push the limits of their personality- whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual- risk burnout and failure. I’ve always admired people who can thrive on little sleep; however, I’ve realized that I need eight hours to function well. As I’ve aged, I continue to respect those with remarkable physical vitality who can run marathons, walk thirty-six holes on a golf course in a single day, or play tennis almost as well as they did at thirty. Unfortunately, I cannot.  As a manager, I’ve always looked up to those with extroverted personalities and abundant emotional reserves who can constantly interact with people without burning out. Sadly, I am sometimes introverted, and my emotional reserves depend on spending time alone.

When leaders ignore their limits, they almost always engage in some form of dysfunctional behavior. They deny their weaknesses, rationalize failure, and numb the pain with sex, drugs, alcohol, or, more commonly, workaholism. They avoid discussing or confronting their limitations. One of the most prevalent ways we dysfunctionally cope with our limits is by ignoring our emotions, particularly those related to grief or loss.

Job as an Emotionally Healthy Leader

In Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, the author uses Job from the Bible to discuss the importance of experiencing grief and loss. [2] The story of Job is particularly intriguing. [3]He was one of the most successful leaders of his time and extremely wealthy, making him a prominent figure in business. Job earned great respect in his community, establishing himself as a significant political leader. He led a large and prosperous family, solidifying his role as a family leader. In the ancient world, Job was highly respected and successful.

Then, in a single day, for clearly unjust reasons, Job loses everything. His wealth is stripped away. He becomes an outcast from the community. His family is shattered. He is left alone and vulnerable. For incomprehensible reasons, God allows Satan to ruin Job’s family and life.

One humorous thing about Job’s character has to do with the way the unknowing repeatedly refers to him as having great patience and acceptance of this condition. Even the book’s most casual reading of Job proves this false. Job constantly complains to God and his friends about his condition. In other words, Joe doesn’t deny his pain, grief, and loss. He doesn’t push it down out of his consciousness where it works in his unconscious. He owns his feelings of grief, loss, and injustice. Job turns out to be an emotionally healthy person and leader. He can maintain his integrity under the most challenging situation imaginable.

Amid his suffering and loss, Job avoids the standard methods we use to evade grief and loss. He doesn’t deny his pain or minimize it. He avoids blaming anyone else for his pain, nor does he blame himself. He maintains his innocence throughout the book. He doesn’t rationalize or intellectualize his suffering, and he doesn’t claim, ” God will make this all work out for the good.” Additionally, he doesn’t distract himself from his pain with alcohol or drugs, nor does he change the subject or divert the conversation. He doesn’t become hostile; instead, he argues with his friends, expressing that he believes they are mistaken in their interpretation of his condition (they think he’s a sinner), yet he doesn’t sever ties with them out of anger.

Owning Our Grief, Loss, and Limits

Job provides a vivid example of how we can confront our own mortality, loss, and other emotions. First of all, Job is aware of what he is feeling. In other words, he pays attention to his emotions. He does not give up as he waits for God to respond to his complaint. He doesn’t stop expressing discontent about his situation. However, he also doesn’t abandon his friends, deny God, or entirely avoid the situation. He waits.

Beyond the story of Job, we can all learn to embrace our limits. We all inherit limits from our family of origin. We have physical, emotional, and mental limits built into our genetics. Additionally, we carry emotional baggage from our childhood, some of which may never be overcome in this world. For those of us who are married, our marital status limits what we can or cannot do. For example, those of us who are married cannot prioritize our wives and children if we wish to maintain leadership positions. We all have only so much time, so much giftedness, so much intellectual capacity, and so much money. We must live within the limits of who we are.

Becoming a Humble Servant Leader

Last week, I mentioned that, contrary to the media (which constantly portrays leaders as self-assured, prideful activists), studies show that the most humble leaders actually create the healthiest organizations and, in business, generate the greatest profits for their shareholders. This is especially true for religious leaders. If you remember, Moses was described as “… a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). Jesus in the New Testament is proclaimed the new Moses. The Beatitudes describe the significance of living with humility within human limits (Matthew 5:3-11).

Above all, living within our limits and acknowledging our failures and shortcomings are constant reminders of our humanity and frailty, showing how much we are like those we lead. Our limits, failures, shortcomings, and griefs are signs of our shared humanity. If we avoid them, we deny our humanity; if we embrace them, we become more fully human and better equipped for leadership. We can identify with others compassionately and wisely.

Slowing Down to Live Within Our Limits

During most of my years in active leadership, I was a poster child for what I call overperformance. Overperformance occurs when we regularly operate at a level inconsistent with our physical, emotional, social, and mental limits. I often share the following story. I became aware of my limits fairly late in my career when I was over 50. Throughout my life, I’ve been blessed with good physical energy and the ability to work long hours. One Thursday night, about twenty years ago, I finished a meeting about our new building campaign. The meeting lasted until 9 p.m. It had been a hectic day filled with meetings about the project, and I hadn’t had a chance to work on the sermon, which I usually write on Thursdays. Therefore, I returned to my office after an 18-hour day and sat down to begin writing. About a paragraph into the sermon for the week, I realized I couldn’t continue. I had hit a limit.

Interestingly, this awareness of my limits helps me better understand how often I’ve overperformed. Most of the mistakes I’ve made in ministry, law, and business occurred under pressure when I was overperforming. Amid a crisis, pressured by events, and exhausted from overwork, I made decisions. Unfortunately, they were wrong.

I became more aware of this phenomenon and began changing my work habits. I started to spend more time at home in the mornings for prayer. I purposefully devoted more time to our family. (At that time, we only had one child left at home. I had already harmed our family concerning the older children.) I sought to overcome the consequences of constant overwork. I made a conscious effort to ensure I did not neglect the need for a Sabbath time. (Working when I should be spending time with God remains a problem occasionally.)

Signs of Living Outside Your Limits

In his book, The Emotionally Healthy Leader, Pete Scazzero provides a helpful list of signs indicating leaders are living outside their limits. We are almost certainly living outside our limits if we:

• Constantly feeling we have too much to do and too little time
• Are always in a hurry
• Continually make snap judgments and give quick opinions
• Are overly concerned with what others think
• Are routinely preoccupied and distracted
• Are consistently ignoring stress, anxiety, and other physical symptoms
• Spend more time talking than listening. [4]

I’m sure anyone with leadership experience could add to this list. You are overperforming and failing to live within your limits if you’re constantly exhausted, feel hopeless, sense failure no matter how much you accomplish, and are easily irritated by others. The list could go on and on. The point is that we all exhibit dysfunctional symptoms when living beyond our limits and failing to be the people we are called to be.

The Price of Over Functioning

There are many significant dangers to failing to live within our limits and constantly overfunctioning. The most important of these is that we distort our personalities, deny the very individuals we were meant to be, and miss the joy of being fully human. Along the way, we hurt others: our families, our businesses, the organizations we lead, our churches, our employees, and our stakeholders. We harm everyone around us.

I think I probably mentioned this in a past blog, but many years ago, one of my best elders retired after many years with a company. We were talking about what she learned in retirement, and I was pondering retiring myself at the time. I will never forget what she told me: “It’s been very interesting. Not one person has mentioned a deal we closed together. Not one person has mentioned a bonus we received for outstanding work. Not one person has mentioned a division we managed together. Everyone mentioned some personal act of kindness and love. Over thirty years of work, I paid a little attention to this, but in the end, it was the most important thing of all.”

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 

[1] As mentioned previously, these blogs are based on Peter Scazzero The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), hereinafter EHL. See also Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Updated Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/. The materials needed to guide individuals through emotionally healthy discipleship training are available on the website and most Christian and secular online book retailers. The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationship Courses are offered as the “Emotionally Healthy Disciples Course,” which includes books, study guides, teaching videos, devotional guides, and teaching aids.

[2] Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, 119-120.

[3] See G. Christopher Scruggs, Path of Life: The Way of Wisdom for Christ-Followers (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, (2014), 179-882

[4] The Emotionally Healthy Leader, 127.

I am just over halfway through a series of blogs on leadership. In order to write this series in coordination with a teaching obligation that Kathy and I have undertaken, I’ve had to pause a series of blogs on spiritual warfare and the theology of the Methodist theologian Walter Wink. I intend to return to Wink sometime in May and continue until I have completed my review of his work. His work is relevant to more than one project I’m currently working on.

As my friends know, I’ve written a series of books on theology, leadership, and philosophy and two novels, Marshland and Peace at Battle Mountain. I’m currently a bit more than halfway through the last installment of what I call the Arthur Stone novels. I began these novels hoping to communicate something of the mystery of Christian faith to a broader audience than Christian believers. The novels follow the career of a young lawyer, Arthur Stone, and his wife, Gwynn, from near the beginning of his career in the 1980s until around 2015.

Each of these novels features a murder, an economic crime, a financial collapse, and the ensuing litigation that typically arises from such events. However, behind the scenes, there lies the mystical reality of a world beyond our material existence, a world that interacts with and connects to our own in mysterious ways.

The first novel delves into a murder during the Texas savings and loan crisis, exploring faith from a spiritual perspective. The second novel centers on the period surrounding the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and other companies during the financial crisis around 2000, addressing love from a spiritual perspective. The final book, set in 2013, discusses the aftermath of the great financial collapse of 2008, focusing on hope from a spiritual perspective.

At the end of Peace at Battle Mountain, one of the characters has a dream:

He remembered his failures and infidelities. He saw all the people he had used and hurt before his injuries—and some since. He remembered his wife’s desertion during his illness. He remembered his inner healing through Eleanor’s love. He remembered their love, and he missed her. He remembered his loneliness and saw the loneliness extending out into the future.

What is the purpose of it? What is the purpose of all this struggle? What is the purpose of all this failure and loss? What is the purpose of it all, even my success? In the end, does it mean nothing? What is the purpose of it all?

The figure in his dream began to speak.

“The purpose is not in history or events. For better or for worse, the meaning is in what humans make of it. Human history and human lives are stages upon which the play of life is set. I have set the stage. It is for you to create its meaning. The stage is not the meaning of the play. The meaning of the play is the life of the characters. Yet, life is not ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ The deepest meaning is the love you share and the meaning it gives. That is the only meaning. The only thing that abides forever is love, for love is what I Am, and no love is ever lost in Me.”

Then, in his dream, Roger saw his life as it was played out in the second half of the 20th century. He saw all of the events of that history. He saw the wars. He saw the death of so many innocent young people in those wars, some for little or no reason at all. He saw the political intrigues and the victory of corruption and decay. In his vision, he saw all the economic booms and busts of his business life, past and future. He saw the end of Winchester & Wells, to which he had given his life. He saw the victory of fools and the defeat of the wise.”

“In his dream, he saw the innocent’s corruption and the unexpected salvation of the corrupt. He saw all the marriages that begin with the fiery anticipation of youth and their end in disillusionment and divorce. He saw all the families starting in hope, ending with hope fulfilled or the end of hope. He saw the endless, impossible-to-understand foolishness and suffering of humanity. He saw in his dream all the seemingly meaningless chaos of history.

Above it all, he saw a figure, bloody from the lash, bruised by beatings, and pierced by nails. He saw that figure looking down upon him in sadness and pain. He felt the vulnerable, suffering love of that figure freely given, sharing itself with the world, and the figure drawing into himself all the pain, all the loss, all the destruction, all the decay, and death of the world from its foundation. He saw the vulnerability and suffering of the One who shared in all life’s meaninglessness and drew it into himself. He saw himself sharing with the sufferer in his suffering.

“Then, in a moment, he saw the figure of his dream transformed into light, a beam of light having the shape of a heart. He saw himself transformed into a version of that light.

Roger Romny awoke. It was morning, the sky was clear, and the day was warm. It was time to go to the office. His dream and its meaning could wait.” [1]

The dream of Roger Romny is meant to communicate the truth of which the Apostle Paul speaks:

Kathy and I have recently been reflecting on and attempting to address a challenging situation with wisdom and love. It has reminded me that love is not merely the key to human relations; it is the key to all relationships in which we human beings are involved, including institutional ones. The problem, of course, is determining how to infuse love into our politics, economics, business, non-profits, and similar domains.

Copyright 2024, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Peace at Battle Mountain (Hunt, Texas: Quansus, 2024), 328-329

This week, I examine what is sometimes called the “Dark Night of the Soul,” an experience that Peter Scazzero refers to as “the Wall.” [1] One of the exciting features of Scazzero’s work is that it exemplifies what I sometimes call the “Post Modern Recovery of the Ancients.” In the case of the Wall, he is recovering the ancient church’s spirituality that surrounds how God is present in his absence, provides light amid darkness, and works in spiritual pilgrims to purify them from barriers to the fullness of what God has for them. Surprisingly, this ancient notion is relevant to secular and religious leaders today.

It is a fundamental notion of Christianity that humans fall short in life (are sinners) and suffer from disordered desires and attachments. St. Augustine famously declared that we love what we shouldn’t love and love the right things incorrectly. We seek our comfort, our pleasure, and our own will. We value what we want more than we value what God wants. We commit wrongdoings, even if only in our hearts.

Secular thinkers generally conceive the human condition as burdened by psychological trauma inherited from childhood and inadequate education and nurturing. The result, however, is just the same—we are less than fully functional, healthy, and moral human beings. We miss the mark of the goals we and others have for our lives. Leadership places extraordinary pressures and burdens on those who exercise it. [2] Whatever “cracks” exist in their personalities are likely to be exacerbated by the pressures leaders face.

The past two blogs emphasized the importance of feeling emotions, positive and negative, understanding the unconscious drivers that impact our leadership and the impact it has on others, and fostering what we referred to as a “positive shadow,” which is a subconscious emotional and spiritual reality that encourages the best functioning of the organizations we lead. This week, we will talk about failure and the need to grow internally through periods when the positive aspects of leadership (success) are lacking in the context of the Christian notion of the Dark Night of the Soul.

The Wall and Dark Night of the Soul

First, we need to define what we are discussing when we speak of “the Wall” or “Dark Night of the Soul. “Secular readers will have to ponder the concept a bit, but eventually, the idea’s secular importance will dawn on all readers.  At the beginning of the religious life, there is usually a honeymoon. You have made a spiritual commitment, received some initial discipleship training, attended worship and other services, started studying the Bible or other religious literature, learned the rudimentary elements of prayer and meditation, and found life different and better.

The problem from a religious perspective is that all of this is, in a way, selfish. We love God or engage in a spiritual community for what we can gain from it. When I reflect on my early religious life, this is exactly what I experienced. I became a Christian in a small group in Houston, Texas, in the late 1970s. I immediately encountered profound spiritual growth. I learned how to study the Bible, began to pray, and volunteered in various public services, including a local mission, church youth activities, and a Sunday School class. I met my wife, fell in love, and started a family. Through all of this, I experienced one long period of consolation and blessing from God, which lasted several years.

In secular callings, there is a similar experience. One decides on a career, for example, law. One studies and achieves the necessary licenses and education. When one first goes to work, one grows rapidly. Everything is new, and every day involves growth as a professional. Sure, there are hard times, which one expects, but overall, a life goal is being accomplished. In the case of lawyers, they may begin to participate in a local or even state bar association.

Unfortunately, this stage does not last forever. For most Christians, there comes a point when they experience spiritual dryness, a feeling that their prayers are hitting a glass ceiling. Prayers go unanswered, and the excitement of religious experience diminishes. Simultaneously, one might face spiritual struggles, including unanswered prayers that seem justified, conflicts within the religious community, and similar challenges. Pastors and spiritual directors consistently caution that these occurrences are neither the dark night of the soul nor the unavoidable ups and downs of life, such as job loss, family issues, moral failures, and so forth. While this is accurate, all of these can be external manifestations or triggers of a Dark Night. The Dark Night or Wall refers to the feeling of God’s absence in the situation.

In the life of most leaders, a similar experience often occurs. For example, let us take the case of a person I will call “Dr. Y.” Dr. Y graduated from a prominent Presbyterian seminary. Dr. Y was a significant success through several more extensive and prominent calls. He was a natural preacher, had good relational and leadership skills, and a practical bent that allowed him to begin ministries and grow churches. Y was a good servant of God, and God was a good servant of Y’s ambitions.

At 45, Y was at the pinnacle of any pastor’s dream career. He was the church’s Senior Pastor, led a sizeable non-profit mission in the city, was a published author, and was much in demand as a speaker and retreat leader. He received a call from a mega-church. At that church, he followed a legendary pastor who took a small rural congregation and turned it into a mega-church in a major city’s suburbs. For the first time, he faced opposition and failure in a call. The congregation constantly compared him to the former pastor. They rejected worship and mission. And managerial changes that Y had successfully instituted in the past. Y was under enormous pressure. Eventually, he suffered a minor self-induced failure. The leadership who called him turned against his leadership. For a time, Y did what any strong leader might do. He worked harder. He studied his Bible, and he prayed. There were no answers to those prayers. Now, Y was lonely, depressed, and questioning his faith. He prayed, but there were no answers.

The events that occurred are of a type that happens to many pastors. They are not the dark night. The Dark Night is the perceived sense of God’s absence during spiritual growth. This is why it is often called “God’s presence in God’s absence.”

Eventually, Y asked for and was given a Sabbatical. For a part of the time, he was with his wife and family. For a part of the time, he went to a Catholic Retreat Center, where he was able to share his feelings of abandonment by God. In the end, Y moved from loving God and ministering to others from a selfish and immature motive to loving God and ministering to the congregation in a selfless way from a center in the unmerited love of God.

Two Aspects of the Dark Night

In The Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross identifies two kinds of Dark Night. The first is a night of the senses.  In other words, we don’t feel the presence of God. The second night is a night of the spirit in which God appears absent from our spiritual lives.  Saint John of the Cross puts it this way:

 This Dark Night, a night of contemplation, produces two kinds of darkness or probation in a spiritual person, corresponding to two parts of human nature: the sensual and the spiritual. The first Dark Night is sensual, wherein the soul is purged according to sense, subduing it to the spirit. The second Dark Night is spiritual. During this second night, the soul is purged and stripped, according to the spirit, subdued and made ready for loving union with God. …  The first Dark Night is bitter and terrible to sense. The second Dark Night is far beyond the first, for it is horrible and awful to the spirit. [3]

In simple terms, humans need to be purged of our tendency to value things according to our senses and the pleasure they bring us. Beyond the merely sensual, we also value ourselves, that spiritual psycho-somatic unity of mind, body, and soul that makes up our total spiritual personality. This spiritual self must also be purged. Those who can endure this purging of the false self in all its forms find a new spiritual unity and wholeness in which they can love God and others unconditionally and without expectation of personal pleasure.

A Secular Example

“Z” is a successful businessman. After graduating from college, he worked in a major technology company as a salesperson, sales manager, and eventually as part of management. He eventually earned an MBA. At a fairly young age, Z was offered the chance to lead a technology start-up company. He was also successful in that endeavor, and eventually, the company went public.

Recently, Z has hit a wall in his professional career. Things that once brought him great joy no longer provide any satisfaction. In addition, his company has fallen behind in the always competitive high-tech industry. The market niche for his product has changed. Several of his employees have publicly challenged his leadership, and his board of directors has begun to raise questions about it. For many years, he has devoted his life to increasingly larger achievements.

At the insistence of his Board of Directors, he began a relationship with a leadership coach. In a recent session, the coach made a challenging observation. She asked a rhetorical question, “Basically, what you are saying is that up until now, your business career has been about you—your achievements. What about your employees, suppliers, customers, shareholders, and others?” I don’t sense much interest in them.”

After the session, Z reflected on her observation. He recalled reading Jim Collins’s book, Good to Great. [4] One of Collins’s key points is that great leaders display humility, focus their energy on the company instead of themselves, and anticipate and empower potential successors. During a long self-examination and with his coach’s help, Z became aware of this pride and the way success fed his pride. He became aware of his love of money and the luxuries that success brought him. He came to terms with his personal weaknesses and shortcomings. Considering his situation, he recognized the need to set aside his ambition and develop a humble, servant spirit towards his company and all its stakeholders. By doing so, Z broke through a leadership barrier that had held both him and his company back.

Conclusion

Dark Nights, or what might be called “Encounters with a Wall,” are often viewed as negative experiences. In reality, they present valuable growth opportunities. These encounters may be perceived as signs of failure; however, they signify future success. Often, they are resisted as a form of death, yet they serve as a pathway to new and abundant life. This does not imply that they are easy- far from it. But they are essential for anyone, whether secular or religious, to attain the fullness of their potential.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] As mentioned previously, these blogs are based on Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), hereinafter EHL. See also Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality,Updated Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/. The materials needed to guide individuals through emotionally healthy discipleship training are available on the website and most Christian and secular online book retailers. The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationship Courses are offered as the “Emotionally Healthy Disciples Course,” which includes books, study guides, teaching videos, devotional guides, and teaching aids.

[2] EHL, 270.

[3] I have paraphrased this passage from St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, tr. E. Allision Peers (New York, NY: Image Books, 1990), 61. I have simplified the language and tried to make it more readable for contemporary people who are not specialists.

[4] Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap, and Others Don’t (San Francisco, CA, 2001),

One of the most remarkable (yet commonsensical) revelations from the research for this blog was the understanding that it is not enough for leaders to simply acknowledge their shadow; they must also learn to manage it for the benefit of the institutions they serve. For better or worse, the unconscious motivators that leaders hide from themselves impact the lives of the organizations they lead. There is truth to the saying that we humans cast a shadow, and leaders cast a particularly large one. [1]

The Shadow

As previously mentioned, the “shadow” consists of an accumulation of unacknowledged and, therefore, untamed emotions, motives, and thoughts, both good and bad, that influence our behavior. The term “shadow” signifies that consciously hidden and submerged aspects of our personality operate in the background, within our unconscious, where they can direct and influence our actions without our awareness or control.

This shadow’s unconscious feature makes it significant and potentially dangerous. Let me provide an example. Mr. X grew up in a dysfunctional family. His father was repeatedly unfaithful to his mother, who coped by drinking excessively. Although his father was a moderately successful businessperson, he fluctuated between extreme prosperity and near bankruptcy.

Additionally, the businesses he managed experienced high turnover rates. Eventually, he was compelled to retire from the company he founded. X is also an entrepreneur. He similarly cycles between extreme prosperity and bankruptcy. Like his father, he is unfaithful to his wife and trusts no one. Similar to the organization his father built, the company he created is characterized by internal conflict, a lack of trust, and poor teamwork.

X recently visited a psychologist for help. The psychologist promptly identified the behavioral similarities between X and his father. He also noted, in a constructive manner, that X’s lack of trust had become systemic within his company. He recommended a counseling period along with specific actions to rebuild healthy trust and teamwork in the workplace. X’s shadow was infecting not only his performance but also the performance of others in the company.

Now, let’s look ahead five years. X has successfully confronted his shadow. He has become more trusting and is focused on fostering a positive atmosphere in his company. Interestingly, he recently embraced Christianity and has been working diligently to restore his marriage, which was severely impacted by his unfaithfulness. A trade publication recently featured a positive article about his company, highlighting its low employee turnover for a business in his industry.

This story illustrates the difference between a negative and a positive shadow. Unconsciously, X had harmed his company through his behavior. Once he became aware of his shadow and changed his actions, he began positively impacting his employees, consciously and unconsciously. Not only did he become more trusting and cooperative, but everyone else in the company followed suit. X transitioned from casting a negative shadow to casting a positive one.

We Know More Than We Can Say

The philosopher Michael Polanyi coined a significant phrase in this context: “We know more than we can say.” [2]In every area of human inquiry and activity, we often act based on information, beliefs, worldviews, and prejudices that unconsciously guide our behavior. It can be as simple as holding a hammer. When I hold a hammer while nailing, I am often unaware of how my hand grips it; my focus is on the hammer’s head and the nail. I’m aiming to hit. However, tacit knowledge is even more crucial in more complex areas. In all aspects of life, humans interpret the world through feelings, ideas, and concepts we have internalized to understand and operate in the world as we perceive it. [3] Unfortunately, we do not always interpret the world accurately; unconscious motives and emotions often guide us.

When I lead a business and engage with people daily, I unconsciously apply my feelings about others to my relationships- including their trustworthiness, abilities, loyalty, and a variety of other factors. Most of the time, this occurs without conscious thought. For example, if someone comes into my office and suggests a course of action, I will immediately respond, “ Sure, go ahead,” if I trust that person and view them as confident. Conversely, if I doubt the person, I say, “Let me think about it. ” In addition, in many situations, I have to consciously remind myself that this person may be right even if I don’t necessarily like or admire this person. On the other hand, I have to constantly remind myself that this person might be wrong even if it’s a person I like and admire.

You can see why leaders need to be in touch with their unconscious drivers more than other people. Simple things, like being self-aware when you’re moving too fast and overworking, are essential for a leader, especially if you’re given (as I am) to overperformance. Otherwise, mistakes can be made.

We Emerge from a Family System

Human beings from the beginning of time to the present have emerged from a family system. It doesn’t matter what society or culture you’re in; you are born from the union of a man and woman, and for a period during infancy, you are completely helpless and dependent on others. During this time and into our young adulthood, we are unconsciously shaped by the culture and family system into which we were born. Unconscious programming can follow us into adulthood for better or for worse.

Since there are no perfect families, everyone should come to terms with the family system from which they emerged. I like to tell a funny story about my wife and I. I come from a family that loved to argue about politics and religion at meals. We didn’t think we had had a good dinner unless we argued about something. My wife came from a family system in which politics and religion were not discussed in social situations. We have somewhat different instincts when speaking out about politics and religion. I’ve learned something from her, and she has learned something from me. We have become more conscious of our family systems and how they molded our personalities.

Two very helpful tools are becoming aware and conscious of our emotions and family history and understanding the unconscious drivers of our personality.

Becoming Aware of Our Emotions. It is very difficult for most of us, especially males in our society, to connect with our unconscious emotional state. One of the most helpful things we can do is spend some time each day reflecting on the positive and negative emotions we experience throughout the day. In the last blog, we discussed the Ignatian discipline of recognizing consolations and desolations. In simpler terms, we need to be mindful of the positive and negative emotions we experience daily. Engaging in this practice regularly, over an extended period, is essential to be sure you properly understand the feelings that subconsciously guide you.

The previous illustration demonstrates the process. When X became involved in counseling, he began to write down his emotions. Over time, he discovered that distrust and fear of others, along with concerns about what they might do or think, significantly influenced his emotional life. This affected both his family and business. He recognized that his father also tended to distrust others. This trait had been instilled in him at such an early age that he understood its impact on his behavior.

Genograms. Another helpful tool is creating a diagram of your family history, known as a “genogram.” A genogram is a visual representation of your family’s relationships, structure, and composition, including key relationships, character traits, significant life trauma, medical information, and other details.  It serves as a tool to help you understand the family system from which you emerged.

In creating a genogram of your family, it is essential to ensure that you have your parents, siblings, and children included in the chart. If you can push back to grandparents and great-grandparents, it’s also helpful. In my case, I know a good bit about my parents and grandparents but not as much about my great-grandparents and almost nothing about my great-great-grandparents. I do, however, know one piece of information about a great-great-grandparent that’s important for our family history: he died pretty young, and as a result, the family moved from being middle class to being poor. I think this trauma has impacted future generations up to mine.

The recommended information for inclusion in a genogram includes marriages, divorces, children, and significant traumatic events (such as an early death), as well as issues like alcoholism, drug dependency, domestic violence, sexual misconduct, and other factors that may impact future generations. I have provided a chart to help you get started. Additionally, various online resources can assist you in using symbols to represent specific types of dysfunction. One of the most important considerations is whether the family system functioned effectively. For instance, if one or more children left home at an early age and had no further contact with their parents or grandparents,

 It indicates a problem. Returning to my illustration of X, let’s suppose that while creating a genogram, he discovers that not only was his father repeatedly unfaithful to his mother, but his grandfather and great-grandfather were also unfaithful and even fathered illegitimate children. This would indicate a deep wound in the family system that X needs to address. Having completed more than one genogram over the past several years, I have found that each case contributed to my self-understanding.

At this point, offering a personal disclaimer or at least some words of wisdom is necessary. The purpose is not to blame our problems on our parents and ancestors but to help us understand ourselves and change. One of my great-grandparents came from Scotland at a very young age. His parents died almost immediately, leaving him to care for himself and his siblings. He worked in a physically demanding job throughout his life. He could be a heavy drinker, had a temper, and could be occasionally violent, including to a hyperactive and not very well-behaved little boy. I can only say that if I had experienced the same life as he did, I might have become just as violent and just as heavy a drinker. I don’t blame my great-grandfather for his behavior or my weaknesses and temper. I understand, love, and hope that he found healing in heaven. This is the attitude we should adopt when creating a genogram. We’re not here to blame; we’re here to learn and seek healing.

Conclusion

The shadow and its impact on our lives and the lives of those around us is an important concept. It’s important in families, churches, small groups, businesses, schools, and every social institution we are part of. I’ve emphasized the importance of leadership and the shadow of a leader. That should not blind any of us to the fact that our behavior impacts the entirety of our relationships. In other words, my shadow may not have as significant an impact as the shadow of the president of the United States. Still, it impacts me and all my social relationships, including my citizenship, our country’s character, and even our world’s character. Therefore, it’s worth taking the time to do a little “shadow management.”

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] As mentioned previously, Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). See also, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Updated Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/. The materials needed to guide individuals through emotionally healthy discipleship training are available on the website and most Christian and secular online book retailers. The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationship Courses are offered as the “Emotionally Healthy Disciples Course,” which includes books, study guides, teaching videos, devotional guides, and teaching aids.

[2] Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1966), 4. The actual quote is, “We know more than we can tell.”

[3] Id, at 29.

Christians and Christian leaders must realize their potential as disciples, and apostles (those sent into leadership) must face their personal emotional weaknesses and sin, lest they project it onto others. This responsibility is fundamental, especially for leaders. As noted in the past, leaders magnify their brokenness by embedding it into organizations like the church, where it infects others. Leaders inevitably leave the marks of their personalities on the organizations they lead, including small groups, classes, and entire congregations.

Understanding the False Self, the Shadow, and the True Self

To understand what it means to “face our brokenness,” it is helpful to clarify three concepts in our minds: the False Self, the Shadow, and the True Self.

False Self. The “False Self” is a construction of the human ego designed to project a more acceptable persona to others. This constructed False Self divides a person from the True Self, preventing psychological and spiritual wholeness. The human propensity to create a “False Self” is a coping mechanism resulting from our insecurity and inadequacy, usually stemming from childhood, youth, and adolescent anxieties. From a religious perspective, our false self ultimately derives from our alienation from God and God’s creation due to pride and selfishness, our unwillingness to accept who God has made us, and our failure to recognize God’s ultimate trustworthiness to redeem and bless us as creatures and the creation God made. [1]

The Shadow: The Shadow consists of an accumulation of unacknowledged and, therefore, untamed emotions, motives, and thoughts, both good and bad, that influence our behaviors. The term “shadow” indicates that consciously hidden and submerged parts of our personality work in the background, in our unconscious, where they can direct and influence our behavior without our even knowing it or having any control over it.

The False Self and the Shadow can create chaos in our lives and the lives of others. The apostle Paul, speaking of sin, speaks words of wisdom that apply to our false self and shadow self:

For I do not understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now, if I do what I do not wish to, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me (Romans 7:15-20).

When we are under the control of our false and shadow selves, we act in ways we cannot fully understand or control. We do not act with faith, hope, and love towards others. We do not act wisely, with temperance, justice, and courage. Instead, we act under the impulse of submerged fears, anxiety, lust, jealousy, greed, and a host of other sinful and unhealthy desires. This causes us to betray our calling as leaders, our fundamental values, and our most basic commitments to the cause of Christians.

As Scazzero points out in The Emotionally Healthy Leader, when we become dominated by the dark side of our shadow, we become a less dramatic form of the famous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Worse, our false and shadow selves prevent us from experiencing the joy of the Christian life and the kind of transformational leadership we so much desire. [2]

True Self. Unlike the False Self, the True Self represents our authentic personhood. From a Christian perspective, it is the person God created us to be, encompassing all our gifts, talents, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. For Christians, Paul instructs us that in Christ, we must “take off the old self and put on the new self” (Colossians 3:9-10). This new self, as John wrote, is “born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, but born of God” (John 1:13). Our true self does not require false strategies, deceit, or control to shield a false self-image. It is genuine and possesses inner integrity. It does not operate from the hidden motives or control of the shadow or repressed emotions. It does not need to project false strength or abilities. It is content with itself.

Life Beyond the False Self and Shadow Domination

Most of the time, many Christians and leaders, both secular and sacred, ignore their false selves and shadows. When challenged to confront them, we often resist due to anxiety, fear, and sheer laziness. We say, “I don’t have time for this.” By resisting the confrontation of our own brokenness, we miss the treasures that Divine Wisdom and Love have to offer. By taking the time to confront our shadow self, we gain emotional and spiritual riches through the freedom that comes from Christ and the realization of our true selves. We can break free from the shadow’s hidden power and bring it into our conscious ability to change. We discover aspects of ourselves that are good and wholesome, which we fear due to the disapproval of parents and others.

Basic Tools of Our Freedom

Experience and Name Emotions. So long as we cannot name our emotions, we cannot ask ourselves questions about their meaning and appropriateness. Once we can name them, they begin to lose their power over us. I often tell a story from my past. When I was about six years old, my parents were hit in a car by a drunk driver. Two people were killed. My father was thrown through the windshield into a nearby field, and my mother was crushed between the back and front seats. (This was before seatbelts and airbags.) Dad was in the hospital for about eight weeks and my mother for six months., Dad lost our family business, and the doctors doubted Mom would recover fully. (She did and lived to 94, walking like a much younger woman.)

For whatever reason, I did not want them to go that night. They assured me everything would be okay, and we spent the night with our grandmother. Things were not okay, and I was left with a kind of anxiety and fear of abandonment that affected me as a husband and father. Then, one day, a spiritual director and friend pointed out that the dysfunction was not the problem or was caused by anyone else. It was coming from my subconscious fears. That realization was the first step in overcoming this fear. It did not happen all at once. It did not happen without prayer and work. But it did happen.

Understanding and Experiencing Our True Selves. As mentioned above, not all aspects of our shadow selves are negative. Within each of us lie potentials we have submerged, partly because others have devalued them. I have a friend whose parents deemed him “too emotional and too soft.” In our success-oriented culture that celebrates toughness, this can easily occur. For a long time, he pursued a profession and a life path, trying to become the “macho person” he believed he should be. The outcome was failure and emotional turmoil. When he finally embraced the different facets of his personality, he shifted his professional focus. He became quite successful in a new field where his sensitivity to others became an asset. Accepting his true self enabled him to unlock untapped potential.

Stopping the Wrong Script. Most of us see our lives as a story where we are the main characters. One view from modern psychology, philosophy, and theology is that humans interpret and respond to reality in narrative forms. This is beneficial if we embrace the script of the right story for our lives but harmful if we enact a false narrative. Unfortunately, in one way or another, we all follow a script we did not write, which was not intended by God, but rather passed down to us by our parents or other significant figures. Sometimes, that script is tragic.

For example, a child who learns to believe he is not a good person may live a life of crime and dishonesty. A child who is told that “Girls (or boys) do not enter this or that kind of profession” may spend years in the wrong calling. Children taught “never to complain” may put up with abusive behavior from others in their adult lives. A young person who sees on television or the media glorification of violence or sexual promiscuity may live out a life script of promiscuity and miss the joys of real love.

Seek Counsel and Wise Mentorship

It isn’t easy to overcome deeply ingrained emotions and habits without help. This is why receiving counsel from appropriate, trained professionals is essential. Referring back to my earlier example, if I had not established a relationship with a spiritual director, I would not have been able to overcome my brokenness. Scazzero notes in his book that one of his negative scripts was the belief that he could not be a good manager because the family business in which he was raised was poorly managed, and he felt he lacked the ability. He overcame his buried fears through the wise counsel of more experienced managers.

Discernment and the True Self

St. Ignatius Loyola wrote a series of meditations to use Jesuits in discerning God’s will for their lives. [3] Today, across many denominations, the so-called “Ignatian Retreat” is used to discern God’s will and the proper functioning of the True Self. At the root of this method is recognizing that God speaks to us through our emotions. He calls these “Consolations” and “Desolations.”

Consolations. Consolations occur when we experience the potential for the joy of God’s pleasure in our lives and, in leadership, in the lives of others. We know we are in God’s will when we sense the presence of love, faith, mercy, hope, or any qualities we recognize as gifts of the Holy Spirit. If I am becoming kinder to people and find this transformation life-giving and Christlike, Galatians offers a partial list of these emotions: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and similar emotions (Galatians 5:22-23).

Desolations. Desolations, on the other hand, refer to those moments when we perceive the absence of God’s pleasure in our lives and, in the context of leadership, in the lives of others. We recognize we are heading in this direction when we sense a lack of the growth of love, faith, mercy, hope, or any qualities we understand as gifts of the Holy Spirit. Once again, Galatians provides us with a partial list of these emotions: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry (greed), sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and similar emotions (Galatians 5: 19-21).

In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius developed a system of discernment and decision-making that relies on scriptural meditation. This involves visualizing whether a proposed course of action or decision will enhance the presence of God and the Spirit in our lives and the lives of others. By meditating on Scripture and seeking its guidance in our lives and decisions, we can practically understand God’s will in our daily experiences.

This can be very important for leaders. Failing to discern whether a particular decision will lead to consolations or desolations, health or a loss of health (personal and institutional), wholeness or a loss of wholeness, harmony, or disharmony can have devastating consequences for any organization and the people involved. As a pastor and church leader for nearly 50 years, I have seen the tragic consequences of failing to meditate prayerfully on the consequences of a course of action.

Victory through the Word of God.

When we become aware of the submerged emotions and harmful narratives shaping our lives, we can evaluate, pray about, and transform them. This awareness liberates us from being driven by unconscious desires and repressed emotions, allowing us to embody our True Selves in Christ. We can “put off our old self and put on a new self” in our lives and leadership. Paul puts it this way:

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 3:17-23).

As we allow our minds to be changed, we become able to engage in what I call “contemplative decision-making.” Letters to Leaders (which I hope to revise and publish in the future) outlines the beginning of contemplative leadership’s importance and technique. [4] Ultimately, contemplative decision-making involves prayerfully lifting to God, not just the decision to be made but also the impact on the human beings involved. One helpful practice is for a leadership team to build a “mental model” of the decision and its impact together with prayerfully considering various bible verses or wisdom sayings that might be helpful. There will be more on this in a future blog.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] G. Christopher Scruggs, Centered Living/Centered Leading: The Way of Light and Love (Memphis, TN: Permiso Por Favor, 2016), 164.

[2] Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 55.

[3] The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, were originally published in Spanish. Numerous English translations are available online and through various book services. The Spiritual Exercises consist of scripture readings, meditations, prayers, and contemplative practices developed by St. Ignatius Loyola to help individuals deepen their relationship with God. For centuries, the Exercises were typically offered as a “long retreat” lasting about thirty days in solitude and silence. In recent years, the Spiritual Exercises have evolved into a program for laypeople and non-Catholics.  The most common approach to experiencing the Exercises today is a “retreat in daily life,” which incorporates a months-long program of daily prayer and meetings with a spiritual director.

[4] G. Christopher Scruggs, Letters to Leaders (unpublished manuscript created for Bay Presbyterian Church, 2019).

Last week, I began a series of blogs on what I’m calling “More Emotionally Healthy Leadership (MEHL).” As I indicated last week, these blogs are heavily influenced by Peter Scazzero’s “Emotionally Healthy Leadership” and his writings on emotionally healthy discipleship.[1] The underlying thesis is that many Christians, including Christian leaders, are not able to fulfill their calling as disciples due to emotional immaturity and blockages from the past.

Christian disciples and leaders cannot change unless they recognize the signs they need to address specific emotional issues. Most of us face the problem of some of these issues lying beneath the surface of our consciousness. Cao uses the iceberg model to illustrate that 90% of who we are lies beneath the surface of our consciousness. Addressing that 90% when it interferes with our service to Christ takes work. Therefore, before self-transformation can occur, self-examination and self-understanding must be undertaken.

Because humans are embodied creatures, we can’t address our spiritual lives without considering our physical, emotional, social, and spiritual lives. To achieve a well-balanced, harmonious personality, we have to balance all of our humanity. In particular, disciples of Christ, including Christian leaders, must bring their emotional lives under the rule of Christ.

Characteristics of Emotional Unhealth

In his book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Scazzero lists ten characteristics of emotionally unhealthy spirituality:

1. Using God to run from God,
2. 2 Ignoring emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear, d
3. Dying to the wrong things,
4. Denying the impact of our past on the present,
5. Dividing our lives into secular and sacred compartments,
6. Doing for God, instead of being with God,
7. Spiritualizing away conflict,
8. Covering up brokenness, weakness, and failure,
9. Attempting to live without limits, and
10. Judging other people’s spiritual journey.

In his book, Emotionally Healthy Leadership, Scazerro reduces this list to four characteristics of an emotionally unhealthy leader. These are:

1. Low self-awareness,
2. Prioritizing ministry over marriage and singleness,
3. Doing too much for God, and
4. Failure to practice a Sabbath rhythm.

For readers of this blog who are not Christians or who are engaged in secular professions, I would rephrase the list as follows:

1. Lack of emphasis on emotional intelligence,
2. Prioritizing work over family and community life,
3. Constant over-performance and failure to live within limits, and
4. Failing to develop a harmonious way of life.

The good news for all leaders is that these problems can be successfully addressed. Even those of us with low self-awareness and limited emotional intelligence can develop better habits. If our priorities are misaligned, we can change them. If we are consistently overextending our human limits, we can slow down. If our lives are out of balance and we neglect our physical, emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual needs, we cannot achieve balance by consciously adjusting our lifestyle.

Habits of Unhealthy Leaders

Unhealthy leaders have common habits:

1. Viewing success in terms of size and physical rewards,
2. Building a self-image around what we do as opposed to who we are

(doing versus being),

3. Superficial spiritual and emotional health is fine (putting on a mask),

One caution is that all leaders, however self-aware, from time to time narrowly view success, get our self-image by what we achieve as opposed to who we are, and hide our real self from others. Self-awareness is the capacity to recognize what is happening inside of us and react in a healthy way. The journey of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is a journey into balance. It’s a journey to achieve inner harmony that coordinates with our outside leadership. The need for this is just as great in business, the professions, academia, nonprofits, the military, and other kinds of leadership as it is in the church. Some language modification might be necessary to make the principles applicable, but the principles remain the same.

Restoring Balance

However, we cannot become emotionally healthy leaders in our active lives until we have developed an Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. For those who may be secular, we cannot have a healthy, active life unless our interior life is also healthy. I can think of many leaders whose leadership failed due to their self-promotion, fears, anxiety, lack of emotional maturity, misuse of their bodies, moral failure, and underdeveloped mental lives, making them so unbalanced that failure becomes likely.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). See also, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Updated Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/. The materials needed to guide individuals through emotionally healthy discipleship training are available on the website and most Christian and secular online book retailers. The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationship Courses are offered as the “Emotionally Healthy Disciples Course,” which includes books, study guides, teaching videos, devotional guides, and teaching aids.

Somewhere over 4000 years ago, in that perennially troubled part of the world we now call the Middle East, an elderly gentleman heard God speak these words:

“Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you, I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:1-4).

This man, whom we call Abraham, obeyed the call, left the place where he was, and began a journey that would last the rest of his life.

It does not require extensive familiarity with the story to recognize that Abraham was not perfect. He tended to lie under pressure. Despite his faithfulness, he often deviated from the path of complete faith. While he listened to God, he sometimes took matters into his own hands. By the end of his journey, I believe he would tell us that he was not a perfect leader. He was, however, better than he had been at the beginning.

Three religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—trace their beginnings to Abraham. Each reveres him as a foundational figure. We all celebrate that Abraham believed in God, trusted God, and obeyed God. This is what I want to discuss in this blog.

The journey to healthy leadership is not a simple one. As I’ve been preparing for this series of blogs, I’ve been joking that the blog should not be titled ” Emotionally Healthy Leadership” but “More Emotionally Healthy Leadership.” In the end, I’ve entitled the series “Healthier Leadership.” Although the book emotionally healthy leadership is in some ways foundational to this series of blogs, I’m going to be giving you some of my own reflections. One of my reflections has to do with the word “emotionally.” We do need emotionally healthy leaders. We also need spiritually healthy leaders. We need physically healthy leaders. Leadership is holistic. The leader leads not just with their mind, not just with their emotions, not just with their spiritual fire born of an encounter with God, but as an embodied being. We lead with all that we are and can become.

The Call

Leadership begins with a sense that we are called to be leaders. When I was quite young, I became a Cub Scout, a camp counselor, a Boy Scout, and then an assistant camp director. I was also president of my high school’s student body. After a few years of practicing law, I attended seminary and became a pastor, eventually leading larger churches. In each case, something inside me urged me to pursue roles I felt utterly unqualified for and incapable of fulfilling.

Every leader has a calling. They may not even know they have the call. Think of the president of a company. That person may think they achieved their position because of ambition. Nevertheless, behind that ambition is the creator God, who made them what they are. Over the years, I have read many leadership books. When I wrote my dissertation, I wrote about the spirituality of leadership. These books recognize that leaders, whether in business, politics, the church, private charities, or social organizations, have some common qualities. They have the physical endurance to undertake the responsibilities of their position. They have the mental capacity to understand problems and their solutions. They have the emotional capacity to read people. All good leaders have these capacities to 1° in another, and the best leaders have exceptional energy, emotional intelligence, and mental acuity. They may have developed these abilities throughout their lives, but the leadership capacity came from another source.

And, of course, there is that subtle thing we call luck, chance, or opportunity. In every leader’s life, there is a moment in which the future opens up, and they step through the door towards their destiny. I can think of two examples from my own life. I was an average student, a poor athlete, and not socially at ease with people. One day, completely unexpectedly, I had the opportunity to become the student body president of my high school. There were 600 people in that class, and I would suspect that I rank somewhere around 590 in the capacity to lead. But God, who knew what he had in store for me, opened the door.

Many years later, I was a lawyer. I wasn’t happy practicing law. I was very active in our church and had served as a deacon, elder, and Sunday school teacher for many years. One day, the door opened, and I had the opportunity to attend seminary, although I had a wife and four children. There’s nothing that I could’ve done to have made that possible. I prayed about the opportunity to serve God and perhaps become a pastor someday. But it was God who opened up the door.

The Promise

When I teach the story of Abraham and his response to the call of God, I often point out that Abraham had a motivation. Too frequently, we think of the spiritual life as entirely spiritual, unconnected to our physical lives. I don’t think that’s true. In the case of Abraham, he was a 70-year-old man, the leader of a tribe of people, and without an heir. In Abraham’s day, that was a considerable problem. It meant that his family would no longer be leading the tribe of the Hebrews. It meant that his wife, Sarah, whom he loved, would likely fall into poverty without anyone to take care of her. Abraham did not obey God in some disembodied way and connected to his own life or problems. He followed God because he wanted to have a child. When God promised him that he would make him a great nation, he promised him that he would have at least one child, which would be the beginning of that great nation. We are no different.

The second aspect of Abraham’s story that interests me is the realization that he didn’t fully understand the promise. He grasped the idea that he would have a child. But what if you and I had told him that he would be the father of three world religions and that many people around the globe, who did not share a single gene with him, would be his children by faith? He surely would have thought we were ridiculous. Often, we ask God for something we desire, and He grants it to us. However, when He does, it is in a way that we could never comprehend at the time of the promise.

Kathy and I served churches from the East Coast to the Mississippi River, to the Canadian border, and throughout southern Texas. We’ve led missions that took our churches and us to Africa, Asia, Central America, and most recently, Mexico. One day, I found myself standing on top of a hill in West Africa, reflecting on the Great Commission, where God says He will send His disciples to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:19). I looked at a project we had just completed, one with my name on it, and I thought, “Son of a gun, I made it.”

If someone had told me in 1991, when we left Houston, that I would preach in Africa, the Philippines, Honduras, and Mexico, I would’ve thought they were crazy. God is taking me much further than I envisioned. I thought I would simply become a pastor and have a lovely church somewhere in the United States, complete with four white columns at the front and two rows of pews divided by a center aisle. I envisioned wearing a black robe every Sunday while preaching from a Calvin pulpit. I was mistaken. What God had in store was even better than I had dreamed.

The Blessing

I often discuss what I refer to as “Shepherd/Servant Leadership.”  Abraham was a shepherd, and all the patriarchs served in that role at various times. King David was also a shepherd. Jesus is known as the “Good Shepherd.” Leadership involves guiding people; it is about leading a group from one place to another toward a better situation- physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and organizationally. That ideal place can be a church that thrives both spiritually and physically, a successful business, a charity that meets the needs of its clients, a family filled with happiness and joy, or a strong and lasting marriage. Leadership exists wherever individuals engage in a common endeavor, and the leader’s goal is to guide those people and the organization entrusted to their care.

This brings us to the servant aspect of Shepherd/Servant leadership. Abraham is told that when he obeys God, he will be a blessing to others. He will receive a blessing, but he will also bless other people. We bless others whenever we meet or help to meet their most basic needs. People need love. People need respect. People need trust. People must be corrected when they are wrong and guided on the right path. The leader’s role is to serve the organization and the people they are called to lead.

It’s been my own experience, and the experience of every leader that I know, but this is not always easy. I have a good friend who was the president of a nice-sized company. We talk almost every week in retirement. Interestingly enough, we often talk about times when we had to do something we didn’t want to do. I’ve had to fire people, and so has my friend. No sane person enjoys holding another person accountable for the final time. I’ve had to uncover wrongdoing and spent hours and hours thinking about financial statements that did not make sense. I was doing it for the organization, not because I liked it. Every leader must do a lot of things they don’t enjoy doing. It comes with a territory.

Attending meetings, working long hours, managing conflict, and addressing organizational failure are all challenging, draining responsibilities, yet leaders must confront them. Selfish and self-absorbed leaders shy away from the tasks they dislike. Conversely, good leaders tackle both the tasks they enjoy and those they loathe. Through this process, they develop the ability to serve others.

America today is afflicted with narcissistic leadership. It occurs in business, politics, churches, charities, and everywhere else. One unfortunate feature of losing a Judeo-Christian consensus about morals is the emergence of people who serve only themselves without the moral constraints of a religion that teaches self-denial.

Some time ago, I researched a company that I cannot name. The president was narcissistic to the point of being a sociopath. He created a culture built on fear and greed. Because of his position, he could hide this behind the façade of being a servant leader. In a way, he was a servant leader, but the person he was serving was himself. Eventually, the company collapsed, and his leadership was discredited forever. His name will go down in history as a failed leader.

The Challenge

Returning to Emotionally Healthy Leadership as we conclude this week’s blog. In the book Emotionally Healthy Leadership, Peter Scazzero tells his personal leadership story and provides many examples for leaders. [1] Most examples come from the church, where he eventually was an experienced and effective leader. However, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to apply a lot of what he says to every other kind of organization.

He begins with four core internal tasks that every leader must undertake. They are:

Internal: Facing our own shadow or false self, leading out of our marriage or singleness, slowing down for loving union with God, and practicing Sabbath delight. In secular terms, he means we must understand our false self, not ignore our primary responsibilities to family and others, slow down to make wise decisions, and be willing to rest. Rest, even for second people, isn’t acknowledgment that we are not in charge of everything, nor should we be.

External: Every leader also has four external tasks to undertake. These include planning and decision-making, creating a culture and building a team, exercising power and maintaining wise boundaries, and knowing how to begin and end a period of leadership.

At the center of emotionally healthy leadership is a profound recognition that who we are as leaders is more important than what we do. The people with whom we interact daily are more certainly formed by who we are than by what we do. Therefore, we must focus our attention first on spiritual matters.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved.

[1] Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Leadership (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015).

Dear friends:

This afternoon, I researched and wrote about the Ukraine conflict using artificial intelligence. If your social media feed is like mine, you are inundated with politically motivated views on the current situation. I decided to examine the situation at a slightly deeper level. I do not claim originality or deep personal understanding. However, I can tell you that every inquiry I made requested a “balanced view.” I am trying to educate, not provoke or support a particular view, though I believe continuing the current war is unwise. I am not smart enough to know how that should be accomplished.

The current conflict in Ukraine stems from a long history of geopolitical tensions, major power rivalries, political corruption, and domestic struggles. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO’s eastward expansion has been a contentious issue among Russia, the United States, and Western Europe. Before the conflict began, several U.S. officials warned of its potential to provoke Russia. These warnings underscored Russian fears and the geopolitical risks of bringing the NATO military alliance closer to Russia, including the possibility of destabilizing Ukraine and inciting Russian military responses.

Early Warnings: George Kennan and the 1990s

One of the earliest and most significant warnings came from George Kennan, the architect of the Cold War containment policy. In a 1997 New York Times interview, Kennan described NATO’s eastward expansion as “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” He cautioned that it would exacerbate Russian nationalism, revive Cold War tensions, and undermine efforts to incorporate Russia into a cooperative European security framework. Kennan’s critique wasn’t speculative—he predicted that moving NATO to Russia’s doorstep would be perceived as encirclement, a notion echoed by Russian leaders ever since.

During the Clinton administration at the State Department, similar concerns arose. When NATO welcomed Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott acknowledged Russian objections, stating in his memoir that Moscow saw NATO as a Cold War relic aimed at them, despite the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Talbott and others questioned whether the West had a convincing answer to Russia’s question: if they had abandoned their bloc, why hadn’t NATO done the same? This internal skepticism indicated a recognition that expansion could be perceived as needlessly antagonistic.

William Burns: A Consistent Voice of Caution

Perhaps the most frequently cited warning came from William Burns, who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008 and was the CIA Director under Joe Biden. In a February 2008 classified cable titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines,” Burns cautioned that Ukraine’s potential NATO membership represented a significant red line for Moscow. He stated that it “could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, as some claim, civil war, forcing Russia to decide whether to intervene.” Burns emphasized that this perspective was not limited to Vladimir Putin—hostility toward NATO expansion was “almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum” in Russia, even among anti-Putin elites. Additionally, Burns issued an early warning. In 1995, as a political officer in Moscow, he cautioned that Russian opposition to NATO’s eastward expansion was deep and widespread. Later, as ambassador, he described NATO expansion as “premature at best and needlessly provocative at worst,” predicting in 2008 that Ukrainian aspirations for NATO membership could destabilize the region and compel Russia to act. His warnings proved prescient with Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2022 invasion, events directly linked to Ukraine’s Western orientation.

Robert Gates, Deputy National Security adviser during German reunification talks in 1990 and later CIA Director (1991–1993), criticized NATO’s eastward push in his memoirs noting that the U.S. “pressed ahead with expansion” despite assurances to Soviet leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t grow beyond Germany—a claim debated but supported by declassified documents showing Western leaders discussing limits on expansion. Gates called this a missed opportunity to build trust with Russia post-Cold War.

Jack Matlock, the last U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1987–1991), claimed that assurances were given during 1990 talks that NATO wouldn’t expand eastward beyond a unified Germany. In later writings, he argued that breaking this perceived promise fueled Russian resentment and set the stage for conflict. While NATO and some U.S. officials deny any formal pledge, scholars like Mary Sarotte, citing archival evidence, suggest that Gorbachev was “led to believe” that expansion wouldn’t happen—a nuance that mattered to Moscow.

CIA Involvement and Escalation Risks

The alleged  CIA role in Ukraine added another layer of tension, amplifying Russian fears of Western encroachment. Reports, including a 2024 New York Times investigation, revealed that the CIA began constructing a network of bases along Ukraine’s border with Russia shortly after the 2014 Euromaidan uprising, which ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. This followed a proposal from Ukraine’s security service for a “three-way partnership” with the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Over the next decade, the CIA established 12 secret outposts, trained Ukrainian commandos, and gathered intelligence on Russia—actions that Russia interpreted as a direct threat.

From Moscow’s perspective, this was not merely NATO expansion; it was the U.S. embedding itself militarily in a country that Russia regarded as its strategic buffer. Critics, such as Ted Galen Carpenter, who wrote for The Guardian in 2022, contended that this covert involvement transformed Ukraine into a “NATO political and military pawn,” even without formal membership. Burns himself had warned in 2008 that Russia feared “unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences” from such actions, a fear realized when Putin cited Western influence as justification for his 2022 “special military operation.”

(As an aside, it is impossible for Americans to fully understand Russia’s fears concerning hostile powers on its borders. In the 19^th century, Napoleon invaded Russia across the Ukrainian countryside. In the 1930s, Hitler launched an attack across the Ukraine. The land is flat and perfect for a tank battle. Russia views Ukraine as an essential buffer zone between itself and any hostile activity from the West. Whether we think this is an irrational fear or not, it exists.)

State Department officials were aware of this. A 1990 internal analysis warned against forming “an anti-Soviet coalition whose frontier is the Soviet border,” predicting it would alienate Moscow. By 2014, as CIA activities escalated, some diplomats expressed concern that arming and training Ukrainians—together with NATO’s involvement—crossed Russian red lines. Victoria Nuland, a senior State Department official, played a crucial role in supporting Ukraine’s post-2014 government, which Russia viewed as evidence of a U.S.-orchestrated “coup.” Her leaked 2014 call discussing Ukraine’s leadership transition fueled this narrative.

Dangers Highlighted: Provocation and Miscalculation

The warnings consistently flagged two dangers: provocation and miscalculation. Kennan foresaw a nationalist backlash, which materialized under Putin’s leadership. Burns and Gates highlighted the risk of civil strife in Ukraine spilling over, forcing Russia’s hand—a scenario that unfolded in Donbas in 2014 and nationwide in 2022. The CIA’s presence, meanwhile, risked escalating a proxy conflict into direct confrontation, a fear Putin exploited to rally

Historical Context: A Land Between Empires

Ukraine’s story begins long before its independence in 1991—and not all of it supports the typical Western view of the conflict. Before World War I, it was a contested space between the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Polish-Lithuanian empires. Kyiv, now Ukraine’s capital, was the heart of “Kyivan Rus,” a medieval state often cited by Ukrainians and Russians as a cultural ancestor. This shared heritage has fueled competing national narratives: Ukraine sees itself as a distinct entity with a unique identity, while Russia has historically viewed it as an extension of Russia, a “little brother” in the Slavic family.

By the 17th century, much of eastern Ukraine fell under Russian influence, while the western regions leaned toward Europe. This split deepened over time, creating a cultural and political divide. The 20th century saw Ukraine enter the Soviet Union after a brief attempt at independence following World War I. Under Soviet rule, Ukraine suffered through forced collectivization, the Holodomor famine of 1932–33 (which many Ukrainians view as a genocide orchestrated by Moscow), and Russification policies. Yet, it also industrialized and became a vital Soviet breadbasket and military hub.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine emerged as an independent state, inheriting a mix of pro-Russian eastern regions and pro-Western western ones. Crimea, which was transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, added another layer of complexity. This historical backdrop—Ukraine’s struggle for identity—set the stage for modern tensions.

Post-Independence Struggles: 1991–2013

Independent Ukraine faced economic hardship, corruption, and an identity crisis. Its leaders oscillated between Russia and the West. Presidents like Leonid Kuchma (1994–2005) pursued a “multi-vector” foreign policy, balancing ties with Moscow and NATO/EU partners. Meanwhile, the 2004 Orange Revolution—a mass protest against electoral fraud favoring a pro-Russian candidate—highlighted Ukraine’s democratic aspirations and its western tilt under Viktor Yushchenko.

Yet, Russia remained a dominant influence. It supplied Ukraine’s energy, maintained cultural ties in the east, and viewed Ukraine’s integration into NATO or the EU as a threat to its security. The 2010 election of Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian leader, seemed to stabilize this relationship. Yanukovych leaned toward Moscow, negotiating trade deals and extending Russia’s lease on the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea. However, his rule was marred by corruption and authoritarianism, alienating many Ukrainians—especially in the west—who sought closer EU ties.

The Euromaidan Turning Point: 2013–2014

The immediate trigger for the Ukraine crisis occurred in November 2013 when Yanukovych abruptly suspended an Association Agreement with the European Union, opting instead for a Russian economic bailout. This decision ignited protests in Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), initially led by students and pro-EU activists. The movement, dubbed “Euromaidan,” evolved into a broader revolt against corruption, repression, and Russian influence.

Protests intensified in early 2014 as police responded with force, resulting in the deaths of dozens. On February 21, 2014, Yanukovych fled to Russia after a deal brokered by EU mediators collapsed. Ukraine’s parliament ousted him and installed an interim pro-Western government. For many Ukrainians, this was a triumph of democracy; however, Russia and some eastern Ukrainians viewed it as an illegal coup supported by the West.

Russia’s response was swift. Claiming to protect ethnic Russians and its strategic interests, it annexed Crimea in March 2014 after a controversial referendum. Meanwhile, pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region (Donetsk and Luhansk) declared their independence, sparking a war with Ukrainian forces. Evidence suggests that Russia provided military support to these rebels, though Moscow denied direct involvement, labeling it a civil conflict. The West condemned Russia’s actions and imposed sanctions, while Ukraine viewed them as an existential threat to its sovereignty.

The annexation of Crimea was a significant geopolitical shock. Russia justified this action by citing historical ties (Crimea was part of Russia until 1954), the presence of its Black Sea Fleet, and a referendum in which 97% allegedly voted to join Russia—though critics questioned its legitimacy given the military occupation. Ukraine and the West condemned it as a violation of international law, specifically the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia, the U.S., and the UK pledged to respect Ukraine’s borders in exchange for its nuclear disarmament.

In Donbas, the conflict settled into a drawn-out stalemate. The Minsk Agreements (2014–2015), brokered by France and Germany, aimed to establish a ceasefire and grant autonomy to rebel-held areas within Ukraine. Neither side fully implemented them: Ukraine resisted legitimizing the separatists, while Russia denied its control over them. By 2021, over 14,000 had died, and 1.5 million were displaced, yet the “frozen conflict” maintained an uneasy status quo.

The Role of Burisma and alleged Western Corruption

Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private natural gas company, has become a lightning rod in debates about Western involvement and corruption tied to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict, particularly since Russia’s 2022 invasion. Founded in 2002 by Mykola Zlochevsky—a former Ukrainian ecology minister under pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych—Burisma’s prominence grew amid Ukraine’s post-Soviet struggles with oligarchy and foreign influence. Allegations of Western corruption, mainly linked to Hunter Biden’s board tenure (2014–2019), have fueled narratives about its role in escalating tensions.

Burisma’s Origins and Ukrainian Context

Burisma emerged during Ukraine’s chaotic transition from Soviet rule, a period marked by oligarchic consolidation of power. Zlochevsky, leveraging his ministerial role (2010–2012), secured lucrative gas licenses for Burisma, raising questions about self-dealing. After Yanukovych’s ousting in 2014 during the Euromaidan uprising, Zlochevsky fled Ukraine amid corruption probes, including a UK money-laundering case that froze $23 million of Burisma’s assets (later unfrozen due to lack of Ukrainian cooperation). This backdrop—Ukraine’s endemic corruption and Burisma’s ties to it—sets the stage for Western involvement.

In April 2014, shortly after Euromaidan and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Hunter Biden, son of then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, joined Burisma’s board alongside figures like former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski and ex-CIA official Joseph Cofer Black. Hunter, with no evident energy expertise, earned up to $50,000 monthly, sparking ethical concerns. Critics, including some U.S. State Department officials, flagged this as a potential conflict of interest given Joe Biden’s role in shaping U.S. Ukraine policy—namely, pushing anti-corruption reforms and countering Russian influence. As with all aspects of this matter, Russia and the West have different perspectives:

• Western Perspective: The U.S. and allies allege Hunter Biden’s role was private and not policy-driven. No conclusive evidence shows that Joe Biden altered U.S. strategy to shield Burisma. His push to oust Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in 2016—widely seen as corrupt and ineffective—aligned with bipartisan U.S., EU, and IMF goals, not a Burisma cover-up. Shokin’s probes into Zlochevsky predated Hunter’s tenure and were dormant by 2016.
• Russian/Critic Perspective: Russia alleges that Joe Biden sacked Shokin to protect Hunter, pointing to Burisma’s payments as evidence of a corrupt quid pro quo. A 2020 Senate Republican report called Hunter’s role “problematic” but found no policy influence. Burisma’s hiring of Western elites seems more a PR move—bolstering its image amid legal woes—than a deep conspiracy. Yet, the optics fed Russian propaganda that Ukraine was a corrupt Western puppet, a narrative Putin used to justify aggression.

Notwithstanding American claims, Burisma’s role intersects with broader claims of Western corruption in Ukraine:

• Energy Warfare: Some argue Burisma was a tool in U.S. economic warfare against Russia, aiming to boost Ukraine’s gas sector (e.g., Burisma and Naftogaz) and reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian Gazprom. Some people suggest the CIA backed Burisma to choke Russian gas exports, linking this to the 2022 Nord Stream sabotage (unproven). If true, corruption might lie in prioritizing U.S. corporate interests—like LNG exports—over regional stability, though evidence is circumstantial.
• Aid and Profiteering: Since 2014, the West has poured billions into Ukraine—over $118 billion from the U.S. by 2025. Allegations persist that corrupt Western actors, including defense firms, benefit from prolonged conflict. Burisma’s prominence amplifies this critique, though its direct role in aid corruption is unclear. Ukrainian oligarchs, like Ihor Kolomoisky (once linked to Burisma), have faced U.S. sanctions for graft, suggesting a tangled web of local and Western interests. A 2024 New York Times report revealed that the CIA has had bases in Ukraine since 2014, training operatives partly to counter Russia. Critics see this as corrupt overreach, turning Ukraine into a U.S. proxy and provoking Moscow. Burisma’s board inclusion of Cofer Black partially fits this narrative, though his role was strategic, not operational.

 Burisma and Western corruption allegations didn’t ignite the Ukraine war but have unfortunately shaped its dynamics, particularly in the United States, where it has become a political issue. As with all things, there are differing views:

• Russian Justification: Putin’s 2022 invasion rhetoric cited Western “exploitation” of Ukraine, with Burisma as a symbol of alleged U.S. meddling. The Biden connection gave Russia a propaganda cudgel, framing Ukraine as a corrupt NATO pawn.
• Western Support Dynamics: Perceptions of corruption—Hunter’s Burisma stint, untracked U.S. weapons—fuel skepticism among Ukraine’s backers and critics of our involvement. By 2025, with private and public donor fatigue rising, these narratives risk eroding aid, while Ukraine warns of battlefield losses without it.
• Ukrainian Perception: For Ukrainians, Burisma epitomizes elite impunity, undermining trust in both domestic and Western anti-corruption promises. Zelensky’s 2023 crackdowns on graft signal reform, but Burisma’s legacy lingers.

Although there is little concrete evidence tying Burisma or Western corruption to Russia’s invasion beyond amplifying existing tensions, the conflict’s roots—NATO expansion, Crimea, and Donbas—precede and overshadow Burisma’s saga.Despite the possibility of Western political corruption, Russia has a history of corrupting Ukrainian elites (e.g., via gas deals), which undercuts its moral stance.

Burisma and Western corruption play a supporting role in Ukraine’s conflict rather than a leading one. Hunter Biden’s involvement symbolizes perceived Western hypocrisy, amplifying Russian grievances and domestic Ukrainian cynicism. Allegations of broader corruption—energy schemes, aid misuse, and CIA overreach—suggest that strategic missteps or profiteering may have escalated tensions, though hard proof remains elusive. As of March 2025, the war continues, with Burisma serving as a potent emblem of how corruption narratives, whether true or false, shape geopolitics. The real story lies in the interplay of power, not merely in one company or scandal.

Escalation to Full-Scale War: 2022

Tensions escalated in 2021–2022 as Russia amassed troops near Ukraine’s borders, arguing that NATO’s eastward expansion—especially Ukraine’s aspiration for membership—posed a threat to its security. The West strengthened its relations with Ukraine, providing military aid and training since 2014, though NATO membership remained a distant prospect. Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded legal guarantees against NATO expansion, insisting that the U.S. and NATO reject it as an infringement on sovereign choice.

On February 21, 2022, Putin recognized the Donbas separatist republics as independent, mimicking his approach with Crimea. Three days later, on February 24, he initiated a “special military operation” aimed at “demilitarizing and denazifying” Ukraine—rhetoric that portrayed Ukraine’s government as a Western puppet with extremist elements. Russian forces invaded from multiple fronts, targeting Kyiv, Kharkiv, and the southern region. Ukraine, supported by Western arms and fierce resistance, successfully repelled the initial assault on Kyiv, transforming the conflict into a protracted struggle.

Perspectives and Interpretations

As the foregoing proves, there is more than one way to interpret the current situation. Here are various viewpoints:

• Ukraine’s View: This is a fight for survival against Russian imperialism. Kyiv sees 2014 and 2022 as part of a pattern of Moscow denying its right to exist as a sovereign, democratic state. The West’s support is vital but insufficient. Ukraine seeks NATO membership and fears abandonment.
• Russia’s View: The conflict is defensive. NATO’s expansion, CIA involvement, and Ukraine’s drift westward threaten Russia’s buffer zone and national identity. Putin invokes history—viewing Ukraine as part of Russia’s “near abroad”—and accuses the A of orchestrating a proxy war.
• American and European View: The U.S. and EU perceive Russia’s actions as unprovoked aggression, violating post-Cold War norms. Supporting Ukraine upholds democracy and deterrence, though critics argue that NATO’s flirtation with Ukraine provoked Moscow unnecessarily.
• Global Perspective: Several nations, including India and South Africa, seek to remain neutral. These countries are cautious of what they perceive as Western and American hypocrisy, and they uphold economic ties with Russia. They promote diplomacy over escalation.

Where are we now?

Today, the conflict persists, with no real end in sight absent negotiations. Ukraine has reclaimed some territory with Western support, but Russia maintains control over extensive areas in the east and south. Irreconcilable demands hinder peace negotiations: Ukraine insists on a complete withdrawal and reparations, while Russia seeks recognition of its territorial claims and a Ukrainian stance of neutrality regarding NATO. Ukraine desires NATO membership or protection, a solution that would only intensify Russian fears. Sanctions have significantly impacted Russia’s economy; however, it has found ways to adapt through China and other allies. The human toll—tens of thousands dead and millions displaced—grows each day.

In conclusion, the situation reflects a tragedy rooted in miscalculation, mistrust, and ambition. History offers no straightforward solutions, and every decision—from 1991 to 2022—has reduced the chances for compromise. A balanced perspective reveals no heroes, only participants in a high-stakes game where the risks continue to escalate.

Many years ago, I became a Christian. Within a few months, I had adopted the spiritual practice of daily quiet time. Like many Christians, I began by reading devotional guides recommended by pastors and more experienced Christians. I then began reading through the Bible. I started reading a chapter of proverbs every day in a moment of conviction that I was foolish. Since 1977, almost without fail, that has been my spiritual practice. About two decades ago, I started reading a devotional guide for pastors based on the dictionary readings for the week. Because I was not a lectionary preacher, this meant that I would always be studying and meditating on some scripture unrelated to any sermon being preached for that week.

Eventually, this led to my first two books: a meditation or Christian version of the Tao called CenteredLiving/Centered Living: The Way of Light and Love and an introduction to wisdom literature for Christians entitled Path of Life: The Way of Wisdom for Christ Followers. [1]  In particular, Centered Living/Centered Living was written when I had to make tough decisions under tremendous pressure and simultaneously overcome habitual anger and over-functioning. I still read that book when faced with difficult choices.

A Word from God to a Young Man

This week, my quiet time includes a verse that meant a lot to me during a career crisis when I was young, inexperienced, and foolish:

I was young, and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread. They are always generous and lend freely; their children will be a blessing”(Psalm 37:25-26).

A few weeks ago, another of my favorite readings from my young adulthood was part of the daily reading:

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle, or they will not come to you. Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord’s unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts in him (Psalm 32:8-10).

I cannot tell you how many times over the years I have pondered these verses and tried to implement them in my life and the life of our churches.

Fruit of the Search

When I first read these verses, I was young and did not know which way to go. Today, I’m in my mid-70s. I still have to remind myself not to be like a horse or mule! Listening to God and hearing his voice so that he may instruct you in the way you must go is not necessarily easy, especially for those of us who are aggressive and hyperactive. Kathy and I’ve been through some pretty challenging circumstances over the years, but our family has been fed, and our children are grown, and they are a blessing. God has been faithful to his promise even when we were not wholly faithful to God.

When one looks back upon a career in ministry, there are so many blessings to remember that recounting one of those blessings seems unfair to the many people who have shared their lives and their faith over the years. Relevant to today’s blog is one of the most critical moments of my professional life.

I was during my last call. The leadership team was making some tough decisions. I did not know what to do and was pretty discouraged. At a moment of crisis, one of the elders looked at me and said, “Chris, you are a wise man. What do you think?” It was as if he was assuring me that God promises wisdom to those who seek it, and after years of reading proverbs and other scripture every day and praying for wisdom every day, after years of failure as well as success, after times of suffering as well as happiness, we think you should advise us.”

In retirement, hardly a week goes by when I do not remember that elder and his words and encouragement that the life of faith is not lived in vain. By the way, the night that elder asked for my advice, there was a long discussion. In the end, leadership made a difficult decision.

Over the years, we’ve all had reason to wonder if it was right or wrong. Many leaders feel it necessary to defend their decisions because leaders must make the right decision. (Indeed, people who constantly make bad decisions cannot be leaders.) But it’s also true that every leader has made bad decisions. What makes the difference between a good and an average leader is the willingness to keep an open mind, to be willing to change, and to be more than willing to admit when you were wrong.

Where We Go from Here

This week, I planned to start a multi-week exploration of “Engaging the Powers, “ the final book in Wink’s Powers Trilogy,” which includes Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces that Determine Human Existence, and Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. [2] Unfortunately, doing justice to Engaging the Powers will take longer than I expected, and I have decided to postpone it for another day—but I am confident that it will be reviewed in 2025, if possible. (It’s important to note that Wink convincingly argues that one cannot engage the powers and principalities on their own terms. They must be engaged through Christ by prayer and other spiritual disciplines.)

Next week, aligning with some responsibilities I’ve taken on, I plan to begin a deep dive into the subject of “Emotionally Healthy Leadership.” This series of blogs will flow from Peter Scazzero’s work in this area but will also include some of my personal experiences and ideas relevant to the theme of the week. I hope it will be helpful to readers.

Often, laypeople do not think of themselves as “Christian leaders.” Yet, we are all leaders somewhere: in our families, among friends, in congregations, in small groups, at work, and in our communities and neighborhoods. The question is, “Are we leading in a wise, loving, and Christ-like way? ” Finally, there are no completely wise, completely loving, or completely Christ-like leaders. There are no entirely emotionally healthy leaders. We are all a work in progress.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Path of Life: The Way of Wisdom for Christ Followers (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014) and Centered Living/Centered Leading: The Way of Light and Love Rev. Ed. (Memphis, TN, Shiloh Publishing, 2016)

[2] Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1984), Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces that Determine Human Existence (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1986), Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992).

This week, we come to the end of our study of Unmasking the Powers by Walter Wink. [1] In this analysis, I wish to begin where we began last week—with the vision of the risen Christ in Revelation:

I turned around to identify the voice speaking to me. When I turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and among them was someone resembling a son of man, dressed in a robe that reached down to his feet, with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes blazed like fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice resembled the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand, he held seven stars, and a sharp, double-edged sword came out of his mouth. His face shone like the sun in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as if dead. Then, he placed his right hand on me and said, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades (Rev. 1:12-18).

This is a vision of the Risen Christ, the Word of God incarnate given to John. What John describes in visionary language, the Apostle Paul describes in theological language:

 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things; in him, all things hold together (Col. 1: 15-17).

In this passage, Paul concurs with John that the Word made flesh is the very image of the invisible God, through whom all things were created. The Word is not something created—a power or element of the universe. The Word is the personal presence of God that existed before our created universe and everything in it, both visible and invisible. In other words, the Word of God is not part of creation. This is important as a foundation for properly understanding what will be discussed in this blog. The basis for a Christian relationship with God’s creation is Christ, the wisdom and love of God.

Elements of the Universe and Angelic Beings

An element of the universe is a fundamental unit of creation. In Greek, the word is “Stocheia tou Cosmos.” The Stocheia (fundamental elements) are not angelic beings. For Wink, spiritual beings fall into two basic categories: those that arise out of the inner life of people and those that arise out of social forms:

Whereas Satan, the demons, and the gods manifest themselves primarily in the human psyche, the angels of churches and nations are encountered in the interiority of corporate systems, and the elements of the world encompass us at every level of existence. They are the ubiquitous building blocks of reality. [2]

For Wink, personal angelic beings are revealed within the depths of the human psyche, while social angelic beings manifest as the inner workings of social systems. The schema, in contrast, represents fundamental principles of the universe.

As the foregoing makes plain, the stocheia do not need to be material. Many are not. For example, Euclid named his book on geometry Stocheia of Mathematics. As the title indicates the stocheia are fundamental axioms or principles that underly rationality in any discipline, scientific, mathematical, artistic, theological musical, etc. [3] In the language of modern physics, tee stocheia are the irreducible invariant laws that govern reality.

In ancient Greece, various explanations existed regarding the fundamental units of creation. “Earth, Fire, Air, and Water” was one explanation. Later, material atoms were considered the basic components of the universe. Plato regarded the noetic forms as the essential elements of the created order. The writers of the New Testament do not venture a guess about what the fundamental elements of the universe might be. They are content to affirm that, whatever they may be, God created them, who brought all things visible and invisible into existence, as stated in the Nicene Creed.

This brings us to the stocheia of the modern and emerging post-modern world. In the contemporary world, the fundamental elements of the universe were understood as material particles and the forces acting upon them. These material particles existed independently of human observers and could be quantified using the principles of mathematics. When translated into social life, this doctrine of force and matter led to our society’s materialistic and power-oriented nature. In contrast, the postmodern world perceives things differently. Today, the fundamental elements of the universe are subatomic entities, such as quarks and muons, which are not considered material at all. [4]

Elements and Worldview

Every age embodies a worldview that impacts how we see and react to the world. In many ways, what we conceive of the fundamental elements of the world impacts that view. In the modern world, the fundamental units of reality were conceived to be atoms that acted on my forces, such as gravity.  (infinitely small particles). As modern physics developed, we became aware of particles smaller than atoms, so-called subatomic particles. While realizing that these subatomic particles were not material, many scientists continued to believe that a more profound understanding would still allow us to see a “material universe.” A material universe can easily be seen as a gigantic machine.

Nevertheless, even the first generation of quantum physicists realized that the picture induced by calling subatomic entities “particles” is deeply misleading. What we call subatomic particles are something like ‘ripples” in a universal quantum field. Even more disturbing to the modern “atomistic” world view, these particles appear to be deeply related to one another. In some way, the universe is deeply related both on a quantum and everyday level.

Wink is well aware of this fact. He is also profoundly impacted by the work of the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and the so-called “process theologians.” Whitehead, who was a mathematic physicist, among his many accomplishments, tried to express the insights of quantum physics and relativity theory in philosophical terms. For Whitehead, the universe should not be fundamentally conceived as a machine but as an organism, not a material organism. Instead, the universe should be conceived as made up of experienced occasions, some of which have a duration significant enough to be called actual entities.  More importantly, societies of actual occasions make up the material world. These societies can be of many different kinds. Still, like all of reality, they have an exterior observable character and an inner being that can be understood and expressed in natural language or mathematics and the language of the sciences.

I have taken time to render the substratum of Whitehead’s thought to give meaning to Wink’s notion that there are angels of churches, nations, societies, and even creation are the interiority of social phenomenon. A church is a society. A business is a society. A nation is a society. A government is a society—and ultimately, creation is a society that has its own inner spirituality. No society can be reduced to simply its outer, observable nature. All societies, whether simple or complex, have an inner spiritual reality. This has significant ramifications for Wink:

1. Reality cannot be reduced to the functioning of smaller components; in technical terms, reductionism is only one strategy for understanding it.
2. Larger societies cannot be understood or reconstructed by science or technology solely on a “bottom-up” basis.
3. Reality as a whole, and societies in particular, are not granular or atomistic; they are complex and relational. They have their own independent reality. [5]

Christ, Angels, and a Postmodern Worldview

It is at this point that we return to the beginning. In a Christian view of the world, the God of Love and wisdom, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bound together by eternal love is the ultimate reality. The Word of God is the Truth and Love of God by whom and through whom all things were created (John 1:1-14). We cannot understand the world by reducing it to matter and force as the modern world tried to do. We can only understand the world holistically, which means, in some ultimate way, religiously. This Word was with God before the beginning and through whom the world was made (Proverbs 8:22-31; John 1:1). Thus, the ultimate inner meaning of the universe is to be found in Christ. [6]

In this context, what sense can we make of angels of nature? Following Wink’s fundamental analysis, angels of societies, including creation, are their inner spiritual reality. This inner spiritual reality (unlike Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8) is that inner spirituality that can be perfected or impaired by human actions. Thus, the angels of creation are an inner spirituality that human beings can make better or worse.

Angels of Creation and the Environment

Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, and National Socialism—all the isms of our day—have in common their fundamentally materialistic view of the world. They hold in common an atomistic view of reality in which autonomous human beings are held in check by the power of economic forces and the power of the state. Interestingly, all allow untrammeled greed, environmental exploitation, and the abuse of creation in the lust for power, pleasure, and position. In some of its forms, it allows completely irrational positions to be adopted under the guise of the will to power.[7]

Amid this, God’s love constantly lures human beings to achieve an appropriate harmony with nature and a sense of its holiness as a creation of a holy God, sustained in constant intimate love and wisdom. [8] When humans achieve sustainable harmony with creation, they also achieve a measure of justice in society and with creation. [9] On the other hand, when we abuse the environment in unsustainable ways, using creation for our selfish purposes, we take creation away from that harmony which God intends. In Wink’s view, we either bring the angel of creation closer to its fulfillment or drive such wholeness (shalom) further away.

Conclusion

The ancient and Medieval worlds saw creation as organic and alive with spiritual and mental meaning. The modern world reconceived this unity as a dualism between matter and force and human minds outside of creation. In so doing, they created an estrangement between human beings and their home—creation. [10] Part of Wink’s project is to re-establish a unified and ultimately spiritual sense of the holiness of creation as a theophany, a physical representation of God’s hidden and invisible nature. A proper understanding of the holiness of that which a holy God created is bound to produce a sense of worship and of the infinite value of our environment. One does not have to agree with all of Wink’s arguments to accept the need to develop a unified worldview in which the value of creation is understood and acted upon. Creation is not god, but it is the work of a holy God. As such, it is to be nurtured, respected, and wisely used.

Copyright, 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved.

[1] Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces that Determine Human Existence (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1986).

[2] Id, at 128.

[3] Id, at 131.

[4] Id, 160.

[5] Id, at 142-143.

[6] Id, at 144-146.

[7] Id, at 153, 163.

[8] [8] Id, at 163.

 I have recently published a sustained argument that justice is fundamentally tied to achieving social harmony through an ongoing process of adapting to social changes and perceptions of social injustice. G. Christopher Scruggs, Illumined by Wisdom and Love: Essays on a Constructive Post-Modern Political Philosophy (College Station, TX: Virtual Bookworm, 2025).

[10] Id, at 155.

 

After discussing the angels of the churches, primarily from the early chapters of Revelation, Walter Wink examines the “Angels of the Nations.’ He centers his argument on the appearance of the Archangel Michael in the book of Daniel. In this context, Daniel, nearing the end of his life, serves as a wise counselor who fasts and prays for his nation, the people of Israel, before being visited by a vision of an angel:

I lifted my eyes and looked, and behold, a certain man clothed in linen, whose waist was girded with gold of Uphaz! His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and feet like burnished bronze in color, and the sound of his words like the voice of a multitude. And I, Daniel, alone saw the vision, for the men who were with me did not see the vision; but a great terror fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. Therefore, I was left alone when I saw this great vision, and no strength remained in me; for my vigor was turned to frailty in me, and I retained no strength. Yet I heard the sound of his words; and while I heard the sound of his words, I was in a deep sleep on my face, with my face to the ground.

Suddenly, a hand touched me, which made me tremble on my knees and the palms of my hands. And he said to me, “O Daniel, man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak to you, and stand upright, for I have now been sent to you.” While he was speaking this word to me, I stood trembling. Then he said to me, “Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia. Now I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come.”

When he had spoken such words to me, I turned my face toward the ground and became speechless. And suddenly, one with the likeness of the sons of men touched my lips; then I opened my mouth and spoke to him who stood before me, “My lord, because of the vision my sorrows have overwhelmed me, and I have retained no strength.  For how can this servant of my lord talk with you, my lord? As for me, no strength remains in me now, nor is any breath left in me.”

Then again, the one with the likeness of a man touched and strengthened me.  And he said, “O man greatly beloved, fear not! Peace be to you; be strong, yes, be strong!” So when he spoke to me, I was strengthened, and he said, “Let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me.”

Then he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? And now I must return to fight with the prince of Persia; when I have gone forth, the prince of Greece will come. But I will tell you what is noted in the Scripture of Truth. (No one upholds me against these, except Michael, your prince (Daniel 10:5-120).

This interesting passage suggests that an angel, Michael, who is the defender of God’s people, has been battling the angel of Persia, who opposes them. Moreover, and most importantly for Christians, the message is delivered to Daniel by “one like a son of man,” whom Christians consistently identify with Christ. Thus, one interpretation of the passage is that it represents a visitation from the word of God to a prophet, providing insights about angelic messengers.

The Context of Daniel

To interpret the passage, one must form an opinion about when it was written, by whom, and for what purpose. Many evangelicals believe that the book was written between 586 and 531 B.C. In contrast, liberal scholars argue that it was composed much later, around the time of Antiochus Epiphanes IV, possibly around 167 B.C. Traditionally-minded scholars view the book as a source of encouragement for the Jewish people from the period of the fall of the Babylonian Empire and the rise of Cyrus of Persia to the time of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, more liberal scholars consider it the work of a later author. Lastly, there is a perspective that I find appealing: the story of Daniel originates from the time of the Babylonian captivity (605-531 B.C.), but it was later revised and adapted by another writer to address the challenges faced by the Jewish people during the Hellenistic Era.

The most straightforward question raised between the two groups is whether we should understand these angels as genuine angelic beings who revealed themselves to the prophet Daniel or as literary metaphors conveying God’s message to a later time. In Daniel’s case, I lean toward viewing the angelic language as primarily metaphorical, intended to communicate God’s word to the audience the author is addressing. The “vision” language suggests a need to express in human words a divine encounter that was not physical but rather mental or noetic in nature. This should not be interpreted as indicating that the words received by Daniel are not words from God.

Wink’s Analysis

In line with his underlying theory that views angelic beings as the true inner essence of a social entity, Wink aligns himself with the second group of interpreters while adding a unique twist to his interpretation. For Wink, Michael embodies Israel’s spirituality and serves as its “guardian angel.” The same can be said for the angel of Persia or any other nation. As the inner spirituality of a social entity, this angelic being holds the potential for both good and evil. Nevertheless, the concept of angels represents the nation’s brightest future, symbolizing an idealized personal perfection of that nation. This becomes especially evident as he discusses what he believes the angel of the United States might represent and what God might communicate to such an angel. Thus, for Wink, angels embody both the unrealized potential of a society and its current state.

Nevertheless, Winks wants to underscore that the angels are real:

The angels of the nations, who have already exacted upwards of 100 million human sacrifices in less than a single century, are not personifications. They are real. But their reality cannot be grasped as if it is projected onto the sky. They are not “out there” or “up there” but within. They are the invisible spirituality that animates, sustains, and guides a nation. And we reckon with them, whether we acknowledge their reality or not. [1]

The dual nature of angelic representations of nations—created good yet fallen from perfect alignment with God’s purpose—conveys a truth we observe all around us: the institutions that provide meaning and purpose to our lives, along with many of our actions in the world, are imperfect and often operate contrary to what even their supporters consider right. Recognizing the angel of a nation as distinct from the people and institutions that constitute it allows us to understand the complexity of change, the inevitable slowness of improvement, and the limitations of our best efforts. It encourages us to view our social endeavors as reflections of our personal and collective limitations, fostering a sense of fallibility in our social projects (or at least it should).

Wink warns:

The angels of the nations are not static, changeless entities, nor are their vocations irrevocably fixed in their foundations. God’s will, for the nations is continually being modified, in accordance with God’s primary objectives, in order to encompass the nations’ latest infidelities and achievements. [2]

Wink also wants to warn us against trivializing angels or nations. [3]We are all familiar with national characterizations: the Scottish are dour, the French unreliable allies, the British overly concerned with formalities, the Chinese inscrutable, and so on. These are not angelic spiritualities; they are characterizations. Their only utility is in pointing us to a deeper truth: all nations and cultures are not alike. Human beings from different cultures are not the same. To understand the human race and the conflicts of human history, it is necessary to consider the vast differences among people as well as our common humanity. We believe that the language of angels and nations helps us analyze and peacefully reconcile these differences.

Just as the angels of the nation should not be trivialized, they should also not be rendered excessively static. The angel of the social entity, like the social entity itself, evolves over time. A good way to understand this is by considering the United States of America and its beginnings as a small, rural nation. Today, it is a large, powerful, and primarily urban nation. The angel of America today is not the same as the angel of America in 1789. This serves as a warning against overly romanticizing the past or making misguided attempts to reclaim a history that cannot be recreated within human experience. While Americans should remain loyal to the principles and central institutions of our political life, adjustments must be made to adapt to vastly different circumstances.

Vocation of Israel, the Church, and Others

If the angels of the churches have fallen and failed to fulfill their vocation, it shouldn’t be surprising that the institutions they represent also fail. Wink allows Martin Buber to speak for him when discussing Israel’s failure to fulfill its vocation as a light to the nations and a beacon of justice.[4] Similarly, in Wink’s view, the church, and particularly the American church, has failed to fulfill its divine calling.[5]

There is a hint of bitterness in Wink’s analysis as he discusses the church’s failure to fulfill what he believes to be its prophetic destiny, as if it were a form of blasphemy. I’m not sure he should feel disappointed in any tangible manifestation of the church in this regard. It is the nature of human institutions to overvalue themselves and their opinions. Naturally, when any established institution seeks to critique the current state of society, it does so from a particular and inevitably flawed perspective. The failures of the churches, like the failures of Israel, should not surprise us in the least. Instead, they should warn us of the fallibility of our own positions.

If the churches and Israel have failed, Wink believes that secularism has also failed. Secularism has taken the worst position of all:

Secularism has simply insured that, in the absence of any divine constraints whatever, nations are free to behave as if they had complete autonomy, as if the nations were indeed absolute: as if it itself were God, deciding the fate of nations.[6]

Israel and the church have indeed failed, but fundamentally, they recognize the limitations of their own institutions. Ultimately, they are self-correcting. Secularism contains no such self-correcting boundaries. It imagines humans as gods and those in power as entitled to act as they please, driven by a Nietzschean certainty of their right to impose their will on others. Ultimately, to use religious language, secularism inevitably becomes demonic.

Conclusion

At his best, Wink understands that the language of angels ultimately speaks to self-correction and self-judgment. When people use patriotic language, including an idealized concept of their own national righteousness, they are, at their best, reflecting on a goal—a future state the nation seeks to achieve. To assert that the angel of a nation can embody both positive and negative aspects allows for critique of the current state of the nation or its administration, as well as the potential for future restoration. In the language of our Constitution, it is about achieving a “more perfect union.”

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces that Determine Human Existence (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1986), 93.

[2] Id, 94.

[3] Id, 93.

[4] Id, 95.

[5] Id, 96.

[6] Id, 100.

I have noticed that several readers of several of my posts on political philosophy have read and downloaded those related to C. S. Peirce and his notion of “agapism.” For those interested, I recently gathered as a group, edited, expanded, and published a series of related essays entitled Illumined by Wisdom and Love: Essays on a Sophio-Agapic Constructive Philosophy. Those who are reading my essays on Peirce may want to purchase the book, which brings my meditations into one organized group of essays covering Peirce, Josiah Royce, Alfred North Whitehead, John Dewey, Herbert Mead, Michael Polanyi, David Bohm, and others. As the named authors reveal, this is not a religious work. It is philosophical.

Illumined by Wisdom and Love is also not an ideological work supporting the views of one of the various parties to political life in our democracies. I have attempted to write a book that those on the political left and right can use to improve their service to justice and the public. Instead, it focuses on the role of community and dialogue in public life. I hope it is helpful to anyone interested or involved in public life and wishes to preserve and make our institutions more effective.

I do not pretend to be a professional philosopher. I wrote these essays to honor my parents, whose lives were devoted to public service out of a deep concern for the quality of our nation’s political life and the stresses one sees on democracy and freedom worldwide. I am sure it will be only one drop in the sea and not a very important drop at that, but it seemed the least I could do.

It is available on Amazon and through other outlets.

One of the most interesting discussions in Unmasking the Powers concerns the angels of churches and the application of this idea in contemporary life.[1] This particular discussion is also one of the most Biblically grounded portions of the book, consisting of an extended commentary on Revelation 2-3. Wink believes that the so-called angels of the churches in Revelation introduce a way of looking at institutional spirituality that has application to governments, businesses, and non-profit organizations, which have certain spiritual characteristics that transcend a particular leader, group of leaders, or other institutional embodiment.

Not long ago, I talked to a friend about an organization I have known for over thirty years. He described it as having an atmosphere like a pirate ship! More than thirty years ago, I would have described the organization similarly under different leadership, with different employees, and even in another business climate. This story has an important lesson: One reason leaders must be careful about their spiritual character is that the spiritual component of their leadership may leave wounds or distortions that take many years to heal—if ever. One reason pastors should understand and deal with the spirituality of their congregations is that it matters more than next week’s sermon. The spirituality a pastor creates will outlive you for better or for worse. One reason businesses of all kinds need to address the spirituality of their organization is that the spirituality will be with the organization long after everyone involved is gone.

The Seven Churches

At the very beginning of the so-called “Letters to the Churches,” John writes: To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands (Rev. 2:1). The formula “To the angel of the church write” appears at the beginning of each letter. Earlier, John introduces the concept by writing:

I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord’s Day, I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.

I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades. Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches (John 1:9-20).

The vision is of the risen Christ, who was dead but is now alive and has defeated death’s power. He holds seven stars in his hands and walks among seven lampstands. As the ending makes clear, the seven lampstands are the seven churches, and the seven stars are the angels of those churches.

Following his thesis on the nature of angelic beings, Wink sees seven church angels as the inner spiritual reality of the visible, concrete congregation being addressed. [2] It should be more or less evident to the reader that John’s use of the term “angels” in this context may be strictly metaphorical. That is to say, in this particular case, he is, in fact, directly stating that these churches have an inner spiritual reality. There is no separate “angelic person” involved.

One’s opinion about this matter depends upon one’s general feeling about the nature of the book of Revelation and about precisely who is being addressed. Many commentators have noted that the number seven was considered a perfect number to the Hebrews and that the churches mentioned may simply be representative of all of the churches of Asia Minor or, indeed, all the churches of the world. I favor the view that the book demonstrates in its entirety a kind of symbolic representation that leads credence to the view that the seven churches symbolize a larger number of churches. The seven churches represent the whole church of John’s Day and, by extension, speak directly to the church today.

This observation does not cancel Wink’s basic thesis. It is consistent with the notion that organizations have an inner spiritual reality. One reason it is important to understand the idea of an “angel of the churches” is that the concept of a church’s inner spiritual reality applies to other social organizations, including transnational corporations, military establishments, university systems, and government bureaucracies—every kind of social organization. [3]

This inner spirituality (or angel) is not separate from the institution but represents its spiritual totality. Yet, it is also personal. People create organizations, yet organizations reflect a separate, organic, individual nature distinct from those who make them up. This nature can only be described as a personality, i.e., a personal spirit.

 The personal address in Revelation suggests more than mere personification of an organization. [4] It is the actual spirituality of the congregation as an entity. As an organization’s corporate personality, it represents its spiritual totality. This spirituality does not exist separately from the institution but is not identical to any specific concrete expression of such an institution. [5] The angel of an institution, including a church, is connected with the material expression of the church’s life as its interiority.

I belong to a neighborhood association and serve on some of its committees. It was formed in 1973, just about the time I graduated from college. Most of the founders are either quite elderly or gone. Nevertheless, the inner spiritual reality of our neighborhood association is evident in nearly every meeting we have. Deep inside the DNA of our association is the notion that the neighborhood needs to be preserved in its original state as far as possible. There is a great fear of change or accommodation for new developments, such as solar electric units seen from the street. The fear of some people that this change is but the beginning of a series of changes that will compromise our status as one of San Antonio’s premier historic neighborhoods impacts every decision. That inner spiritual commitment affects everything we do. [6]

The Ambivalent Nature of Angels of the Churches

In ordinary language, we often speak of “guardian angels.” We think people have guardian angels. Sometimes, people talk of churches or other institutions having guardian angels. Indeed, the archangel Michael is seen as the guardian of Israel, the people of God, and the Christian church in general. It should be evident that when John talks about the angels of the churches, he is not talking about quite the same phenomenon. [7] Michael is entirely holy and good. Michael is wholly a servant of God. It’s evident from the message to the churches that the angels of the churches do not have this status. John consistently speaks of both aspects of the churches that are good and by God’s will and compromises the churches made that have taken it out of God’s will. In other words, the angels of the churches are a good bit like human beings in general. They have a capacity for good and for evil. [8] This is an aspect of social angels that Wink will discuss not just in Unmasking the Powers but in his final book, Engaging the Powers. His point is that the angels are fundamentally the creation of a good God, but like human beings, they have the capacity for diversion from their created potential.

Discerning the Angelic Spirit

A significant problem implicit in Wink’s analysis is the question, “How does one discern the inner spirit of a congregation or other organization?” We human beings have no direct access to the inner spirituality of any organization. We must rely upon external observation of the organization to understand its inner spirituality. Most helpfully, Wink does try to give some guidance in this area as regards congregations. He suggests the following areas of inquiry:

1. What is the nature of the congregation’s regular physical space for worship, prayer, and study?
2. What is the social status of the congregation? Is it primarily working class? Office workers? Executives? Retirees?
3. Where is power located in the congregation? The pastor? The governing board? The women of the church? The wealthiest member? A particular family?
4. How is power exercised in the congregation? Is it a dictatorship? Is it democratic? Do people compromise to reach decisions?
5. How is conflict handled? Is it submerged? Is it vocalized at the slightest opportunity? Is it healthy, or is it unhealthy?
6. What is the structure of any denomination? Is it connectional or centralized? Is there a bishop, or are the higher courts of the church democratic? How much input is given to local congregations?
7. How does the congregation see itself? Is it growing, helpless, declining, missional, inbred, or outgoing? [9]

Naturally, no simple analysis of one factor to the exclusion of others can give us a complete picture of the inner spirituality of a congregation or any other institution. No simple list can provide us with such insight. One of the problems with consultants is that they come in and gain a very superficial view of a congregation based on interviews, questionnaires, and other analyses. Inevitably, the perception of the current pastor plays a more significant role than any other perception. It takes time and effort to perceive the inner spirit of a congregation. I might add that a wise pastor takes the time to understand this inner spirit, not to criticize it, but to understand how to serve the local congregation best.

Healing the Spirit of a Congregation

As John’s introduction to Revelation and his letters to the churches exemplify, all churches have positive and negative characteristics. The question for leadership is how to maximize the positive elements of the spirit of the congregation and how to minimize the negative aspects. We have John’s letters to the seven churches but do not have John’s personal reflections garnered over time. We can assume that John regularly received reports about the congregations of Asia Minor. He probably also talked to visitors from many places and learned how their churches were doing. Ephesus was a major center of the Christian faith and a seaport. Before his captivity on Patmos, we can be sure he was aware of the condition of the churches. He prayed and reflected on what he ought to say to the churches. This gives us some insight into how faithful leaders can heal the angel of a church.

1. Courage to Speak Wisdom. First, there is the element of courage. John had to decide whether to send his revelation to the churches and how to say what needed to be said. Part of what he had to say was difficult to say without risking hurt feelings. John had to decide what to say and how to say it.
2. Praise for Accomplishments. The revelator found something in every church to praise. The churches in Ephesus had been faithful, long-suffering, patient, and persevered through testing. (Rev 2:1-2). The church in Smyrna had done excellent work despite poverty and oppression (v. 9). The angel of the Church of Pergamon had worked hard despite opposition from pagan deities (v. 13). The church at Thyatira had been hard-working, loving, faithful, service, and patient in tribulation (v. 19). The church at Sardis had a great history and name (.3:1). The church at Philadelphia had been a faithful congregation in every way.
3. Areas for improvement. The church in Ephesus had grown tired and lost its first love. The church of Smyrna tolerated the intolerable out of fear (2:8-11). The church in Pergamon permitted harmful teachings to infiltrate and was experiencing decline (2:12-15). The church in Thyatira allowed itself to be seduced into sexual immorality from which it needed to repent (vv. 20-21). Despite its history, The church at Sardis was a dead church and needed to be renewed (3:2). The church in Philadelphia needed to persevere (vv.10-11).

Those who lead churches or other organizations can learn much about their spirituality by pondering Walter Wink’s analysis of local congregations. It may not be perfect, but it is certainly illuminating. Ultimately, any leader’s most important legacy, for better or worse, is the spirituality they encourage in the church or organization they serve. At the same time, this spirituality profoundly impacts what can be accomplished in any organization. Next week, I will deal with the angels of the nations.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces that Determine Human Existence (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1986).

[2] Id, at 70.

[3] Id, at 70.

[4]  Last week,  one reader found some of what I said regarding the personalities of angelic beings (particularly Satan and fallen angels) objectionable. When discussing the “personhood” of heavenly beings, it’s important to note that this concept isn’t easily understood. Human beings have bodies, physical emotions, and similar traits, highlighting that angelic personhood differs from human personhood. The key idea is that persons exist independently of one another and cannot be reduced to, for example, the writer’s or perceiver’s psychological states. I believe this is what Wink is addressing. The nature of angelic personhood is ultimately founded in the personal nature of God, who created a world in which personhood can develop.

[5] Id.

[6] I would not want my neighbors to think I am speaking against historic preservation. Indeed, one reason we purchased in our neighborhood was its historic character.

[7] Unmasking the Powers, 70.

[8] This particular insight is why I believe that the term “angels of the churches” reflects the use of “angel” metaphorically distinct from the use of the term when referring to “the Angel Michael,” who I take to referring to a personal revelation of the being of God in the form of a messenger to the human race.

[9] Unmasking the Powers, 71-78.