This week, I am shifting from political philosophy to discipleship, returning to a theme that has been the subject of many past essays. For the next few weeks, I am going to take a leisurely walk through a book that will be released in the next few months, Emotionally Healthy Success: Measuring What Matters Most to Jesus by Pete Scazzero.[1] This book is in the final stages of publication. I was given the rare privilege of reading an advance copy. Readers can order the book in preorder on numerous websites, including Amazon. There may be some changes between the text that read and the final product. The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/.
In Emotionally Healthy Success, Pete is reaching out religious leaders with an important message—and one that is especially needed within the contemporary evangelical movement. The message is simple: For the contemporary church in the West and those impacted by American culture to recover spiritual and emotional health, spiritual values and disciplines that have been ruled secondary since the Reformation need to be recovered by the contemporary church.[2]
Pete Scazzero and his Ministry.
For many years, Pete Scazzero has been helping pastors and church leaders escape the shallowness of the American church and focus on deeper issues of emotional and spiritual health in the local church and among church members and leaders. Through his ministry, he has impacted many church members and leaders, including me.
Nearly a decade ago, I was asked to help a troubled congregation restore itself to health. One of the associate pastors pointed me to Pete’s book, The Emotionally Healthy Leader, and suggested I read it. Within weeks, one of our children reported to me that her Anglican congregation was reading The Emotionally Healthy Church together. Eventually, I read both books, then everything that Pete has written. Kathy and I participated in and later taught Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationships in local congregations. Over time, his message began to sink into my soul and changed not just my life and ministry, but our family as well.
Pete’s ministry has included planting and pastoring a growing church, facing the pressures and challenges of the contemporary pastorate, confronting his own weaknesses, writing books on the importance of emotional health in congregations, and, more recently, coaching and consulting with congregations of all shapes and sizes. One question he is constantly asked is, “Pete, how exactly do I know if I am succeeding or failing?”
False Metrics
The mere fact that this question is asked so frequently (and I have asked it myself) should alert us to a big problem in American Christianity: We are captured by the materialistic success orientation of our culture. We don’t ask, as I think the Apostle Paul would have asked, “Am I following Christ and sharing his love with others?” We ask, “Am I succeeding?” In Pete’s case, he pondered the answer to that question and came to the conclusion that he needed to change. In the process of looking at his own inner life, he concluded that American church leaders are confused about the meaning of their ministry because we often use the wrong metric to judge our success and failure.
From the time I began my ministry, I looked at some metrics every week. The metrics I looked at included how many people attended worship that week, the collections for the week, how many people attended Bible studies, Sunday School, and other discipleship events, and the like. My list was pretty long. I have friends for whom the list ended with the number of people in worship. I’ve also known people who abandoned their ministry when they didn’t see dramatic growth in attendance or even a small decline. This focus on metrics eventually turns into a kind of mania. “If my church grew by 10% last year, it should grow by 10% every year. In fact, it should grow by more than 10%. I should be doing better and better every year.”
Fortunately, during my first pastorate in a very small church, our church actually grew by about 10% a year; one year it grew about 30% and then returned to a slower growth rate. Years later, when I was called to a new pastorate, I looked at the issue of who dropped out of our fellowship. Guess what I found? I discovered that the greatest dropout rate among members was among those who joined during the years we grew fastest. That 30% year was the case in point. Our little church was simply incapable of nurturing a third more people each year. My focus on growth had not worked. From that point forward, I realized that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way I was judging success. I made every effort not to let growth metrics control my ministry or our church’s ministry.
The problem of false metrics is not limited to church leaders. I have been a lawyer involved in business, as well as a pastor, throughout my professional career. The problem of false metrics for success is always with us in any profession. In any profession, false metrics often reflect a need for personal approval. In business, they often involve a need for financial gain. In government, false metrics involve power and position in a bureaucracy. The problem is the same: We fall into the habit of comparing ourselves to others we feel have experienced greater success, as measured by the metric we are using.
Why False Metrics Matter
When I was a young lawyer, I was assigned to help a businessman clean up a failed investment. It was an interesting experience. To sell what remained of the business, we had to continue operating it for many months. In the process, we found that the former managers continually compared themselves to the largest company in the industry, which made an expensive product. To gain market share, the company cut prices, resulting in massive losses during a recession. We, on the other hand, bid whatever it took to make a profit, because we were going to sell the company anyway. We got every contract we bid on. Why? Because, in fact, the company was the second choice for most customers, who only gave us the contract if our larger competitor was unable to fill the order. In other words, we could bid much higher because we were meeting an urgent need. Using a false metric drove the company into an unnecessary bankruptcy. Once we understood that fact, we were able to restore the company to profitability.
The lesson? False metrics matter, and recognizing that we are using a false metric is the first step toward renewed health, whether in business, government, non-profits, the church, or one’s personal life.
We live in a culture obsessed with false metrics. Our false metrics are often a version of size matters. But there are other false metrics—power matters, position matters, personal pleasure matters, getting what I want matters, being right matters—the list is pretty long. The problem with false metrics is that they result in failure and pain. The pain is felt by everyone: the person who uses the false metrics, their family, children, neighborhoods, church, cities, even the nation as a whole. False metrics create suffering. We are surrounded daily by the consequences of living according to false metrics and a false narrative of what a truly blessed life requires. The ruins lie all around us in the form of broken families, neglected children, alienated employees, troubled churches, and a host of other signs that something is deeply wrong in our culture.
The church is not immune to false metrics. I have been a pastor for a long time. I have been to many meetings of pastors, local groups, denominations, and large training events. Almost inevitably, the first question pastors ask each other is, “How large is your church?” The most pervasive metric in today’s evangelical movement is size. Size = success is a false metric. Interestingly, based on this metric, Jesus was a failure.
During his ministry, he attracted crowds, but at the end of his life he was completely alone. He had twelve close colleagues who deserted him, and a larger group that did the same. Jesus, however, did not think that size was what mattered. He also did not think that financial security, a large home, and a host of other things we view as signs of success were important. He thought having a relationship with God, whom he called “Father,” was important. Success was being a faithful son of the Father.
The night before he was executed by the successful and powerful people in his culture, he asked that the fate allotted to him not be required, but in the end, he accepted his destiny with a calm, “Not my will but Thy will be done.” His metric for success had nothing to do with success, money, position, power, pleasure, or fame. It had to do with carrying out the will of the Father in constant, unbroken communion with God. In the eyes of the world, he would be seen as a failure. In the eyes of God, the Beloved Son had achieved the greatest success the world had ever seen or would ever see—a victory over evil, sin, and eventually death.
False Metrics Lead to False Comparison
If we use a false metric to judge ourselves, our families, our professions, or our churches, we inevitably end up comparing ourselves to others. Pete Scazzero puts it this way:
Comparison with others is a unique kind of self-torture. What begins as a glance sideways often grows into something far more dangerous: envy and covetousness. Comparison says, “How am I doing?” Envy whispers, “I’m not enough unless I have what they have.” It is the voice that says, “I’ll be happy when our church reaches two hundred or five hundred.” “I’ll be content when we finally have our own building or are debt-free.” “I’ll feel so much better when we have a bigger youth ministry or a second campus.” This struggle with comparison isn’t new. It’s a dynamic that appears repeatedly in Scripture.[3]
The Bible is full of stories about people and nations that had a false ideal that led to destruction and death. Israel wanted to be like all the nations that surrounded them, and the result was a series of failed kings, division, and finally enslavement in Babylon. Saul wanted the adulation of the people more than faithfulness to God, and the result was the loss of God’s favor and eventually the loss of his kingdom and life. David wanted the pleasure of being with Bathsheba more than obedience to the law, and the result was suffering for his family and nation. When Jesus arrived, the leaders of the people valued the continuation of their comfortable way of life more than the recognition of the unexpected Messiah they had been given by God.
I wish I could look back on my own professional career without regret for having followed false metrics and the damage they caused. But the facts are otherwise. When we discover that we have been captured by a false ideal of success, the best thing we can do is recognize it, repent of it, and live beyond its control as we do the best we can to undo the damage and suffering it has caused.
Conclusion
The good news is that God is merciful and we can move beyond our cultural captivities to false ideals and notions of success. In the process, we find our true selves and the joy of using our best talents, be they large or modest, in the way God has intended. In my experience, undoing the consequences is never swift, easy, or complete, but there is real healing. In this world, real healing, personal and social, is both important and enough.
At least to this point in my Christian walk and as a Christian leader, I have not accomplished all I hoped and dreamed of. Along the way, there have been failures and shortcomings. There has also been mercy and undeserved success. One of the great mercies has been the discovery of Pete Scazzero’s writings and the Emotionally Healthy Discipleship movement.
One word about Emotionally Healthy Discipleship generally and Emotionally Healthy Success in particular: These are not books to be read quickly or summarized in an essay like this. You have to read the books, do the exercises they recommend, and make the changes required to achieve emotionally healthy spirituality, relationships, and leadership. This is why pastors and church leaders need to do the work personally before leading a group of people through the materials. In a reversal of the phrase, “It is not about you,” it is about you (and me). It is about being the person and disciple God calls you (and me) be before anything else.
Perhaps just as importantly, it is important to do the work with your spouse and other colleagues. Fortunately, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship offers online leadership training for church leaders, preparing them to bring this ministry to their local church. Kathy and I have done the training, and it was wonderful. We are still in contact with some of the people we met during the training. Next week, we are beginning a new couples course with folks from around the country. It has been a wonderful experience.
Next week, I am going to return to how false metrics lead us to false ways of thinking about ourselves and what leadership requires of us, causing failure and misery to ourselves, others, and the cause of Christ.
Blessings to all.
[1] Pete Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Success: Measuring What Matters Most to Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2026. See also, Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). For those who wish to read all of his books, see, Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003, 2010), Emotionally Healthy Spirituality updated ed (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming your Inner Life will Deeply Transform your Church, Team, and World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017)
[2] Although Emotionally Healthy Success is primarily written for religious leaders, its principles are equally valid for those of us in secular occupations. They are also valid for non-Christians, though people from other faith traditions or no faith tradition will have to adapt certain principles for their own tradition.
[3] Id, 24.