Intro > Emotionally Healthy Discipleship Book

Emotionally Healthy Discipleship offers a fresh lens, a paradigm shift, a vision to build a counterculture that informs every aspect of church and community life. 

C1 >  The Four Failures That Undermine Deep Discipleship

Too often, the traditional approach to discipleship results in lives that have the appearance of spiritual maturity but remain largely unchanged beneath the surface.  This video seeks to answer the question: "What are the beneath-the-surface failures that undermine deep discipleship and keep people from becoming spiritually immature?" They are: 

• Failure 1 > We tolerate emotional immaturity

• Failure 2 > We choose to do for God rather than be with God. 

• Failure 3 > We ignore the treasures of history. 

• Failure 4 > We define success wrongly.    

We must address these failures in our lives first, then in our equipping of others, and finally, in creating healthy, Biblical communities that provide a context for serious discipleship. The transformative model of discipleship expects people to mature spiritually as they experience deep and lasting change beneath the surface of their lives.

• WEBPAGE: The Four Failures That Undermine Discipleship - described in more detail

C2 >  The Emotionally Healthy Discipleship Personal Assessment

PERSONAL ASSESSMENT TO TAKE:  EHD Assessment - Take this 15-minute diagnostic tool that enables you to determine your level of spiritual maturity.

C3 > Be Before You Do

A person who practices "being before doing" operates from a place of emotional fullness and spiritual fullness, deeply aware of themselves others, and God. As a result, their being with God is sufficient to sustain their doing for God.   

• Emotional Fullness is manifested primarily by a high level of awareness—of their feelings, their weaknesses and limits, how their past impacts their present, and how others experience them. They have the capacity to enter into the feelings and perspectives of others. And they carry these maturities with them into everything they do. What you do is important, but who you are is even more important.

• Spiritual Fullness is evidenced as a healthy balance between being with God and doing for God. They are careful not to engage in more activities than their spiritual, physical, and emotional reserves can sustain. They receive from God more than they do for Him. They enjoy the Jesus they share with others. They establish regular and sustainable rhythms that make it possible to handle the demands and pressures of leadership. Their cup with God is full, not empty, because they are consistently receiving the love they offer to others. You cannot give what you do not possess.

The core challenge that makes being before doing so difficult is that it forces us to come face-to-face with our false self. Characteristic external behaviors of the false self include self-protection, possessiveness, manipulation, self-promotion, and a need to distinguish ourselves from others.

C4 > Follow The Crucified, Not The Americanized, Jesus

Within the church, to “Americanize” Jesus is to follow him because he makes life better and more enjoyable. It is possible to be Christ-centered but not cross-centered. To be Christ-centered is to be captivated by Jesus as a triumphant Savior who offers us an abundant life with greater sense of power and influence in our lives. To be cross-centered is to follow Jesus as a Savior who embraced the cross, making that the pattern of our lives and leadership. Good question to ask ourselves: What does it mean to follow the crucified Christ in our context? 

Three essential practices for following the crucified Jesus: 

• relax in Jesus

• detach for Jesus

• listen to Jesus

C5 > Embrace God's Gift Of Limits

Without a deep theological and practical understanding of limits, we severely compromise our ability to love God, ourselves, and others over the long haul. What we do with our limits has far-reaching consequences, for good or ill. In bypassing or denying our limits, we bypass and miss God as well.

Receiving the gift of limits requires asking two primary questions: 

• What limits do I need to receive and submit to joyfully as God’s invitation to trust Him? 

• What limits is God asking me to break through by faith so that others might know Him, or so that I might become the person He intends?

Limits offer many gifts. They protect us, keep us grounded and humble, and break our self-will. They are God’s means of giving us direction, wisdom, and encounters with himself.

C6 > Discover The Treasures Buried In Grief And Loss

God gives us treasures on the pathway through grief that we could never anticipate or choose for ourselves. They are treasures hidden in darkness (Isaiah 45:3). Learning to welcome and hold sorrow and grief before God is central to the work of discipleship.

We resist loss and grief because we resist losing control and we have a faulty theology that interprets losses as interruptions. A refusal to embrace our sorrows and to grieve them fully condemns us, and our churches, to a shallow spirituality that blocks the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

C7 > Make Love The Measure Of Maturity

Loving people well is the defining characteristic of a mature Christian. Emotional health and spiritual maturity are inseparable. It is impossible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. Love—not ministry activities or spiritual practices—is the measure of spiritual maturity. We must refuse to accept that people are growing in love for God in ways that do not translate into growing in love for people.

Our aim must be to equip our people to love like Jesus anywhere and everywhere. Discipling people in how to love others, especially those with whom we disagree or who drive us crazy, needs the same time and energy we give to equipping them to love God.  

C8 > Break The Power Of The Past

We have been shaped by forces other than our status as children of God. A larger approach to discipleship—encompassing a person's past and family of origin—frees people so they can lay hold of God's great plan for their lives.  Resistance to looking at our own past and unwillingness to wrestle with its implications on our emotional and spiritual lives will negatively impact our spiritual maturity. The hard work of discipleship is necessary in order to let go of unbiblical ways of living and to learn to live in the new family of God.

C9 > Lead Out Of Weakness And Vulnerability

Western culture, including the church, places a high value on power and influence, which leads us to pride and defensiveness. God built brokenness and weakness into the fabric of all life when He set in motion the consequences of the fall (Genesis 3:16–19). He did this so that our weakness would drive us to seek Him and recognize our need for Him as a Savior.

"But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." - 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 NIV

While the larger world treats weakness and failure as a liability, God sees our weakness and vulnerability as a gift and the source of our greatest strength in Him. God invites us to a posture of constant brokenness and vulnerability—one in which we lean into Him in order to be lavishly overwhelmed by His love.

C10 > Implementing Emotionally Healthy Discipleship - Creating a church culture that deeply changes lives.

Emotionally Healthy Discipleship is like a new operating system with three distinctives:

1. It integrates Biblical truths missing from the traditional discipleship model: The gift of limits, embracing grief and loss, breaking the power of the past, making love the measure of spiritual maturity, and living in weakness and vulnerability. 

2. It integrates loving God, loving ourselves, and loving others in a way that goes beyond head knowledge to a lived experience.

3. It slows us down so we ground our discipleship in the person of Jesus, focusing on who we are on the inside, rather than what we do on the outside.