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Tag Archives: shadow

10 Signs Your Shadow Is Undermining Your Preaching

The first inner life issue addressed in The Emotionally Healthy Leader is our need to face our shadow. Why? It is one of our greatest challenges. Our shadow undermines our ability to serve others and undermines the best of who we are. This is nowhere more true than in our preaching. The following are ten signs your shadow is negatively impacting your preaching: You are overly concerned with people’s approval and affirmation after you preach. You exaggerate, spin, or tell half-truths from the pulpit for impact or to get laughs. You preach about things you don’t live. You spend an excessive amount of time focusing on being clever, smart, and finding great illustrations rather than taking time to allow the biblical text to transform you. You use the pulpit to inappropriately manipulate a particular response, failing to do the hard work of developing your speaking gifts. You use the pulpit to indirectly address conflicts. Read more.

10 Ways You Know If It’s Your Shadow

Everyone has a shadow. Shadows are those untamed emotions and behaviors that lie, largely unconscious, beneath the surface of our lives that constitute the damaged versions of who we are.  They may be sinful; they may simply be weaknesses. Most importantly, they lie concealed just beneath the surface of our more proper selves. You know it’s your shadow when: You are defensive when someone corrects you or points out your flaws. You are triggered by a person, or circumstance, saying things you often later regret. You act out inappropriately when under pressure. You dismiss others when they bring up a difficult issue about you and your behavior. You keep doing the same thing over and over despite the negative consequences. You are angry, jealous, and envious – a lot. You do and say things out of fear of what other people think. You become busier when you are anxious rather than more reflective. You. Read more.

Projection and Transference

Ernst Becker, in The Denial of Death, observes we have a universal human need for heroic figures who are less helpless or broken than ourselves. We transfer our childlike feelings of dependency to celebrities, mega-church pastors, or other authority figures. (Freud called this transference). They appear to have triumphed over the hardships of life. They dazzle us with their self-confidence. We compare ourselves to them, feeling diminished in their presence. If we happen to get close to them and see their ugly side, we feel shocked and betrayed. We forget. They too feel frightened, inadequate, and vulnerable like the rest of us. Read the biographies of all spiritual, military, economic, intellectual, political, and artistic leaders through history. You will discover they each had their shadows and monsters. People will, at times, put you on a pedestal, idealizing you and projecting onto you qualities as if you were indistinguishable from the rest of humanity. But. Read more.

Projection and Transference

Ernst Becker, in The Denial of Death, observes we have a universal human need for heroic figures who are less helpless or broken than ourselves. We transfer our childlike feelings of dependency to celebrities, mega-church pastors, or other authority figures. (Freud called this transference). They appear to have triumphed over the hardships of life. They dazzle us with their self-confidence. We compare ourselves to them, feeling diminished in their presence. If we happen to get close to them and see their ugly side, we feel shocked and betrayed. We forget. They too feel frightened, inadequate, and vulnerable like the rest of us. Read the biographies of all spiritual, military, economic, intellectual, political, and artistic leaders through history. You will discover they each had their shadows and monsters. People will, at times, put you on a pedestal, idealizing you and projecting onto you qualities as if you were indistinguishable from the rest of humanity. But remember:. Read more.

Face Your Shadow

Everyone has a shadow. Shadows are those untamed emotions and behaviors. They may be sinful; they may simply be weaknesses. Most importantly, they lie concealed just beneath the surface of our more proper selves. They may erupt in judgmental perfectionism, outbursts of anger, jealousy, resentments, lusts, greed, or murderous tendencies. At other times, they emerge through our need to rescue people, our seemingly endless need to be noticed, our inability to stop working, our isolation, or our rigidity. Our shadows are the damaged versions of who we are. They are the behaviors we use to protect ourselves from actually changing. We keep them hidden because they make us feel so vulnerable. Churches and organizations can develop a “shadow mission.” We want to reach people for Jesus Christ. That is good. The shadow of that is: “We are here to grow our numbers.” Many of us have wonderful public gifts in speaking and mobilizing people.. Read more.

EHL Conference 2014 and The Emotionally Healthy Leader

This year’s Emotionally Healthy Leadership Conference will be different this May for a number of reasons. First, I’ve been intensely writing my new learnings since 2007 in a new book called The Emotionally Healthy Leader that will be released in early 2015.  I have narrowed it down to four critical areas that must be established (i.e. our inner life) if we are going to lead our churches well (i.e. our outer life). These reflections, tested over the past seven years, will inform our conference.  The outline is as follows: Your Inner LifeChapter 2    Face Your ShadowChapter 3    Lead out of Your Marriage or SinglenessChapter 4    Slow Down for Loving UnionChapter 5    Practice Sabbath DelightYour Outer LifeChapter 5     Planning and Decision MakingChapter 6     Culture and Team BuildingChapter 7     Community and Dual RelationshipsChapter 8.    Endings and New Beginnings (A Case Study of Succession) Secondly, God has led Geri and I into other new content around leading out of your marriage. Read more.