Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter.
This is Part 1, and we're starting where the book starts: the lies we call success.
For years I measured my ministry the way most of us do. Attendance. Budget. Baptisms. Conferences that promised the next strategy for growth. It worked, for a while. But underneath the numbers, I wasn't reflecting on Jesus. I wasn't in touch with my own shadow, my fears, my perfectionism, my anxiety. And the wreckage from that started piling up long before I was willing to see it.
In this episode, I walk through five of the most common false scorecards leaders use without knowing it: the size of our ministry, the extent of our influence, the praise we receive, the pace of our growth, and how we compare to everyone else in the room.
If you've ever felt like you should be further along, this one's for you. Listen in.
Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/
Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success
I was taught that no one rises above their intercessory prayer life. If revival wasn't happening, that meant I hadn't prayed hard enough. So I prayed. We held five morning prayer meetings a week and monthly half nights of prayer, pleading with God to move. He did, slowly. Not the outpouring I was hoping for. Prayer turned into duty, something I dragged myself through rather than something I wanted.
Two things changed that. Time with Trappist monks who taught me to listen more than talk. And years spent inside Luke's gospel, watching how Jesus actually prayed.
This week, I open the first of four reversals from my new book, EH Success: The Move from Praying for Results to Praying for Communion. Jesus didn't pray to get things done. He prayed to stay with the Father, to hear him, and to receive strength from him. That's a different kind of prayer than most of us were taught, and it might be exactly what your prayer life is missing.
Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/
Free Resource: Craft a Rule of Life for Emotionally Healthy Leaders → emotionallyhealthy.org/rule
In 2004, I stood in front of a building we couldn't afford to renovate, a staff team with the wrong people in the wrong seats, and a list of problems that all traced back to my own failures as a leader. I thought about resigning. I thought I'd taken the church as far as I could.
Most of us know that feeling. Not enough hours. Not enough margin. Not enough emotional or spiritual energy for one more thing. And under that kind of pressure, we get reactive, anxious, driven.
This week, I go back to 701 BC and a king named Hezekiah, surrounded by the most powerful army in the world, with no way out. What he does under that siege is still exactly what we need today. Four practices, not theory, that show you how to find rest when the pressure won't let up.
This isn't about managing your calendar better. It's about what you do the moment the walls close in.
Listen now, and grab the Rule of Life resource above to start building this into your own life.
Learn more about the 2026 FALL SEMESTER School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leadershipschool/
