Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church

Discipleship/Leadership Training

Emotional Health of the Congregation Session 1

Signs of spiritual and emotional sickness
Our Church is in need of emotional repair. There are deep emotional scars and
wounds that need healing and dressing if we are to go forward in the New Year and
New anointing that God has given us. But in order to move forward we must
understand that there will be forces that are embedded within us from past events
hurts, and situations that will strive to pull us back to the death that we are
emerging from. This is more important than numerical growth. As pastor, I would
rather have a spiritually and emotionally healthy and mature congregation full of
disciples moving toward healing and maturity over a congregation that is full of
2000 immature members that think they have made it spiritually any day. The
former is the only type of congregation that the Lord will entrust with the great
things of God.

As we move toward strong emotional and spiritual health we must understand the
signs of a church that is falling backward while facing forward and arm ourselves as
leaders with the tools to heal the deep emotional and spiritual damage that affects
our church. But this can only happen if we educate ourselves as leaders, and to not
do so is dangerous as our God says, “My people are destroyed for lack of
knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a
priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will
forget your children.” Hosea 4:6 (ESV)

In his book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, Edwin
Friedman proposes (prophetically in my opinion) that the greatest danger to
effective leadership is the inability for the leader to distinguish between him or
herself and the people that he or she leads. Leaders can get so wrapped up in the
people they lead or the role of leadership that they stop developing themselves and
their own maturity After two years as Pastor, this is easy to see, because when this
happens people start to see their roles as leaders as a crutch to either grow self-
appreciation or to feel a sense of control in a life that is out of control. They confuse
themselves with the roles that they have been called to and attempt to fulfill
external human expectations, or even internal expectations and forget about God’s
expectations of them as leaders. They forget that God called them to a ministry
(through the harmony of pastor and people) and God knew who they were before
they were called and He called them because He knew who they were, where they
were, and what they could be.

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This is similar to what Friedman proposes. Friedman expresses the truth that
leaders must seek to be well-differentiated (or self aware and focused). A self-
aware leader, according to Friedman, is “someone who has clarity about his or her
own life goals, and, therefore, someone who is less likely to become lost in the
anxious emotional processes swirling about. I mean someone who can be separate
while still remaining connected, and therefore can maintain a modifying, non-
anxious, and sometimes challenging presence” 1

But the danger is that leaders will sink from God’s expectations and seek to live out
of the expectations of people who may be spiritually and emotionally immature and
subject to what Friedman calls “Chronic anxiety” 2. - The feeling of walking on
needles or the suffocating feeling that at any moment any word or action can be the
cause of an emotional uproar and explosion. This chronic anxiety is draining on
leadership and robs leaders of the self, and spiritual conduciveness that is necessary
to lead God’s people and it is very prevalent in Churches and Communities of Faith
that are spiritually sleek-but spiritually and emotionally unhealthy due to wounds
and scars that hinder the development of honest communication and relationship
that is necessary for a strong move of God.

Friedman gives five characteristics of a society in regression (or a spiritually and

emotionally unhealthy church)3.

1) Reactivity- members are intensely and often times viciously reactive to one
another- “Overreaction” Signs of “over” reactivity are:
a. Triggered by outside stimuli that in the end is unimportant
b. Taking things personal
c. Communication is diagnostic and uses labeling “you” statements ex.
“You are unkind”, “You are just like momma”, “ You’re just young”,
“You don’t listen”, “You always….”, “You need to….”
d. Feelings are confused with opinions
e. Different opinions are silenced-boundary erosion
f. Exaggeration is prevalent
g. Hysteria, Aggressive, and Passive-Aggressive behavior are rewarded
h. Operate on Instinct (see Jude 1:10)

2) Herding-Godly and Christ-like living develops in the interplay between

togetherness (community) and personality (personal development and
growth ie. The Trinity). Herding upsets this dance and forces togetherness at
the cost of personhood. Everyone becomes emotionally fused with everyone
1
Friedman, Edwin H. A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix,
Seabury Books (New York: 2007) p. 14
2
Friedman, Edwin H. p. 58
3
Friedman, Edwin H. p. 61

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 else- Cult-like and contrariness, conflicts of will and perversion is promoted.
Signs of herding are:
a. Dissent is discouraged and so is diversity of opinion
b. Feelings trump ideas
c. Peace and calm trumps development
d. Togetherness trumps personality
e. Adapt to most immature member(s) of the group (see. Philippians
3:12-21)

3) Blame Displacement- Instead of focusing on healing the community or

Church by owning mistakes, hurts, and situations and then allowing God to
transform them, the emotionally and spiritually unhealthy church blames
everyone else, but themselves. Signs of blame Displacement are:
a. Focus on external stimuli and not internal process and responsibility
b. Not owning your own feelings-everyone or a particular person is
responsible for how you feel
c. Judgment (Romans 14:4-8)
d. Unable to find internal support from their own resources
e. Slander (James 4:11)
f. Play the Victim-everyone mistreats me because of who I am, “Who
you are “ may be the problem

4) Quick Fix mentality- We forget that healing takes time and struggle. Signs of
Quick Fix mentality are:
a. Materialistic (2 Timothy 3:1-5)
b. Relieve Symptoms and not the problem (need for Godly
Transformative Change and development)
c. Time and event oriented vs. process/discipleship oriented
d. Auxiliary oriented and not ministry oriented.

5) Cowardly leadership- In order to end the constant barrage from immature

constituents leaders stop being courageous and instead do enough to keep
people who are emotionally and spiritually immature due to hurt off their
case. Leaders die inside and its not redemptive death but demonic murder
through the most immature.
a. Leaders lack spiritual or cognitive distance to think clearly
b. Leaders are reluctant to take well defined stances because it might
“offend” someone and lose all conviction (2 Chronicles 18:5-24)
c. Leaders lack the calm and maturity to develop because they are made
to feel bad for developing themselves.
d. Leaders focus on “where the people are” and not “where God wants
the people to be” and become self-serving and self-seeking.

All of these are bad, very bad. But the worst is cowardly leadership. Out of all the
things that we can do as leaders, nothing makes God as angry as cowardly and
selfish leadership.

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Here are a few passages that express God’s disdain for Leaders who because of
cowardice to be and develop themselves, and become self-seeking in the process

- Ezekiel 34:2-15
- Jude 1:10-12
- Jeremiah 2:8-12
- Malachi 2:7-8

As we can see it is very hard for, emotionally and spiritually unhealthy and damaged
churches to have a deep positive impact on the world because there is so much that
hampers the movement of the Spirit of God. In addition, churches that have these
signs of spiritual and emotional sickness may LOOK healthy on the outside. They
may have great choirs, great preaching and teaching, and attract members. But
there will always be something tugging at the hearts of those who strive to be
spiritually sensitive, and this sickness must be dealt with if any lasting
transformation is to take place, but it will take honesty and courage. It might seem
impossible for us to get beyond this pain and these issues, but God can do anything.
We must always remember the words of our Lord “…With people this is
impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matt 19:26 see also Mark
10:27 and Luke 18:27)

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