Contact: Jana Muntsinger (832) 247-‐9308 [c) [email protected] THE EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY LEADER PETER SCAZZERO CREATES A NEW PARADIGM FOR CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP Grand Rapids, MI — Have you as a leader ever avoided meetings you knew would be hard or stressful? Have you massaged the truth when being completely honest would be too painful? Have you walked into important meetings without specific goals or an agenda, but only offering a small prayer? Have you failed to allow adequate time to follow through on your commitments, which meant dropped balls so staff or volunteers couldn’t do their best work? Pastor and international best-‐selling author Peter Scazzero, in more than 28 years of pastoral leadership, freely and candidly admits he has done this and more. Peter Scazzero’s new book The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World (Zondervan, June 2015), is both spiritual and practical, looking at the theological integration of internal emotional health and effective Christian leadership. Scazzero offers a road map forged by more than 28 years of pastoral leadership in his new book, complete with specific ideas and practices, to build teams that deeply transform people who, in turn, deeply transform the world. The Emotionally Healthy Leader contains all new material that was developed slowly over the last eight years since the publication of his previous bestsellers – The Emotionally Healthy Church (2003) and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (2006). Specifically, Scazzero’s The Emotionally Healthy Leader addresses two major problems facing Christian leaders: First, leaders often grow ministries and organizations larger and faster than the depth of their roots in Christ can sustain. Secondly, they often fail to apply their spirituality with Jesus to inform key leadership tasks—such as planning, decision-‐making, team building, and boundaries. The Emotionally Healthy Leader was forged out of hard lessons learned in more than 28 years of leading a large, growing, complex, multiracial church in New York City with over 73 nations from around the world. Scazzero writes with passion and humility, sharing openly about his own failures, conflicted relationships, and dark nights of the soul. And how he slowly learned to develop new practices and rhythms robust enough to withstand the pressures of leadership and transform the way he led New Life Fellowship Church. After examining the “Four Characteristics of an Emotionally Unhealthy Leader” in Chapter 1, the book is divided into two parts, one on the inner life, and the other on the outer life. All chapters contain excellent self-‐quizzes to help the reader in creating effective emotional health. Highlights of this book include: •
Concise assessments for leaders and teams to measure the health of their leadership for each chapter (e.g. in making decisions, building teams, facing their shadow). •
Practical, proven strategies that have been developed over a 28 year period both at New Life Fellowship Church and in interaction with leaders from around the world. •
An original, biblical integration of leadership with spiritual formation in Christ out of the context of the local church. •
Practical strategies and applications of how to face your shadow, lead out of your marriage or singleness, slow down, and embrace endings in our ministries amidst the pressures of leading. •
Thoughtful, clear guidelines on how to lead amidst the complexity of dual relationships (e.g. I am your supervisor, brother in Christ, friend, pastor), the use of power, and hiring/firing in a church context. •
Guiding leaders and churches through healthy transitions and successions, using Scazzero’s highly effective and fruitful succession model at New Life Fellowship. The Emotionally Healthy Leader is written for senior pastors, executive pastors, church staff, elder/deacon board members, small group and ministry leaders, denominational and parachurch staff, missionaries, and marketplace leaders. This powerful book offers a whole new way of viewing yourself as a leader as well as a radically new way of leading. Peter Scazzero is the Founder of New Life Fellowship Church in Queens, NYC, a large, multiracial, international church with more than seventy-‐three countries represented. After serving as Senior Pastor for twenty-‐six years, Scazzero now serves as a Teaching Pastor/Pastor at Large. He is the author of two best-‐selling books -‐The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Emotionally Healthy Church. He is also the author of The EHS Course, The EHS Church Wide Initiative and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day. Scazzero, along with his wife Geri, are the founders of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, a groundbreaking ministry active in over 25 countries that equips churches in a deep, beneath-‐the-‐surface spirituality that deeply transforms people who then transform the world. For more information, visit www.emotionallyhealthy.org or connect with Pete on Twitter: @petescazzero Zondervan, part of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, is a world leading Bible publisher and provider of Christian communications. For more than 80 years, Zondervan has delivered transformational Christian experiences through its bestselling Bibles, books, curriculum, academic resources and digital products. The company’s products are sold in multiple formats, worldwide in more than 60 countries, translated into nearly 200 languages. Zondervan offices are located in Grand Rapids, MI. www.zondervan.com. # # # The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World By Peter Scazzero Available from: Zondervan Release date: June 30, 2015 Price: U.S. $22.99 Format: Hardcover Pages: 224 ISBN-‐13: 9780310494577 BISAC category: Religion / Christian Life Review copies, reprint permission and interviews are available. Contact Jana Muntsinger, McClure Muntsinger Public Relations, 281-‐251-‐0480 or [email protected]