The Lies We Call Success Part 1

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter. When I finished the first chapter of this book, I was ready to move on to the hopeful part. My editor sent it back with a hard word: "Pete, you can't get to the cure until you've told the truth about the disease." I didn't want to climb back down into that pain. I had already lived it. But I did, and it became the hardest chapter in the book to write. In this ...

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter. What if you could succeed brilliantly at something God never asked you to do? Is it possible to succeed at the wrong thing? I spent a good part of my ministry answering yes to that question without knowing it. I built something big at New Life Fellowship while becoming increasingly unhealthy. The numbers were up. My joy was down. It took a church split and two...

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter. For years, I measured ministry impact by one word: bigger. I remember walking into one of the largest churches in America, watching thousands of people fill the room, and thinking, this is it, this is critical mass. A staff member who'd been there since it was a thousand people told me something shifted at 7,500. Point people in a direction, he said, and it fe...

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter. For my first seventeen years in ministry, I led for Jesus without listening to him. My prayer life was mostly a list of requests. When a door opened, I walked through it and called it faithfulness, following my best ideas and telling myself it was discernment. In this episode, I walk through the third of four reversals from my new book: the move from ou...

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success For most of my early ministry, I led from my gifts. Teaching, vision-casting, faith, I had those in abundance, and little else. So I built my leadership on them, hid my weaknesses, and made sure no one saw me struggle. Then a painful church split exposed the whole thing. I spiraled into a two-year depression before I hit rock bottom, and found Jesus waiting for me there. In this episo...