3 April 2012

While in leadership within a church it is imperative that as a leader of any size or type of ministry/congregation you seek to constantly learn of and evaluate the health of that body. By the presentation of The Emotionally Healthy Church I learned of a great resource to help me and aid me in how to discover if the body is or is not emotionally healthy. The six keys that were shared brought much insight to this process, they are as follows

Key 1- Looking below the surface: Here it was stressed that we stop looking on the outside and look towards how things are functioning on the inside. It is easy for people to become content with their lives, even if they aren’t good lives, and find that life a comfortable one to live in.

Key 2- Break the Power of the Past: The past of one self can overwhelm them and cause them to continue in the patterns of old and never be released to life a life free to grow and develop as they should

Key 3- Live in Brokenness and Vulnerability: if all humans were to do is live a life that is to be completely whole and closed to the outside then those people who compose the church would never be able to complete the great commission, not only because they would never be able to reach out to others but because they themselves would never make an attempt to reach out to those who need Christ.

Key 4- Receive the Gift of Limits: Without limits humans are bound to be worn to nothing. Limits prevent people from doing too much and at the same time they prevent us from completing too little.

Key 5- Embrace Grieving and Loss: without these two essential processes the church and individuals cannot get over something that is bound to happen in everyone’s life. It is not only bound to happen, but healthy for loss and proper grieving to occur because without the loss of certain things people would forever be caught in a cycle of unhealthy activity.

Key 6- Make Incarnation Your Model for Loving Well: Jesus is the leader and best role model for the church and everybody on an individual level as well. If, as individuals, Jesus became our role model then we would all have a completely different idea of how to love others and see a great change in the body as a whole.