Emotionally Healthy Discipleship

"It's impossible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature."

— Pete Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

Our calling as believers is to trust and obey Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of our lives, and to live in a way that the hope that we have received in Him is shared with the world. The problem is that many of us, although we have encountered that hope from time to time and committed to following Him, live in ways shaped more by our cultures, our families, and our past experiences rather than the Gospel. We live hurried, busy, and difficult lives that keep us from experiencing intimacy with God, giving Jesus greater control, and receiving the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

Over the last couple of years, our church has used the Emotionally Healthy Discipleship tools, created by Pete Scazzero. Emotionally Healthy Discipleship is a program that offers several 9-week courses that take participants through Gospel transformation through tools that lead us to explore beneath the surface of our lives, beyond what is easily visible to ourselves and others. These tools help us to grow in awareness of the broken places where we have yet to surrender to God and receive the healing and transforming power of His grace.

As a church, we offer Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Emotionally Healthy Relationships courses biannually. We hope you can join us as we continue to become healthy together.

Mike St. Denis
Pastor of Discipleship (“Build”)

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (EHS) Course:

In the EHS course, you’ll learn how to slow down your life and develop a personal relationship with Jesus. Discover how to:

  • Confront the Crisis of Emotionally Unhealthy Spirituality

  • Know and Become Your Authentic Self in Christ

  • Discover How Your Family of Origin Affects You Today

  • Find Your Way Through "Walls" to Grow into Maturity

  • Enlarge Your Soul Through Embracing Grief and Loss

  • Integrate Silence and Sabbath to Slow Down for Jesus

  • Grow Into an Emotionally Healthy Adult

  • Design a Lifelong Plan to Live in God's Love

Emotionally Healthy Relationships (EHR) Course:

In the EHR course, you’ll get equipped with practical relationship skills to love others like Jesus. Discover how to:

  • Checking In With One Another (Community Temperature Reading)

  • Stop Mind Reading and Clarify Expectations

  • Genogram Your Family

  • Explore The Iceberg

  • Listen Incarnationally

  • Climb the Ladder to Integrity

  • Fight Cleanly

  • Develop a “Rule of Life” to Implement Your New Learnings

Stories of Grace from All Souls

Watch Julie’s story.

Watch Jim’s story.

Watch Jane’s story.

Learning and Reshaping

By KatieRuth Tucker

Participation in the EHS course is designed to help you peel back your habits and re-orient them toward Christ. Through conversation and prayer, tools offered in the workbook and the context in the book, I was able to isolate where I had either inherited or built up some unhealthy ways of dealing with my pain, and mature in my spiritual walk.

As a white American in our current times, I have a lot to learn and reshape. Healing the racial divide in our country will be a long and complex process. There are necessary changes that need to be implemented broadly at the institutional level, but as individuals, we also need to do internal work of re-learning the history of our nation, and becoming better listeners. This course (EHS) is intended to help us recognize our failings and sin (racism included) and to take on a contemplative posture. As a community, we can do better to serve our black brothers and sisters. As we build towards true reconciliation, working to become emotionally healthy ourselves will be foundational. We see others better when we can walk with maturity and grace in our own spiritual lives, and this course guides us by placing our feet on the right path to gain emotional maturity.

Resources from the Emotionally Healthy courses

In this video, Steven gives us 10 tips for setting the Sabbath apart from the other days.

10 Tips for Sabbath

How to write a Rule of Life

Steven unpacks the Rule of Life Practice. Download the worksheet.

Mike St. Denis gives context to a shortened EHS Tutorial on The Genogram. Then, we have added the Scazzeros briefly explaining the purpose of a Genogram as they fill in one as an example. Download the Genogram Worksheet here.

Genogram Resource

Longer version of the Scazzero video (produced by Emotionally Healthy Discipleship). Download additional Genogram instructions.

Genogram Resource (Full-length)

“Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (EHS)” Sermon Series

EHS topics engage our inner emotional life with the good news of Jesus in the areas of rest, grief, vulnerability, and more. This course has been enjoyed by many at ASF for its engaging content, thought-provoking Bible studies, and tools for engaging the inner life. We are pleased to be able to share this tool through our Sunday morning worship.

Sermon 1: Spiritual Transformation: We cannot separate Spiritual and Emotional Maturity - Matthew 23:1-12, 25-28

Sermon 2: Who I am (Being present to oneself): Know yourself that you may know God - Mark 1:1-11

Sermon 3: Where I'm from (Master my story): Going back to go forward - Genesis 50:15-21 (Then, see Genogram above.)

Sermon 4: Surrender to the Lord (Dark Night of the Soul): Journey through the wall - Genesis 22:1-14

Sermon 5: Becoming Human (Contentment and Trust in suffering): Enlarge your soul through grief and loss - Matthew 26:36-44

Sermon 6: Delight in the Lord: The Sabbath - Exodus 20:1-2, 8-11