Book Review: The Emotionally Healthy Church by Peter Scazzero

The Emotionally Healthy Church is a book about an emotionally healthy model of spiritual vitality for individuals and congregations. The book has four parts. The first two parts of the book lay out the need for emotionally healthy congregations and church leaders. The second two parts go about sharing the elements of an emotionally healthy disciple and an emotionally healthy congregation.

I have mixed emotions about this book. One one hand, I thought the whole book was mistitled. The title of the book--The Emotionally Healthy Church--leads one to believe that the book will be about community formation. Instead the book is about promoting emotional health in leaders, and then hoping that this penchant for emotional health will trickle down from the leadership to the congregation. The title should have made this more clear.

However, once I decided to read the book anyway I discovered a lot to think about and grow with in my ministry. It challenged me to work on ways to become more emotionally healthy, and to find ways to communicate that to my family and hopefully at some point to the church family I lead. There is a lot of good content in the book, and every pastoral leader should read The Emotionally Healthy Church and think about what it says