The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast

Most leadership teams know how to brainstorm. Very few know how to discern together.
After more than 40 years of leading, one of my deepest regrets isn’t moral failure. It’s how many things I led that God never actually asked us to do. We had the money. We had the momentum. We had the energy. But we were moving fast  and we were missing God. 
In this episode, I share what I’ve learned the hard way: adrenaline is not the Holy Spirit. And brainstorming is not discernment.
I walk through five practices that can transform how your leadership team makes decisions  not out of anxiety, urgency, or ambition, but out of quiet listening, surrender, and communal hearing.
This is slow work. It’s countercultural work. But it produces what every exhausted leader is desperate for: more peace, more freedom, and more alignment with Jesus.
If your team is making big decisions right now, don’t miss this episode.
Learn more about the EH Global Leader Conference 2026: emotionallyhealthy.org/conference

Most of us were trained to read the Bible the way we were trained to lead — move fast, cover ground, extract what's useful, and get back to work. But what if that approach, by itself, is keeping you from the very transformation you're trying to produce in others?
In this episode, I want to share a practice that has shaped my life for almost thirty years. A practice I cannot live without. It's called Lectio Divina — holy reading — and I believe it may be the single most important shift a Christian leader can make in their relationship with Scripture and with God.
I'll take you through the history of this practice, the ancient monastic stream of reading that treated the Bible not as a text to be mastered but as a sacrament — a place of encounter with the living God. I'll share the four movements that structure it, and exactly what it looked like in my own devotional life this past week.
This isn't theory. I'll be honest with you about the years I spent reading the Bible the way I approached leadership: achieve, produce, get it done. What that approach cost me — in my prayer life, my preaching, my soul — is something I wish someone had told me at 30.
Lectio Divina interrupts the cycle of leading from information rather than formation. It doesn't just inform your sermons — it transforms the person preaching them. And it begins with something shockingly simple: slowing down long enough to let the Word read you.

Grow in practical EHD skills such as incarnational listening, clean fighting, and understanding your family of origin to build honest, life-giving relationships rooted in the love of Jesus.
Learn more about the EH Global Leader Conference 2026: emotionallyhealthy.org/conference

Most of us were trained to look for God in the big moments — the breakthrough, the open door, the dramatic call. But what if God is most consistently present in the ordinary moments we rush past every day?
In this episode, I want to share a 500-year-old practice that has quietly transformed my leadership, my marriage, and my relationship with God. It's called the Examen — and I believe it may be the single most underused tool in the modern pastor's spiritual formation toolkit.
I'll take you through the history of this practice, born out of the life of Ignatius of Loyola — a soldier brought low by a cannonball who discovered that God speaks through our interior movements. I'll share the 2-question version you can start today, and the fuller 4-movement practice the Jesuits have done twice a day for five centuries.
This isn't theory. I'll be honest with you about the years I spent pushing past the heaviness in my chest — misreading desolation as something to overcome rather than something to hear. What I missed cost me. You don't have to miss it too.
The Examen interrupts the cycle of leading from wounds and repeating old patterns. It teaches discernment, not just decision-making. And it begins with just two questions.
Grow in practical EHD skills such as incarnational listening, clean fighting, and understanding your family of origin to build honest, life-giving relationships rooted in the love of Jesus.
Learn more about the EH Global Leader Conference 2026: emotionallyhealthy.org/conference

Free Resource: Download the Day Alone with God Guide at emotionallyhealthy.org/sabbath
Most leaders I know have a daily time with God. Very few ever stop long enough to actually hear Him.
There's a difference between a longer quiet time and a day alone with God. One sustains you. The other re-orders you. And if you're honest, you know the difference—because you've felt what happens when your life gets disordered and nothing seems to bring it back into focus.
In this episode, I'm walking you through how to spend a half day—or full day—alone with God, and why this practice may be the most important thing missing from your leadership right now. We'll look at how Jesus, Moses, Elijah, and Anna all built extended withdrawal into their lives with God—not as a luxury, but as a necessity.
I'll also share a simple six-movement structure you can use right away, along with the fears and resistances that keep most leaders from ever doing this.
Your leadership will only go as deep as your life with God. You cannot give what you don't have.
This episode could change everything.

Grow in practical EHD skills such as incarnational listening, clean fighting, and understanding your family of origin to build honest, life-giving relationships rooted in the love of Jesus.
Learn more about the EH Global Leader Conference 2026: emotionallyhealthy.org/conference

📥 Free Resource: Download our free guide to get started with the Daily Office emotionallyhealthy.org/dailyoffice

One of the questions I get asked more than almost any other is: How do you spend time with God each day? What do you do? For how long? Is there a right way?
Here's the truth I've learned over decades of pastoral ministry: there is no one-size-fits-all daily time with God. The goal was never a method—it was always a life of loving union with Him.
In this episode, I take you on a personal journey through five distinct phases of my own prayer life—from intense Scripture study to intercessory prayer, from emotional health integration to contemplative rhythms rooted in monastic wisdom. Each phase taught me something essential. None of them, on their own, was the whole picture.
Then I lay out six practical pillars you can use to design a daily rhythm with God that actually fits you—your season, your temperament, your calling.
Whether you're a ministry leader under immense pressure or someone just trying to show up faithfully, this episode will help you stop copying someone else's spirituality and start building something sustainable and life-giving.
The best daily time with God isn't the longest one. It's the one you'll actually keep.

Grow in practical EHD skills such as incarnational listening, clean fighting, and understanding your family of origin to build honest, life-giving relationships rooted in the love of Jesus.
Learn more about the EH Global Leader Conference 2026: emotionallyhealthy.org/conference