Hi, my name is Pete Gazzaro, and I want to welcome you today to the Emotionally Healthy Leader

podcast. And our title and theme here as we close out this very short series on integrity

is climb the ladder of integrity or climb the ladder of integrity. And actually, this

comes out of our whole journey into emotionally healthy discipleship in

1996. When Jerry and I had what I like to call our second conversion, we'd become committed

followers of Christ when we were in college. We grasped the gospel. Christ had died and risen for us.

And we were involved in, you know, the best training in Christian discipleship and eventually

started a church here in Queens, New York City.

But something was clearly wrong.

People were supposedly growing in their love for God, but they weren't growing in their love

for people.

And we couldn't figure out what the problem was.

People with great passion for Christ were still defensive,

judgmental, critical, unapproachable, unsafe. We weren't. That included us as well. And even as a pastor,

I was well rooted in the classic Christian disciplines of scripture and growing to my personal

relationship with Jesus, but the people around me

weren't necessarily feeling any more love. And so we hit a wall. Something was problematic in our

discipleship. We didn't know what to do with our own anger towards people or circumstances that

came to us, and we were afraid of being honest in relationships.

I didn't know what to do with difficult topics. I didn't want to hurt people, how to disagree with

people. I avoided conflicts. I wanted to be seen as a nice Christian. Wasn't really honest with myself

and others, and I often said yes, but I wanted to say no. And the list goes on. But this missing

...