Welcome to the Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast.

My name is Rich Velodis. I'm the lead pastor of New Life Fellowship Church here in Queens, New York City.

And as always, I'm with Pete Scazaro. Pete is the founder of New Life, as well as the founder of emotionally healthy spirituality.

Now, we're in a series of podcasts looking at content and theme. as well as the founder of emotionally healthy spirituality.

Now, we're in a series of podcasts looking at content and themes from the book,

The Emotionally Healthy Leader.

And today we're going to talk about the theme of leading out of your marriage or singleness.

This is a chapter that convicts me most of the time, Pete.

In the book, you have four inner pilinges or four roots out of which leadership flows. And this one is second on your list here. This

is pretty high. When we think about leadership, at least when I think about leadership and what I've, the conferences I've been to, the notion of marriage and singleness being connected to leadership this high, really, you don't really see it. Why did you put this number two really high on your list of leadership?

That's a good question, right? I think two, I think two reasons.

One is theology.

Once we had our own encounter with God through our marriage, is when I realized, oh my goodness,

like none of my formation ever addressed our marriage, or a singleness or a sexuality.

It was never just, never talked about. All the leadership conference, all the seminary.

And so the understanding was kind of like, okay, you know, your leader, you know, build the church,

advance the kingdom, and your marriage will be fine. You know, seek first the kingdom of God.

Everything else will be added on to, including your marriage will be great.

And it was kind of like, you know, your marriage is for the sake of doubling your ministry

for God.

That was kind of the mentality that I had, I think most of us had.

So the church and ministry was first, and the marriage was second, unless it was a crisis.

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