Hi, my name is Pete Gazzaro on welcome you today to the emotionally healthy leader podcast.

It's very good to be with you.

Our theme today is ancient disciple making.

Why Embracing Church History makes strong leaders and disciples.

So actually, this is a new ebook we're releasing as well today.

And so I'm going to be making some comments from that ebook.

So I want to encourage you to download it.

It's free at Emotionally Healthy.org slash ancient. That's

Emotionallyhealthy.com slash ancient. And it's going to be a great resource for you. Of course,

I'll be adding beyond that ebook here as well. So this comes out of the fact that there's a major

gap in our churches today, in Western Christianity,

in how we understand the place of history. I mean, most folks think, okay, we book of acts

happened, God birthed the church, and then boom, before we know, we're in the 1900s, or we're

at the Reformation, but not a lot of understanding and knowledge of what's happened in between or the impact.

I talked to one pastor recently, and I asked him about his understanding of history, church history.

And he said, well, I had a course through online on church history.

And all I remember about it was there was a lot of fighting that went on in the 1500s during the Reformation. And I just thought

to myself, oh, Lord, because this faulty way of thinking about the ancient church over the last

2,000 years has done a lot of damage to our discipleship, our leadership formation, and the way

we train other people and do our mission in the world.

I like what William Faulkner said, the writer.

He said at best.

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