Navigating the Isolation and Criticism of Pastoral Leadership

Chuck DeGroat’s name has become somewhat synonymous with work on narcissism in the church. But as he and Steve Cuss discuss, DeGroat is devoted to shining a light on wholeheartedness and internal integration.  

DeGroat and Cuss talk about anxiety—specifically around dying—and the way that age often brings with it a concern for one’s legacy. They talk about experiencing pain through work in church settings, noticing emotions that arise in ourselves and others, and coming home to God and ourselves—all while considering the impact of secondary trauma on people in pastoral and helping professions, ways to distinguish between shutdown and rest, and our response to the invitation of God.

Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guests include:

• Chuck DeGroat
• Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering by Chuck DeGroat
• Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self by Chuck DeGroat
• When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat 
• “Narcissism In The Chair” 
• Internal Family Systems model
• The Expectation Gap: The Tiny, Vast Space between Our Beliefs and Experience of God by Steve Cuss
• Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs by Steve Cuss
• “Always Beginners” by Thomas Merton
• Experimental Theology with Richard Beck
• The Enneagram
• Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir … of Sorts by Ian Morgan Cron

Click here to ask Steve a question.

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