We chatted to Revd Christopher Ramsay and some members of St George’s, Southall about their experience of participating in the Emotionally Healthy Discipleship course. 

The Emotionally Healthy Discipleship course, written and developed by Pete Scazzero, a church pastor from Queens, New York City, emphasizes the importance of emotional health as a critical component of spiritual maturity. It gives practical application of Biblical teaching to enable a slowing down to involve God in our emotional responses to challenges like conflict resolution, anger, sadness, fear, running from God and establishing boundaries.

During the COVID pandemic, Christopher Ramsay listened to a podcast from Scazerro. He comments, “This counter-cultural spirituality resonated deeply with a church that is often busy and active but where ministry can become like a weight on people.” Christopher felt convicted about his own need to be more present to God rather than just doing tasks and to move his congregation “more deeply into the presence of Jesus.”

The place to start was with the staff team. Over the course of a year, Christopher, along with St George’s curate, youth worker and two volunteers, read through Scazerro’s book The Emotionally Healthy Leader. Taking a chapter a month, the staff team for the first time engaged with concepts of Sabbath rest and employing healthy boundaries. It was deeply helpful.

The next step was to engage the church community with the two-part Emotionally Healthy Discipleship course focussing first on relationship with God and then with others. St George’s is a diverse intercultural church. People don’t regularly read books, so Christopher took the book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and translated each chapter into a sermon preached once a month over the first six months of the year.

Alongside this were small groups for follow up and reflection. The groups ran once a month at different times and in different ways. Some face to face, some online. Doing this whole process spread out over 6 months allowed time for reflection and embedding the principles in people’s lives. This was also the first time running online groups since lockdown and this worked really well, making the course accessible for older people and families with young kids. 25% of the church engaged with a group which is a high proportion for St George’s.

During the Autumn term, the church turned their attention to the second book in the series Emotionally Healthy Relationships, running 8 sessions over the four months – a session every two weeks rather than every month. The greater intensity gave more momentum but also may have felt like too much commitment for some and so had less take up.

Tinu George has been part of the church in Southall ever since moving to London from India as a teenager 20 years ago. She and Basil married after he arrived from India in 2017.

They were particularly drawn to the option of engaging with the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality course virtually on Zoom. “As working parents of young children we hardly get any time to learn about our faith together. The virtual part and us working from home enabled us to do it together.”

Tinu and Basil feel that the course has deepened relationships with other people in the church: “It helped us to talk about some of the things that we don’t necessarily talk about with other people because of just how busy life is. Life can be difficult and it’s easy to think only we are having this or that problem. But when you interact honestly with people and they are sharing their struggles, you realise you are not alone.”

For Tinu, the session about incorporating Sabbath into her life was particularly transforming. “Although you can be very busy, just putting away that one day for God and Jesus is life changing.”

Tinu and Basil both agree that they are spending more time in prayer as a result of the course. They are learning how to express their emotions in the midst of struggles and to consciously connect with God when going through bad times. This has had an effect on the whole family: “Ethan, our six-year-old son has seen us praying and he’ll say, ‘Come on, mama, can I pray for you guys?’”

Carloes and Edwin Lee have been part of the church for two and a half years. They’ve now done both parts of the course and have appreciated its practical application.

“Sometimes we know the right things to do, but it’s a struggle to work that behaviour out practically in every-day life” says Edwin, “The course brings biblical ideas to ‘touch the ground’ in our lives.” Carloes cites the example of dealing with conflict in a godly way. The course provides steps that, accompanied by God in prayer, help us to precisely clarify why we feel angry or hurt. “Feelings are like a pot of ink,” says Edwin, “They’re difficult to discern. But the key message is: first work out your emotions and then you can work out your relationships.”

Carloes is hopeful that the common ground and shared skills derived from doing the course will permeate the community of the church and deeply improve relationships. They highly recommend the course.

Samantha Arikiriza is the music leader at St George’s and has been part of the church for 20 years. She’s done several courses but has found Emotionally Healthy Relationships quite unlike any other she has done: “broader and deeper and encouraging”.

“It’s really good to hear different views which help one reflect more deeply on oneself. People open up about their feelings and it’s been an opportunity to grow to know one another more as a church family.”

Sam talks about becoming more intimate to herself, others and God through the course. “If we are to know God and others, we must first more deeply know ourselves.”

“The Emotionally Healthy Discipleship course had changed me as a person,” says Christopher Ramsay, “I am increasingly living out of a deeper place of stillness and reflection. And it’s wonderful to see this spreading throughout the church.”

In terms of what comes next with discipleship at St George’s, Christopher is keen to use some of the materials from Practicing the Way. “This is a journey without an endpoint,” he says, “We never get there, we just learn to lean more and more deeply into all that God has for us.”