The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast
Sep 29, 2026 · 29 min · 10 segments
Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter. This is Part 1…
Pete ScazzeroHost
So I opened the book and the first chapter with a little illustration from Wendell Berry, who he's talking about the contrast of industrial farming and family farming, and how the modern industrial farming is built on short-term economics, which means making the most amount of money as quickly as possible.
And so he writes this, it's the practice of making as much money as you can, as fast as you can, by any means possible, while ignoring the long-term effects.
And he goes, people who operate on the basis of short-term economics accumulate large externalized costs, which they charge to the future and to the world and to our grandchildren.
And so while the short-term approach produces effective results, It also pushes the other costs out, the true costs, depleted soil, poisoned water, and disappearing family farms and communities.
It's impressive, but, and the profits are rising, but the soil's dying long-term.
Now, it's a great application to, I think, many ways that we've operated in our churches.
but there's a cost to that because we're not building long-term for the kingdom of God.
And so I know for myself in my early years as a pastor leader, I was counting attendance, budget, growth, baptisms, going to conferences.
We talked about greater strategies, networking, imparting greater power and gifts.
I was just bought into just the general Western culture idea of bigger, better, faster.
And so what I talk about here in this podcast today is the five most common wrong measurements that we have.
So I opened the book and the first chapter with a little illustration from Wendell Berry, who he's talking about the contrast of industrial farming and family farming, and how the modern industrial farming is built on short-term economics, which means making the most amount of money as quickly as possible.
And so he writes this, it's the practice of making as much money as you can, as fast as you can, by any means possible, while ignoring the long-term effects.
And he goes, people who operate on the basis of short-term economics accumulate large externalized costs, which they charge to the future and to the world and to our grandchildren.
And so while the short-term approach produces effective results, It also pushes the other costs out, the true costs, depleted soil, poisoned water, and disappearing family farms and communities.
It's impressive, but, and the profits are rising, but the soil's dying long-term.
Now, it's a great application to, I think, many ways that we've operated in our churches.
but there's a cost to that because we're not building long-term for the kingdom of God.
And so I know for myself in my early years as a pastor leader, I was counting attendance, budget, growth, baptisms, going to conferences.
We talked about greater strategies, networking, imparting greater power and gifts.
I was just bought into just the general Western culture idea of bigger, better, faster.
And so what I talk about here in this podcast today is the five most common wrong measurements that we have.
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