Rich Villodas believes that the pastors most certain they aren’t anxious are often the ones least able to tolerate disagreement. Villodas argues that a pastor's central task is building a community where disagreement doesn’t inevitably lead to disconnection. He claims most pastors fail to accomplish this work because they’re anxious, or unable to hold tension and distress. Stetzer tests whether that tolerance for disagreement is just softness or evidence of convictions left unpreached, but Villodas argues that hard teaching survives when a church builds several formational spaces around it. He then turns the same standard on pastors themselves, saying that the average pastor is living off someone else's formation. Rich Villodas has led his Queens congregation for 12 years and runs an eight-month formation cohort serving 60 to 75 pastors annually. His third book, The Narrow Path, was published in July 2024.
Villodas arrived with a definition of anxiety that implicates confident leaders as much as worried ones. Stetzer spends most of the hour testing whether a congregation can hold that much internal difference and still teach anything difficult.
Why do confident pastors still lead anxiously?
Villodas separates anxiety from worry. Worry is a feeling a pastor can honestly deny. Anxiety, as he uses the term, is the automatic response to a real or perceived threat, and it shows up as manipulation, coercion, anger, or avoidance. That definition does real work in the conversation, because it moves the diagnosis away from the visibly stressed pastor and toward the one who cannot leave room for dissent. His own test is whether he can tell a staff member to push back and mean it. When he cannot stand disagreement, he reads that as anxiety rather than conviction.
Stetzer sharpens this into something a listener will recognize, noting that pastors can grow worse at formation than the people they lead because they treat sermon preparation as their spiritual life. Drawing on the pastors moving through his cohort, Villodas says the average pastor has no plan for personal formation and is living off someone else's spirituality: podcasts, books, other people's sermons.
Can a politically mixed church still teach hard convictions?
Villodas describes his congregation as split roughly in thirds between Trump voters, Harris voters, and people who abstained. Stetzer asks the difficult question: does a spread like that indicate a pastor avoiding the sharp edges of Scripture? Villodas responds by saying that a single message cannot form anyone, so a church that wants to hold a hard conviction has to build multiple spaces for conversation, listening, prayer, and self-examination around it. Alignment is a low bar for a pastor to clear. Discipleship is the actual assignment.
He frames the pastoral task as creating an environment where difference does not automatically produce disconnection, which he ties to differentiation: staying close to God, to yourself, and to others under high anxiety. He also insists on understanding how people arrived at their conclusions, since depersonalizing someone strips the story that produced the conviction.
Where does pastoral burnout actually begin?
Burnout, in Villodas’s account, is the attempt to give what you do not have, which is why he starts with relationships rather than Sabbath. Villodas argues that emotional pain persists when there is no relational home to hold it, and he applies this directly to pastors carrying criticism, hard emails, and board conflict without anywhere to put them.
Is the narrow path about salvation or discipleship?
Villodas grants that Matthew 7 is usually read salvifically, as a statement about how few are saved, and argues instead that Jesus is describing discipleship. He works from three categories he takes from Dale Bruner: successism, moralism, and individualism. Against successism he sets the Beatitudes as a reframing of what counts as blessing. Against individualism he sets love of neighbor as the proof of love for God. He also inverts the usual sequence between prayer and mission, treating mission as a root of formation rather than a result of it, and points to his church's health center, pantry, and youth organizing work as the setting where that formation happens.
From the conversation
Ed Stetzer: "I'm of the view that pastors sometimes are worse than regular people when it comes to their spiritual formation 'cause they just sort of rely on their preparation as their formation."
Rich Villodas: "But anxiety is not simply about worry. Anxiety is what is the automatic response to distress or disagreement."
Rich Villodas: "I think the average pastor's living off the spirituality of someone else. Podcasts, other sermons. There's not a cultivation of being with God and speaking out of that place."
Rich Villodas: "It's a narrow path that leads to the kind of spacious life that we long for."
About Rich Villodas
Rich Villodas is the Brooklyn-born lead pastor of New Life Fellowship, a large multiracial church in Queens with more than 75 countries represented. He is the author of The Deeply Formed Life (2020), Good and Beautiful and Kind (2022), and The Narrow Path (2024).
[00:00:00] Rich Villodas: I think the average pastor's living off the spirituality of someone else. Podcasts, other sermons. There's not a cultivation of being with God and speaking out of that place there. The average pastor's lonely, I think generally speaking, in large pockets, pastors need a lot of help.
[00:00:19] Ed Stetzer: Hey, I'm Ed Stetzer. This is "The Exchange," presented by Gloo. This week, I sat down with Rich Villodas, and I think you might find our conversation interesting, particularly how we deal with, well, the reality is there's a crisis of pastoral failures, and what does it look like to live differently as a leader for sustained long-term ministry?
[00:00:39] Stick around for the conversation.
[00:00:42] Rich, I don't know a time that we can point back to in the last 30, 40, 50 years when it's been this tumultuous and turbulent and actually impacting the pastorate in significant ways. Most of our folks who engage are pastors and church leaders. So you write this book, The Narrow Path, that speaks into some of this cultural moment. Well, talk about the genesis of that.
[00:01:00] Rich Villodas: Well, when I became a Christian, first of all, at 19, I was discipled by my grandfather three to four days a week, two to three hours each time, for eight months before he died. And one of the assignments he gave me throughout those eight months was reading the Sermon on the Mount on a regular basis.
[00:01:15] So memorize Psalms, read the Sermon on the Mount. And so since I was 19, I was captivated by Jesus' words. Beyond that, however, I think the question pastorally that I was asking was: What does it mean to be faithful to Jesus? When everyone is claiming faithfulness to Jesus, on left, right, middle, is there any way to discern what that looks like? And I think the narrow path for me was if we can take Jesus' word seriously, Matthew 5, 6, and 7 as a starting point, we can get a better sense as to what faithfulness looks like to him, especially in the discipleship culture that we're in right now.
[00:01:47] Ed Stetzer: The Sermon on the Mount maybe doesn't work for the cultural moment that we're in. You know, we've heard that winsome is bad now. It's, there's a bit of a war on winsome. We instead need to, we need to punch harder, punch more, et cetera, et cetera. So where, how do you navigate? 'Cause these things come up in and around cultural issues.
[00:02:05] So how do you walk this way of Jesus, this Sermon on the Mount-centric life, in a world that's so full of conflict?
[00:02:11] Rich Villodas: It's a reframing of what success looks like, first of all. And so I'm a New Yorker, so I understand punching. I understand tensions and all the rest there. But I think the Sermon on the Mount invites us to reframe what we mean by success, primarily. Starting off with the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." "Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the, the- those who hunger and thirst after righteousness."
[00:02:31] I think Jesus is giving us a reframing, upside down way of what success is. And so I think starting there, for me is not the full the full story here. But I don't know how someone can say, "I'm following Jesus faithfully," without looking at his commands. "You've heard it said, 'Don't murder,' but I tell you, anyone who's angry with a brother or sister- is already subject to judgment." It escapes me how people can just go, "Ah, that's optional," not fundamental to what it means to follow Christ.
[00:03:01] Ed Stetzer: Yeah, I don't think being winsome is a culture strategy I think is the way of Jesus. And it's pointing people to the way of Jesus. But again, there seems to be, I don't know if it's ministry or even seminary. I'm the dean of a seminary. I was having dinner with a group of students this week, and one of them watched my welcome video. And point number four in my welcome video, "Hey, you're a new student," point number four is, "Don't become a jerk." Because something seems to happen sometimes.
[00:03:25] And it's increasingly we see online causing these sorts of things. 'Cause, I mean, the draw is I open my social media. Everybody's punching. Everybody's mad. Again, you're a New Yorker. I grew up there. This is... I wanna get into the fray. I even put on the bottom that, you know, in the arena. Like, I'm in the fray. How am I in the fray but in the way of Jesus in the fray?
[00:03:43] Rich Villodas: For me, at least my approach to it, I'll just give my approach. When I'm in that space, my primary task is what does it look like to paint a beautiful picture of who Jesus is and what it means to follow him?
[00:03:55] My approach to social media, which is pretty wild out there is there a vision of beauty? Is there a vision of kindness, of goodness, especially for folks who don't know Christ, and especially for folks who are giving up on the church.
[00:04:06] Ed Stetzer: And this is why nobody follows you on social media.
[00:04:07] Rich Villodas: That's exactly right.
[00:04:08] Ed Stetzer: Just to lay that out.
[00:04:09] Rich Villodas: They don't want the goodness. They don't want the beauty. They want the anger and the venom. They—
[00:04:12] Ed Stetzer: —want the conflict entrepreneurs, is what they want, the conflict entrepreneurs.
[00:04:15] Rich Villodas: And so I think back to what does success look like? Is success now more followers? Is success now going viral? For me, success is painting a beautiful picture of who Jesus is.
[00:04:26] Ed Stetzer: I love that. So, you're calling to Jesus' way in this divided age. What would it look like in churches like yours and mine... We're on different coasts. You're on the East Coast. I'm on the West Coast. What would it look like in a church community to walk the way of Jesus together?
[00:04:38] Rich Villodas: My primary task as a pastor is to create an environment where our differences don't automatically lead to disconnection. Now—
[00:04:49] Ed Stetzer: And that's a phrase you use in the book as well.
[00:04:50] Rich Villodas: I use it on a regular basis. And so it's a culture of differentiation. You know, remaining close to God, remaining close to myself, and remaining close to others, especially in times of high anxiety. And so I think the primary need for churches and leaders and pastors is not simply just getting theological alignment.
[00:05:08] It is primarily, I think, a growing capacity to have greater conversations among the community that's not marked by reactivity. Reactivity is, you know, or anxiety is a automatic response to a real or perceived threat. That's our society right now. And so if I can, as the pastor, offer a calm presence which makes it possible for conversations to happen amongst the community, for me, that's the starting point for the invitation to follow Jesus at this moment. Otherwise, there's not a conversation happening. There's no proximity to people that are different.
[00:05:32] And I pastor a church, politically probably 30% voted for Trump, 30% voted for Harris 20% abstained, 10% voted for Spider-Man 'cause he's from Queens like you are, Ed. That's a crazy place to be, and yet my task is what does it look like to create an environment of curiosity, humility, prayerfulness? It doesn't mean we don't have convictions, but it means our convictions are not the reason for our disruption and disconnection, and that's a lifetime of pastoral work here, and I think I've been doing this now for the last 12 years as the lead pastor. Like, that's my primary focus in this congregation.
[00:06:16] Ed Stetzer: Okay, so what would you say... There are people who will say that you, if you're teaching and preaching on hard biblical truths, you wouldn't have 30% voting for Kamala Harris. If you were teaching on... well, depends upon the perspective person, but that might be the broader view in evangelicalism. So how do you, how do you say this is a good thing? Is this a good thing? Is this something that you wanna change, something you wanna walk in? What?
[00:06:37] Rich Villodas: The ability to understand why people come to the conclusions they do socially, politically, theologically, religiously, that's the journey of pastoring. It's very easy to have a bounded set approach. In, out. Black, white heaven, hell. As opposed to the way that people arrive at their political convictions, their theological convictions, there is a story behind that. And so my goal fundamentally is to get people to live like Jesus, to believe in the core tenets of Christian faith, and at the same time to respect the journey that people are on, recognizing you came to this conclusion because of a particular story.
[00:07:13] And what does it look like to humanize your story, to not depersonalize you, which is really the powers and principalities of our world, driven by social media, exists to depersonalize, to take away your story so that you're just you know, something out there, not a human being any longer. And so for me, I want, how do I respect the journey while at the same time maintaining core convictions?
[00:07:35] Those who just want theological adherence and alignment often miss the story of why people got to the place where they're at there. And I think if we can start there back to the anxiety. The people who want that, there's usually anxiety going throughout their whole system, their whole bodies. "If you don't believe this exactly the way that I do, something's wrong with you." Now, who's determining the list now? Who's determining the hierarchy of belief here? We're not talking about whether Jesus Christ was divine or not. We're not talking about whether his death was substitutionary. We're talking about some other stuff here. And our capacity to create communities where those conversations can happen, I believe, is the core pastoral task in this particular moment.
[00:08:12] Ed Stetzer: Okay, so as you do that, you know, I guess, I don't know if the phrase a non-anxious presence is trademarked or not, so but, you know, being a non-anxious presence in this kind of context. The question is often then asked, how do you communicate biblical truths lived out in complicated cultural moments?
[00:08:29] For example, I'm guessing you've spoken up for immigrants and refugees. And, you know, I would expect no less. You're there in, in New York City, the more... How then do you also say, well, how do we communicate people who are struggling with gender dysphoria or same-sex attraction? And how do we do... Do we just teach those all and then work through them as a community together? 'Cause those are... You're gonna get people on, upset when you communicate either of those.
[00:08:52] Rich Villodas: Yes. We did a whole 10-week series on human sexuality. We land at a more traditional historic perspective on the topic. And yet 10 weeks on it we talk about the poor, we talk about refugees, all the rest there and Christ's love for them. My approach has been this. In order to pastor well in those spaces, you need multiple formational spaces to do that work. If the pastor thinks that a 30-minute sermon or an hour sermon, if you're from the reform tradition or whatever it might be—
[00:09:20] Ed Stetzer: Don't, don't... Moody Church, we went 45 minutes to an hour. There you go. So there you go.
[00:09:23] Rich Villodas: If that's, if we think that's gonna get the job done here without multiple spaces for conversation, for listening, for prayer, for humility, for self-examination, we're gonna have a hard time navigating these things. And so it's not that we can't say, "Hey, biblically and theologically, where we're at as a community is this here." But my goal is not just to make sure you understand where we stand. My goal is discipleship. What I wanna pass to you on that journey.
[00:09:45] Ed Stetzer: Sure, sure. Right. Sure, for sure.
[00:09:48] Rich Villodas: My goal is how do we think through this critically with our lives? And so if the pastor thinks my work is done—
[00:09:56] Ed Stetzer: Because I gave a good message. And now I laid it down...
[00:09:57] Rich Villodas: —my people know where we stand. That's a pretty low bar of formation and discipleship.
[00:10:02] Ed Stetzer: I wanna actually see people walk in the Biblical truths that are there. Okay. All right, so, so pastors and church leaders are just buffeted right now. There's people who are always upset, and new things come. You like, you mind your own business, all of a sudden people are upset again. So—
[00:10:15] Rich Villodas: Talking about my church?
[00:10:16] Ed Stetzer: Yeah, yeah. Could, could be all of our church. I mean, it's, we do experience this, right? So it's pretty regular. At the beginning of, or in 2020-ish, I started talking about we were in a cultural convulsion, maybe 2021, and cultural convulsions tend to last four or five years. I don't think we're at the peak of the cultural. I think we're still could see more disruption that's actually here.
[00:10:35] So if that's the case, first of all, some pastors dread, like, "I dread the phone calls. I dread the emails," et cetera, et cetera. So how do I walk in that kind of spiritually shape that's properly spiritually formed life as a leader? What, what do you do?
[00:10:48] Rich Villodas: First of all, I think I need a community of people that can support me on the journey. 2017 I did a whole series on racial justice individual racial prejudice, systemic sin, talk about the ways that sin manifests in our world. Everyone loved the individual racial prejudice, the people didn't like the institutional racism thing.
[00:11:07] I really got some bad emails from that there, and I realized I was so lonely, 2017. And so I reached out to three friends, and for the last eight years, we've been meeting once a month for 90 minutes each time, asking four questions. Where is there pressure you're facing? What do you need feedback on? What are you learning? Where do you need wisdom for some particular decision you're making? That core group, I don't know how I would have gotten through the pandemic without a regular rhythm. So I would start there. It's easy to start with take a Sabbath or have some more time with Jesus. I—
[00:11:37] Ed Stetzer: Just have some friends...
[00:11:37] Rich Villodas: I've needed people on the journey, and all the stats that Barna's put out around loneliness in ministry. There's so many lonely pastors. There is one quote that I come back to from time to time around anxiety and trauma that says that, "Emotional pain persists when we can't find a relational home in which c- we can be held."
[00:11:54] Lots of pastors have lots of emotional pain, criticisms, sermons, emails, board challenges, and if there's no relational home in which your story can be held, in which your anxiety can be held, we're gonna have a hard time. So for me, I would start relationally. The questions beyond that is, do I have enough margin in my life to pay attention to my interior life? To pay attention to my reactivity? Do I have a life outside of the church? I think then, now we can talk about Sabbath and solitude and prayer.
[00:12:23] Ed Stetzer: Hidden work of the soul, you refer to it as.
[00:12:24] Rich Villodas: The hidden work of the soul. But I would begin relationally. Relationally. It's too much of a public hazard, this, to be a pastor here, to do this alone. And so that's at least how I've been able to navigate it a bit here. Now,
[00:12:35] Ed Stetzer: If we hear... You know, we're actually having this conversation at the Right Now conference, and we're in the Dallas area. And if I hear the phrase Dallas area pastor one more time in a news story... And so, you know, it just, it and it becomes, you know, and it's not just Dallas but we happen to be a place where we've seen a lot of that. And consistently, you find people outside of life-giving relationships in those contexts. That makes a huge difference.
[00:12:54] Simultaneously, the kind of spiritual formation practices that are there, sort of what you're known for. When I came to the Talbot School of Theology, they interviewed me to be the dean. And I got a question from our mutual friend, Kyle Strobel. The spiritual formation people were a little nervous about me. I think among the large seminaries we have the most robust spiritual formation requirements out there. And so he was kinda like asking me about that, and John Coe asking me about that, and I just told him, you know, I have a friend, Mindy Calaguire, who says there are two kinds of people in ministry. There's jet fuel drinkers and candlelighters.
[00:13:26] And I'm clearly a jet fuel drinker. That's how I think, it's how I grew up in New York. I think people hear, when they hear you talk about spiritual formation, they don't necessarily know that you're the pastor of a large church, very large for New York City. You develop different ministries. And I think people kind of assume that people who really care about this are these candlelighters and they're not necessarily living in the real world of ministry. You're just praying and loving Jesus. How do you persuade people that's not the case for them? 'Cause otherwise we've seen them all crash and burn.
[00:13:55] Rich Villodas: Yes. We're doing a series through the Gospel of Mark. We're calling it A Missional Gospel for New Yorkers. Because we see Jesus going all over the place immediately, suddenly, all this stuff. I'm like, "Jesus is a New Yorker. He knows what it's like to be in nonstop ministry," and at the same time, he's making space to be with the Father. And so for us, spiritual formation gets a bad rap because it's usually confined to mountains and monasteries, and I live in the city that doesn't sleep.
[00:14:20] When I do a little time of contemplative prayer, I got the, police cars and sirens going in the background here. And so, first of all, I would say spiritual formation the city is not an enemy to spiritual formation. There's, there is no, ideal location to spiritual formation. 'Cause wherever you—
[00:14:36] Ed Stetzer: 'Cause people sometimes think that. No. They think the monastery.
[00:14:38] Rich Villodas: That's right. It's where- wherever you go, there you are. And so I think it's trying to reframe what spiritual formation is, is not simply spiritual practices. Spiritual formation is about... Here's my definition of it.
[00:14:50] Ed Stetzer: Tell me.
[00:14:50] Rich Villodas: It is orienting life around the presence and teachings of Jesus in a spirit-dependent community that joins God on mission.
[00:14:57] Ed Stetzer: Say it one more time.
[00:14:57] Rich Villodas: Is orienting life around the presence and teachings of Jesus in a spirit-dependent community that joins God in mission.
[00:15:05] Ed Stetzer: I love it. I love it. I love the mission part, too, though. Trinitarian and mission.
[00:15:06] Rich Villodas: Very Trinitarian. No, in fact, here's my reframe of spiritual formation. I see mission as a root, not a fruit.
[00:15:14] Ed Stetzer: At first, I— It's—
[00:15:15] Rich Villodas: No, no. Root, root, not fruit. It's usually the case that people think, "Let me pray. And when I prayed enough, then I can get on mission." As opposed to, no, we can begin with mission and allow that to form us. It is the way that I'm on mission now being joined to prayer, reflection, community.
[00:15:32] Ed Stetzer: If you look back, if you read the book How the Irish Saved Civilization, which I may like especially so—
[00:15:36] Rich Villodas: Which, by the way, it's the second time I heard this book in the last two weeks.
[00:15:38] Ed Stetzer: You hear it, really? So it's fascinating 'cause it's the monastics, the Irish and the Scottish monastics who go on mission but are deeply shaped and formed in the process. So I do love, you need... And as an Irish New Yorker, you need to read that book. You're not an Irish New Yorker, but I am, so.
[00:15:50] Rich Villodas: No, but I, the accent from time to time comes out like an Irish New Yorker.
[00:15:52] Ed Stetzer: That's true. That's true. The coffee and those types of—
[00:15:54] So, so I do think that we see this historically is that these on-mission monastics were some of the most mission-driven and spiritually shaped and formed individuals.
[00:16:03] Rich Villodas: And that's, for me, that's New York. We have a community development corporation that we serve 2,000 patients in our health center that's part of our church, food and clothing pantry, after-school programming, training teenagers to be community organizers. We are very much involved on mission.
[00:16:19] But we don't see it as just something you do when you get your life right with Jesus. It's, no, no, this is part of the formation process. And so that's been our work in the city to reframe spiritual formation around action and mission, not simply just silence and solitude.
[00:16:33] Ed Stetzer: Love that. Okay, so come to the pastoral role. 'Cause whatever we are, whatever we do, first of all, I do sort of wonder, like, I'm kind of of the view that pastors sometimes are worse than regular people when it comes to their spiritual formation 'cause they just sort of rely on their preparation as their formation. Is that just me, or you work with pastors a lot, so talk to me about that perception. I've been a pastor. I am a—
[00:16:52] Rich Villodas: —pastor.
[00:16:53] Ed Stetzer: But talk to me about your perception of other pastors and those you... Do you, people who come to you want to grow in their spiritual formation, but look across the landscape. Are we doing well, badly, what?
[00:17:02] Rich Villodas: As pastors, you say?
[00:17:03] Ed Stetzer: Pastors, pastors.
[00:17:03] Rich Villodas: I work with a lot of pastors. We have a school of formation that serves 60 to 75 pastors every year through an eight-month cohort. And so these are fresh... This is fresh data that I get from. I think the average pastor does not have a regular plan for their own formation.
[00:17:18] Ed Stetzer: I would agree.
[00:17:19] Rich Villodas: I think the average pastor's living off the spirituality of someone else. Podcasts, other sermons. There's not a cultivation of being with God and speaking out of that place there. The average pastor's lonely, and so you're not gonna get formation in that kind of way when you're lonely. And so I think generally speaking, in large pockets, pastors need a lot of help.
[00:17:38] Anecdotally, I mean, the questions the conversations I'm having with pastors throughout this country and in some of Canada, Mexico there's no sustainable vision they have right now for their own formation. Which is why, talk about burnout, like burnout is not doing too much. Burnout is trying to give what I don't have, and pastors are trying to give out of what they don't have. I find myself very concerned around—
[00:18:00] Ed Stetzer: —Me too...
[00:18:00] Rich Villodas: —the current state of pastoral formation in terms of the rhythms of sustainability.
[00:18:04] Ed Stetzer: Okay, let's go down that burnout road for just a second because go back to the narrow path as well. So how does that... How can the narrow path this living the way of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount reframe our understanding about things like success or ambition or calling? I think there's a holy ambition. How does the narrow path help us with that?
[00:18:21] Rich Villodas: I think what Jesus is doing, my frame of the narrow path, the Sermon on the Mount I think there's three big categories that I work with. Successism, which is from Dale Bruner, New Testament theologian, moralism and individualism. I think the moralism part is where the narrow path really, I think, confronts us because Jesus is not simply about... He's trying to help us live from a deeper center. So you have heard that it was said. You have heard that it was said. You've heard it was said, "Don't murder," but I tell, you know, I tell you anyone who's angry with their brother or sister is already subject to judgment. But—
[00:18:50] Ed Stetzer: —higher—
[00:18:50] Rich Villodas: The hi- there is something deep- Higher- And so the narrow path, which is paradoxical, it's a narrow path that leads to the kind of spacious life that we long for.
[00:18:58] It's a willingness to interrogate. I think this is what Jesus is trying to help us do, to interrogate our motivations, the value systems that live beneath the surface, the idols that we carry. Over and over, Jesus is confronting that and basically saying "To follow me into spaciousness is gonna require a steady commitment to look beneath the surface of your own life." And who has time for that?
[00:19:25] Ed Stetzer: And it's who wants it? Self-interrogation. Who wants that? Look... If I'm a pastor and I want to engage in this kind of self-interrogation, to lead to a better way, a sustainable way, a formed and shaped way, well, give me some practical. What would that look like? Matter of fact, make it five steps, like a pastor. No, I'm just kidding.
[00:19:40] Rich Villodas: I'll give you five steps actually.
[00:19:40] Ed Stetzer: Will you really? I'm, I'm impressed.
[00:19:43] Rich Villodas: Two, two things. So with the five-step thing here, and then I'll give a four-step thing here too. So I think in frameworks. I think so much of our pastoral formation is around paying attention to our reactivity. So, so much as a pastor, we're getting emails, conflicts. We get everything, and so our monitoring our reactivity requires looking beneath the surface. And so 2018, I put together a framework 'cause I was so reactive and so fragile. My soul was so fragile in 2018, getting all the criticisms and all that stuff there. And so here's a five-step question just for your own reactivity.
[00:20:18] Ed Stetzer: That's very pastoral.
[00:20:19] Rich Villodas: Here it is. Here it is.
[00:20:19] Ed Stetzer: If you elaborate it, I'll be super, super yeah. Super yeah.
[00:20:21] Rich Villodas: Oh, I don't, I don't— I have... There's only questions, but—
[00:20:24] Ed Stetzer: —Just do the five steps... No, no. Don't elaborate. No, no, no...
[00:20:24] Rich Villodas: —but now I'm gonna work hard for the next time you interview me, all right? Next time. All right. So five questions. Number one, what happened? So whenever I get, I feel like there's a reactivity in me, what happened? What am I feeling? What's the story I'm telling myself?
[00:20:49] What does the gospel say? And what's the counterintuitive act that's required of me? Which for me, it's about how do I invite others into my story so that I'm not alone? What happened? What am I feeling? What's the story I'm telling myself? What does the gospel say? And what's the counterintuitive act? For me, paying attention to our reactivity as pastors, that's a really good place. And the second framework is we teach something called exploring the iceberg, which is four elementary questions that I've done with my children when they were four and five years old at the dinner table. I've done this with professors, business leaders, and it's so elementary, it's a stumbling block. What are you mad about? What are you sad about? What are you anxious about? What are you glad about? And to begin to use those simple questions to, you know, pastors, most, a lot of, lots of pastors don't think they can get angry.
[00:21:23] Or if they do, they have to do it in the silence of their own cars. And so how do I name my grief? How do I name my anger? How do I find the space to name my anxiety before God and others? And then where's their joy? I think those are a couple of simple frameworks that can help us begin to look beneath the surface.
[00:21:37] Ed Stetzer: Emotional health is obviously a key theme. It's the name of what you do. So emotionally healthy pastors, if you had to pick two or three areas where you say, "These are where I find pastors having the most unhealthy part of their engagement," I think of things like people pleasing or maybe the anxiety that's there. What are some areas too there as you say, "This is the..." I'm gonna ask you how to address them, but these are areas I see pastors most unhealthy.
[00:21:58] Rich Villodas: Here's what I've seen, especially in the moment how we began our conversation. I think pastors are very anxious. And here's the thing about anxiety. Lots of people think anxiety is about excessive worry and concern. So folks go, "I'm not, I'm not anxious. I don't feel worry. I'm confident.
[00:22:14] I'm strong. I know where..." But anxiety is not simply about worry. Anxiety is what is the automatic response to distress or disagreement. And as pastors, plenty of moments of distress, plenty of moments of disagreement. The question becomes, what, where do we go when that happens? And so we can go to manipulation, coercion, anger, avoidance. We can do all these things. That's a- anxiety. That's an automatic response. That's—
[00:22:36] Ed Stetzer: —an expression of that.
[00:22:36] Rich Villodas: That's an expression of that. And so when a pastor says, "I'm not anxious," there's no, no, but you're coercing now. You're not creating room for even dissent. See, as a pastor, I mean, and I've had to learn this. When I talk to a staff member or person, I go, "Well, push back on me. I'm gonna tell you something here. If you have a different thing, push back on me. Let me know if there's something else." That's when I know I'm at a, living from a good place. As opposed to, "Here's what it is. This is a law. I'm not gonna give you any space now." When I'm not doing that, that's anxiety because I can't stand their dissent. I can't stand their disagreement. And so anxiety is one. And then, Ed, I mean, we talk a... Emotional health for us is so tied to our family of origin.
[00:23:12] And so our inability to name the ways our families of origin have shaped us. We say Jesus lives in your heart, but grandpa lives in your bones. That's what we say in our church. We have positive legacies and negative legacies.
[00:23:21] Ed Stetzer: I don't think I've ever heard you say that before.
[00:23:23] Rich Villodas: Oh.
[00:23:23] Ed Stetzer: So that's a thing you say at your church all the time.
[00:23:23] Rich Villodas: It's a church thing we say. Jesus lives in your heart. Grandpa lives in your bones. So we've been shaped by our families and we bring that family system that we grew up in into our churches. Into our elder meetings, into our staff meetings, all the rest there.
[00:23:35] Ed Stetzer: For me, a distant father, father wound, all that sort of stuff. Someone once asked me, you know, my father and I, I guess I grew up in Long Island and he was a drunk. His self-description. Sobers up later, become, we could become very close. I lost him earlier, in early January of '25 and, very close. Great grandfather.
[00:23:55] But it's so funny 'cause I was 36 years old and someone said, "Why are you doing your second doctorate?" I said, "I'm trying to prove something to my father." I just said it just for fun. Although my father and I for 10 years have had this wonderful close relationship that... But it's that childhood that sort of stays there and acknowledging that is hard, but it's also remarkably freeing to acknowledge that my driven nature has to do with a distant father when I was 15 years old.
[00:24:18] Rich Villodas: That's exactly right.
[00:24:18] Ed Stetzer: So but the challenge is, I mean, it seems sort of like, I don't know, maybe it's, like, too psychologically oriented. Some people are suspicious of those things. So how do we help people see and step into that space where they can have some emotional health and freedom?
[00:24:32] Rich Villodas: Well, for me, I frame everything theologically, and so even, like, family, for example. You know, Paul says put the old self on, off and put the new self on. One of the ways we talk about it is to be a follower of Jesus is to be in his new family, his new family that Jesus is creating, which means there's an old family. And there's plenty of biblical context for Jesus saying, you know, anyone who's, you know, if anyone does not hate their mother and father and follow me.
[00:24:55] It's like, well, Jesus, what are you talking about? He's talking about a new family, that you're orienting your life around different values, different principles here. Which for me is like that's a great starting point to say, if Jesus is inviting me to a new family, what must I do with my old family?
[00:25:08] And how must I resist and at the same time honor, because Jesus would have been a law-abiding Jew fulfilling the law perfectly of honoring the Fifth Commandment, honor your father and mother. And so how was he able to say, "Honor your father and mother," at the same time, hey, what we're talking about now, a new family that we're belonging to, holding on to the positive legacies, letting go of the o- so for me, when people think psychobabble, I'm thinking, no, there's something richly theological here for us to pay attention to. If we can take the time to say, to follow Jesus is not just an individual enterprise, I'm now invited into a new community, a new humanity, a new family, and let's start our theological reflection there and then begin to work out pastorally, okay, this is what I m- here's a tool that might help us live into that that's not psychobabble, but it's emerging from a theological center.
[00:25:51] Ed Stetzer: That's good. I'm gonna ask you two last questions. One is, I'm gonna ask you what does the narrow path add to this conversation, this moment? And then I'm gonna ask you lastly, what's your advice for pastors? So talk to us first the narrow path.
[00:26:01] Rich Villodas: Well, I mean, the narrow path offers paradox. And you know, if you want to be... You can't understand Christianity without appreciating how paradoxical it is. You wanna be great, you have to be least. You wanna be first, you have to be last. If you want spaciousness, you have to go through a narrow path. That's Matthew 7. And Jesus says few Choose that path. Now, usually, the classic interpretation of that is there's gonna be a lot of people in hell—
[00:26:25] Ed Stetzer: —Salvific interpretation.
[00:26:26] Rich Villodas: —as opposed to discipleship. Very few people choose it. And so it's usually the interpretation is, "I can't live it, so let me throw myself at the grace of God," as opposed to, "Let me throw myself at the grace of God so that the Spirit of God can help me begin to live into this." Jesus, in fact, in Matthew 7, he doesn't look at his teachings as a set of, "If you can get to it, figure it out, but if not, there's forgiveness."
[00:26:48] He says, "If anyone does not practice what I'm telling you, they're like a house built on sand." That thing is gonna crumble. And so the narrow path, I think, is taking Jesus' teaching seriously. Again, back to spiritual formation, orienting life around his presence and around his teachings. And so I think if we can go back, Matthew 5, 6, and 7 is not only the only teachings of Jesus, but you can argue it's the most significant collection of Jesus' teachings. And if we're gonna take following him seriously as pastors and leaders, we must begin to take a faithful reappraisal of what success is, what spiritual formation is, what fruitfulness is, and I think the narrow path has everything to say about discipleship, leadership, pastoral ministry, all the rest.
[00:27:28] Ed Stetzer: And then what would your advice be in line with that for pastors and church leaders?
[00:27:32] Rich Villodas: Back to the framing. So to follow Jesus as a pastor means we need a whole new metric of what success is. And so the Beatitudes offers us a whole different way of thinking about what success is. Success for pastors and most humans is, when you're happy, you're blessed. Jesus says, "Blessed are those who mourn." Doesn't make any sense. And so redefining what success is, another reappraisal of what the impact of moralism on our lives. Jesus wants to transform us not simply on the externals, but deep beneath the center of our lives.
[00:28:03] And pastors, how do we as pastors begin to say, like what we've been talking about today, "What is happening beneath the surface of my life?" Because if I'm not attending to that, it's gonna be manifesting in all kinds of ways in my leadership. And then back to the individualism. Jesus does not allow us to have a one-dimensional life with God. In fact, our love for our neighbor is proof of our love for God. He resists all kinds of individualism. And as pastors and leaders, how do we personally and then in our leadership begin to say, "It's not enough just to have a life with God. That life must be expressed in concrete love for neighbor"? And I think that's essentially the message of the narrow path.