Steve Cuss - pastor and author of Managing Leadership Anxiety Yours & Theirs - Problems Aren’t Just Inside Us, They’re Between Us - Understand The Nature Of Chronic Anxiety

Steve Cuss is the author of the influential book, "Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs” (published by NEXT Leadership Network), and serves as lead pastor at Discover Christian Church in Broomfield, CO. 

 

On today's episode, Steve and Adam discuss chronic anxiety and its effect on our personal lives, our teams, and the society in which we live. This is an important conversation, especially in the current global pandemic. 

From Steve's website: 

I love leaders, and I see how much pressure they carry. My particular concern is to bring relief by equipping them with tools for individual and team health. I especially enjoy helping leaders break long stuck patterns in themselves and their organizations. 

I cut my teeth on leadership anxiety when I served as a chaplain at a level one trauma hospital. The hospital sent us into every conceivable human experience and we had nothing but our wits and the presence of God to get us through. In that baptism of fire, I learned how to pay attention to what was going on under the surface of my own life, and also the dynamics between family members. One of the supervisors was Murray Bowen’s student, so I was steeped in family systems theory and then later studied it and cybernetics more formally in graduate school. My unique experience and training deepened my leadership capacity to manage anxiety and notice it in groups. I have sixteen hundred hours of supervised ministry in Clinical Pastoral Education. I hold a Master of Divinity from Emmanuel Christian Seminary where I focused on Hebrew Scriptures and Family Systems. My thesis was based on the Hebrew Scriptures’ dignity laws in Leviticus and Exodus and how a suburban church can engage local and global poverty through the lens of reciprocity and dignity rather than charity.  

Since 2005, I have served as Lead Pastor of Discovery Christian Church in Broomfield, Colorado, an innovative and entrepreneurial church that has grown from 150 to more than 1000 in weekly attendance. The church intentionally welcomes spiritual seekers and skeptics and is passionate about partnerships that break the local and global poverty cycle. I have also served at a mega church in Las Vegas, on a ranch for struggling teens, and as a youth minister in the Appalachian region. 

I was privileged to grow up in Perth, Western Australia, in an adventurous family of origin. After moving to the United States for theological study, I married Lisa and together we have two sons and a daughter, in whom I take great delight. When I am not working, you can find me laughing with my family, knee-deep in a trout stream, or trying a guitar I cannot afford at a local music store.