Leadership Journal

Nobody wakes up and starts the day thinking, I hope I find myself in a crisis today. Ever known anyone to write at the top of the personal wish list: "A real crisis"? I didn't think so. Me neither.

While no one longs to be in crisis, that's where we often find ourselves, especially as leaders. The crisis can be personal, or it can be organizational: a financial crisis, a painful conflict, a health concern, a crisis of faith, a public failure, a costly loss, a season of grief, a crucial moment of decision, or some other high intensity defining moment.

And in a church, with the number of people we deal with, someone is in crisis almost continually. In fact, as veteran pastor Alan Redpath once observed, "If you're a Christian pastor, you're always in a crisis—either in the middle of one, coming out of one, or going into one."

Crisis can become the norm for those of us in church life, not unlike it is for those who work in an emergency room or homeless shelter. But we don't often think of it that way. Too often a crisis catches us by surprise.

On the positive side, crisis moments are often the times God does his best work. Ask almost any mature believer, and they will tell you that they grew more as a person, as a Christian, during seasons of loss, pain, and crisis than they did at any other time.

While no one longs for personal crisis, the saying is true nonetheless: a crisis is too valuable to waste.

In one of my favorite PreachingToday.com sermons, Bruce Thielemann calls them "molten moments." He describes work in a foundry and that brief period in which metal has been heated enough to be shaped into something useful. And when things cool, it's too late.

Similarly, crisis is a short-term opportunity to do some long-term good.

And in the "Crisis" issue of Leadership Journal, John Ortberg writes: "Actually, the wonderful and terrible thing about crisis is that it's the one resource we do not have to fund or staff or program. It just comes. However, pain does not automatically produce spiritual growth. Ghettos and barrios and abusive homes and trauma wards may produce scarred souls; they can cripple more human spirits than they strengthen. Crisis can lead to soul strength, but not if the soul is starved of other nutrients, and not apart from certain responses."

To develop this theme, we've gathered the stories of various churches and the different kinds of crisis, and crisis response, they encountered. And we'll be featuring them on our website over the next few weeks. You'll learn from the responses of the leaders involved.

In some cases, the crises became a "stress test" of their faith, revealing areas of weakness that needed to be strengthened. In other cases, the crisis was a "proving ground" of faith, revealing the resilience and equilibrium that confidence in God can produce.

But what becomes clear in almost every case: The time to prepare for a crisis is before it happens. Jesus' example in the Garden of Gethsemane is instructive. There Jesus does his intense preparation for the upcoming crisis, praying in anguish till "his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground." But after that, when Judas arrives and throughout the crisis itself—his arrest, interrogation, trial, and crucifixion—he is steadfast and demonstrates astounding poise.

While crisis may not be your favorite leisure activity, it's certain to come. And when it does, we hope that you'll be prepared to face it in faith, knowing that God is at work.

Marshall Shelley is editor-in-chief of Leadership.

Copyright © 2011 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

PAGE 1 of 1