October 19, 1987, will forever be remembered as Black Monday in the financial world. The Dow plunged, like an out-of-control airplane, a record-scorching 508 points. In seven hours, investors lost some $500 billion in equity values. Smaller brokerages were forced out of business. Traders were let go. And now, more than a year later, according to reports, smaller investors still have not regained confidence in Wall Street.
What happens when a local church experiences a similar financial downturn? What exactly does ministry mean when a church faces a fiscal crisis, whether moderate or severe, and what’s the pastor’s responsibility?
LEADERSHIP posed those questions to four pastors who have experienced money crunches of varying kinds. As an introduction to their discussion of the underlying issues, here is each pastor’s account of how his church found itself in a hole.
Aborted Bequest
Jim Smith
Elim Baptist Church
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Late in 1983, a former parishioner at Elim approached my predecessor to say: “My family has deep roots in this church. And now that I’m beginning to think about retirement, I’d like to build the church a new building-whatever it costs-provided you furnish it.”
Plans began, I came to the church, and by July of 1987, the building’s roof and walls were completed. The inside, though, had a long way to go.
Then the donor suffered a major financial reversal and informed me, “I have to cap the gift.”
That left our urban-neighborhood congregation, attendance around 300, with signed contracts and debts totaling almost $700,000. Without any clue it was going to happen, we inherited a debt three times our annual budget. If the work stopped, we could be sued for breach of contract. We weren’t sure there would be enough money for any staff. We came within days of the project being shut down.
The One Two Punch
Lloyd Sturtz
Chippewa United Methodist Church
Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania
My former church, Grace United Methodist in Franklin, Pennsylvania, had grown to an attendance of 450 on Sunday morning, which was more than our sanctuary could handle, and we began thinking about building. At that time, a member told me, “I’m expecting a major legal settlement shortly, and I’d like to give half a million dollars toward a new building,”
We had some money set aside, and with that gift promised, we bought property and began site preparations. When the foundations were laid and walls were going up, the major donor called me at home. “I’m about to receive the check,” the person said, “but I’ve made a decision. I’m not going to give you the money up front. I’m going to put it in my will, and you’ll get it when I die.” This donor was only 35 years old.
That left us with roughly $600,000 indebtedness, which would have created a cash-flow problem but still have been manageable.
However, six months later we learned that Joy Manufacturing-the largest employer in Franklin- was laying off half its management staff. In the next nine months, community unemployment hit 25 percent. We lost three hundred of our eight hundred members as they moved to find work. And most of these people were active leaders and liberal givers.
The church hadn’t experienced financial difficulty before, but now we had to decide each month which bills we’d pay. We wrestled with which ministries would go, and eventually we had to drop our Christian day school.
Changing Demographics
Slump
Art Gay
South Park Church
Park Ridge, Illinois
Our situation isn’t as dramatic as some of the others’, but it’s current. South Park Church is about 50 years old, and without faith promises or pledges, it has always paid its bills and been able to expand its ministries.
But the game has changed. Many of the church’s long-time “angels” are now being called home or retiring to Arizona. In our urban/suburban Chicago area, many of the younger families can’t afford to live here unless they have two incomes. And the younger people we do keep aren’t accustomed to tithing. They like to give to projects-like co-sponsoring an Indian church in Chicago-but they don’t get as excited about ongoing operations..
As a consequence, we’re currently in a cash flow crisis and $100,000 behind budget. We can’t afford to replace one pastor who left, so we’ve had to cut back ministry to young singles, which is a growing area for us. As we build our budgets for next year, we’re looking at no raises-and probably cutbacks-in staff salaries and ministry programs.
Though we’re a church with no debts, we have few resources. The county just approved our plan to put up a two-story educational building, which we need because we have many young families with children. But the people causing the expansion can’t pay for it. We have one year to start building, but we’re several months into the year and have no fund drives going because of our current situation. So the building may not happen.
Botched Building
Bob Rhoden
West End Assembly of God
Richmond, Virginia
In the late seventies, when attendance at two morning services reached about five hundred, we decided we needed more space. We designed a simple, multipurpose building. Our philosophy was that you don’t borrow, and we thought we’d spend $250,000 on a payas-you-go basis.
Meanwhile, three problems developed in the congregation. One was theological; we had to deal with the “name it, claim it” issue. A second problem was governmental; we were changing from a congregational to a more presybyterian polity, and that created a power struggle. And the third problem was economic. We discovered we had a crowd but not a church. There was no common vision, and people were not excited about giving.
We decided to proceed with the building anyway. As we got into it, though, costs soared to $400,000, and so in midstream we had to switch from pay-as-you-go to borrowing. Before, we had taught “It’s God’s principle that we not borrow,” and now we were asking people to take a loan. That created a loss of confidence in me and the other leaders.
Meanwhile, the county charged us $150,000 for drainage work we hadn’t anticipated, and the building ended up costing $980,000.
When the building was completed, there wasn’t enough parking, and the air-conditioning didn’t work on opening day, a hot September Sunday, so we had the doors open. Plus, the building flooded on one side, so sometimes members had to mop.
Soon, we didn’t want to answer the telephone because of contractors. We borrowed $500,000 on the first mortgage and tried, unsuccessfully, to raise the rest of the money. We had to take bonds for an additional $205,000.
People stopped coming to church to find out what God was doing in people’s lives; they came to find out how much we owed. At one meeting, three people demanded we put the church into receivership. Another night, a church meeting to discuss the problem nearly turned into a brawl. One man challenged another, “You want to step outside and settle it?”
Leadership: Whew! You and your churches have been through the wringer. Yet you’re here talking about it, alive and well. What happened?
Bob Rhoden: First, we held a “Day of Victory” on Easter of 1980, in which we tried to raise $50,000. We received $17,000, which represents a lot of sacrificial giving, but all we could think was, We came in $33,000 short of our goal.
We learned something through that: never look to a onetime event as a way to restore the damage from a long process. It took time to get into the mess, and it will take time to get back out. You have to say, “God, we trust the process that’s going on here.”
After a lot of thought, I stood with the other leaders one Sunday morning and said, “We have made a lot of mistakes. We have blown it royally.” We didn’t try to blame anybody else. We said, “We ask you as a congregation to forgive us for what we’ve done wrong. We don’t have all the answers to this, but if together we can find an answer, we’ll go on.”
It was gut wrenching to stand before five or six hundred people and say, “I’ve blown it.” But the people recognized it was sincere, not a manipulative move, and they came forward, wept with us, and told us they forgave us. That didn’t solve all our problems, but it changed some attitudes.
Jim Smith: Keeping relationships strong is critical. I had to ask, “How can we keep from fighting ourselves, from attacking segments of the church, from scapegoating?” It’s natural for people to wonder whether someone could have seen this coming.
But as we talked and prayed through our feelings, we were able to do the practical things we needed to do. We began a faith promise program and obtained a line of credit from the bank, and the people responded generously. The budget jumped 30 percent in one year, but we’ve gradually moved from a full-blown crisis into a cash-flow crunch. We aren’t able to support a full-time associate, and there’s austerity, but we’re making it now.
Lloyd Sturtz: We had to make some tough decisions through agony and prayer. It wasn’t easy closing down our Christian school, and we lost a family over it. But from those decisions and courageous giving by the members-tithing of their severance pay!-the church has gradually climbed into the black.
Art Gay: The only solution to our situation has been to redefine ministry success. It isn’t based on noses or nickels; it’s based on being faithful with what we have. Whether or not we build a building or have as much staff as we need, ministry will continue.
If I don’t get a raise, I remind myself that raises are not a given; they’re a privilege. Joanne and I are ready to take the lead in this. Going backward in compensation is not failure. What hurts, though, is when people move to other churches with great numbers and finances and then view us as unsuccessful. We have to keep saying, There’s another standard by which we want to be measured: faithfulness.
Smith: When a crisis hits, the minister has to take the lead. We made some cuts, and so in three years my salary has gone backward. But that doesn’t bother me; I’m not a martyr. It’s just that if you’re going to ask people to sacrifice, you have to cinch down, too. Some of our dear people mortgaged their homes to make sure we didn’t lose the ranch. Together we made the decisions and paid the price. And as a result, we had a deeper sense of ownership and of God’s desires to use the building in ministry.
Rhoden: What helped turn us around happened after that time of repentance before the congregation. My associate and I were brainstorming one day, and we concluded: “We’re in such a mess, we’ll never solve all of it. We ought to go help somebody else.” We recommended the church send twenty people to the Dominican Republic to build a church. The twenty paid their own airfare, and the church raised $12,000 to help with the project. The group built not one but two churches, and suddenly we began to develop an identity.
Our attendance dropped to about 350, but internally we rounded the corner. From that point on, five different people gave us large gifts. They said, “We want to give this out of conviction, not because we feel any pressure.” When we gave up worrying about ourselves and started helping others, the whole situation changed.
Leadership: Looking back, do you think you could have forecast your various crises? If so, what would you have done differently?
Smith: In our case, no. Who would have guessed a multi-millionaire would struggle with finances?
Complicating the situation is that when I came as pastor, in July of ’35, the oars already were in the water, the boat was wet, and the rowers were sweating. I tried discreetly to ask some questions: “Do I have any latitude in this building project? Is there any elbow room to talk about the nature of the gift or how it’s applied?”
The response: “Realistically, not at this point.”
Leadership: If you had been able to influence the initial stages, what would you have done?
Smith: Set a dear definition of the size of the gift. The gift was open-ended, which was the way the donor preferred it, and the donor and building committee acted in good faith. But without a set amount, all we could do was say, “Here’s what we would like to see in the building. Do you think this is okay?” And the response would be, “That seems reasonable.” But when the crisis hit, we didn’t even know the exact extent of our indebtedness.
Sturtz: We could have been more realistic if we had watched the economic downturn everywhere else in the country. It didn’t hit the Franklin area until two years after other areas. We had a two-year reprieve, but we just didn’t pay attention.
We Christians tend to say, “We live by faith; God’s going to take care of us.” That’s true, but we’d better look closely at what the business community is doing if we’re planning new construction.
Rhoden: If I could go back, I’d gather people in the real estate, development, and construction businesses. As a pastor, I haven’t been trained as a contractor or real estate agent. In a recent building program we just completed, we did gather such a group, and that team kept us on track.
A second thing I’d do is make sure the congregation owned the vision. In our first building program, we talked about “We’re gonna pay for this as we go,” and they all stood and applauded. But they just didn’t give.
Leadership: The applause meant, “They are going to pay for it, not I.”
Rhoden: Exactly. There has to be some criteria by which you can determine whether people are ready to take the next step. For instance, in this current project, we said, “Before we take step one, we’re going to pay for the land, which will cost half a million dollars.” The money came in for that, and then we knew the people were behind the project.
Third, I’d set a realistic goal for the cost of the building and stick to it.
Leadership: What happens in a congregation when money is tight? What symptoms do you notice?
Gay: Embarrassment, surprise, self-doubt, anger, acrimony at meetings. In the past, our congregation felt there was nothing we couldn’t do. To find out we can’t do some things we’d really like to do is earth shaking. People want to distance themselves from that.
One of the roles of pastoral leadership is to identify the mood of the congregation and describe their feelings. That’s part of shepherding, of helping people through the grief process.
Leadership: So your counsel would be to talk about the crisis directly?
Gay: Yes, from the pulpit. In my case, I was given the assignment; “Now, Pastor, we’re in trouble Get out there and preach those stewardship sermons.” (Laughter) Seriously, the leaders said, “It’s your responsibility to articulate the vision of the church, and we’re in a critical situation.” So I talked about our position clearly and directly. The bottom line was, “Realistically, when we begin a new fiscal year, the church will be at this financial position, and the congregation will determine the level of ministry. And that’s okay. God hasn’t left us, and I have no intention of leaving unless you know something I don’t.” (Laughter)
I went on to say, “My sense of success isn’t attached to money; it’s attached to faithfulness.” That was important for people to hear, because people expect that when giving goes down, pastors yearn to leave. And the fear of desertion is a strong emotion. So I want to articulate the church’s vision, communicate the people’s feelings about the crisis, but then say, “However this comes out, we’ll still be here ministering together.”
Smith: Something I’d add about communicating publicly during a crisis is to wait until you have the facts. The Sunday in July after I found out we had a problem, I didn’t say anything. By the end of the summer, I had an idea of our debt. By early September our leadership was working on a strategy. Not until October could I write a newsletter article for the congregation with full details.
Leadership: What did you say in that article?
Smith: I affirmed the generosity of the benefactor and the diligence of the building committee. Then I said we’d received word that the generous gift would have to be capped, and this meant it would cost over $600,000 to complete the project. I admitted I’d felt anger, fear, and the temptation to blame others. But now, I said, I’m ready to move to the next stage: finding the Lord’s solution. Finally, I strongly urged people to attend a Sunday meeting where the financial realities would be explained in detail.
Rhoden: To me, the timing of when you say something publicly is important. If I stand up and speak during the announcements, it’s heard on one level. But if what I say is part of the sermon, it has a higher value. So I spoke about the crisis right before I preached. I’d say, “I’m going to talk to you for just a few moments as family.” Why take the lowest part of the service to say what is important?
Leadership: Your approach also places whatever you say in a spiritual context.
Rhoden: Right. It says, “We’re not talking about mere business, folks. We’re talking about the kingdom.” We elevate what we say by when and how we say it.
But I also think it’s important to resist the temptation to let the crisis enter all your preaching. I really felt a tension: Am I going to preach out of this pressure I’m feeling, or am I going to preach out of God’s anointing?
Sturtz: In retrospect, I would change the way I described the problem. I said repeatedly from the pulpit, “We don’t have a financial problem; we have a spiritual problem. If our people were as spiritually committed as they ought to be, we could easily do this.” I’d never say that again. That was a disaster.
Leadership: Because you accused people of lack of commitment?
Sturtz: Because it wasn’t altogether honest; we did have a financial problem. The leaders kept coming to me and saying, “You’ve got to tell them we need more money to pay our bills.”
I’d say, “That’s not what we need. We need more commitment. If our members would tithe, we could pay our bills.”
And they’d say to me, “Lloyd, you’re an idealist. The reality is we’re facing $10,000 in bills this month that we haven’t been able to pay.”
Leadership: So if the situation presented itself now, how would you talk about it?
Sturtz: I would be honest enough now, I think, to say, “Unless we come up with this amount of money, we’re not going to be able to meet the budget.” Then I would say, “I believe we will be able to pay this bill if the spiritual issue of commitment to give is taken care of.” I’d put the spiritual and financial together.
Rhoden: I made the mistake of talking about our financial problem every week. It would have been better to pick the first Sunday of the month and say, “I want to give you a report on how we did last month.” That way, people get a feeling there’s some relief. But if you talk about a corporate problem every week, you fatigue people, and soon the corporate problem overshadows personal needs, and ministry deteriorates.
Leadership: Besides the public presentations, what other aspects of ministry do you need to emphasize during a crisis?
Smith: I tried to anticipate people’s reactions and questions. “How did this happen? Is it anybody’s fault? Could there be some mistake?” The congregation seemed to experience denial and all the other stages of grief. In addition, people began to ask broader questions: “Where do we go from here? Does this building really represent us, or is it just one guy’s dream?”
As a result, I invested an enormous amount of time in answering phone calls, initiating conversations, and saying, “No, the way you heard it isn’t exactly the way it was.” There were so many stories going around, and I had to make sure the straight story was being heard.
Gay: I haven’t changed my time allocation. Crises of church discipline consume many days or weeks or months, but during a financial crisis, if I’m going to carry on the rest of ministry, I can’t focus just on that. Probably if you’d ask my financial chairman or board chairman, they might say “Art should be more concerned.” But deep down they have the attitude, and it’s been articulated to me, “You spend the time in the Word and head the ministry team. Share with us the other concerns, but we don’t want you bleeding off your energies toward this. Ministry has to go on. Otherwise we’ll have nothing here.”
Sturtz: I had to spend extra time deciding what kind of ministry we could afford. I looked at the bottom line and knew we were going to have to divest ourselves of some programs. I had to go to the church and say, “If the church is going to survive, we have to continue our youth program and our children’s program. Sunday school, worship, prayer, and Bible study have to continue. But we can do away with the concert series and the special speakers. And the school will have to go.”
It takes time and discussion and prayer to make that kind of decision, to honestly interpret the congregation’s willingness to support a program.
Smith: I had to monitor where my people were. Some lay people gave an immense amount of time and expertise to handle the problem, and I got concerned they might burn out. Other people seemed not even in touch with what was going on, and so I’d say, “Wouldn’t you like to get involved, in prayer and in offering constructive alternatives So I spent time either calming people down or waking them up.
Rhoden: I found myself doing a lot of damage control, trying to deal with people’s feelings. Someone would call and say, “I’m upset about the way this has been handled,” and I’d get drawn into that.
Some ugly things were said about “supporting his vision,” and I had to work through those.
Sturtz: You hear some amazing stories. For example, “Lloyd’s building a monument to himself.”
Leadership: How do you deal with a charge like that?
Sturtz: Smile and say, “Boy, if you ever get the chance to build a monument for yourself, I hope you get to go through what I’m going through.” (Laughter)
Leadership: What are the temptations for a pastor in the midst of a financial crisis?
Gay: To cut and run, to sell used cars.
Rhoden: Oh, yes. I saw what the situation was doing to my family, and I thought, I don’t need this. Let somebody else deal with it. But that would have been reacting rather than responding.
Sturtz: Another temptation is to let anger build. When that member decided to put the gift in a will, I felt angry and frustrated. I thought we had been shafted.
Rhoden: It’s a temptation during crisis to become a fixer rather than a builder. As a pastor, you’re the builder; you’re responsible for the long haul. But when a money crunch comes, you want to put a Band-Aid on the situation.
Looking back at our “Day of Victory,” I realize I was trying to fix the problem in a hurry. If I could do it over, I would say, “Folks, we owe a lot of money. We’re not going to fix this in one Sunday. It’s going to take a process, and we’re going to build over time until we come out of this.”
Another example of “fixing” things is that we stopped putting out a weekly bulletin. People came one Sunday, and there was no bulletin. I had to explain, “There wasn’t enough money for it.” I would never do that again. That creates such a strong negative statement, and we were saving something like $13. But in a crisis, all you can think of is solving a problem rather than making the best decision for the long haul.
Smith: I know what you’re saying, but at times you’re forced to apply some Band-Aids. With only a few days’ warning, we had to draft a lean budget for the bank to examine before it would extend a line of credit. It had zeros for certain staff people. We had warned them that might happen, but we didn’t have time to give them official notice. Later, one associate resigned and then de-resigned in the midst of this. When you have situations like that, you have to do a lot of extra mustard plastering. I had to major in seventeen-minute conversations, which usually began, “Pastor, I’ve got a concern.”
Is that putting on Band-Aids? It’s not just damage control; it’s ministry.
Sturtz: I faced another temptation because I felt guilty. If I had not been interested in reaching the community, in helping the church grow, we would never have needed the building. I wondered, Are you sure you heard the Lord correctly when he said to build? I felt so guilty about it that finally I went to a psychologist friend and said, “I’m dying inside. Something’s wrong with me. Talk to me.” We talked for hours, and I finally realized I wouldn’t do anything differently were I doing it over again. I’d want the money in the bank before I turned a spade of dirt, but I believe in people. I believe they want the church to grow and to do the ministry of the Lord.
But it took me a while to get there. There were times when I considered buying a $2 million keyman insurance policy and doing away with myself to get the church out of its crisis. I know I could never have gone through with my intentions. But there were times I contemplated that, because I hurt so much for the congregation and felt so guilty.
Leadership: Now that you have some distance from that situation, do you think accepting blame was a realistic assessment? Did the congregation hold you responsible?
Sturtz: No the congregation never blamed me.
Leadership: Even if a pastor has no responsibility for the crisis, how much is the pastor responsible for getting the church out of it?
Gay: You want an honest answer? Inside the gut of every pastor is the feeling that if he’s good at what he does, there will be enough resources to carry on the work of the church. It’s based on the old saying, “If you do God’s work in God’s way, you’ll never lack God’s supply.” But what happens is that when you don’t see God’s supply, you think you must not be doing God’s work in God’s way. Yet I see people ministering in the middle of Chicago and in South India who do God’s business in God’s way and yet have no resources, financially speaking.
My responsibility as a pastor is to nurture a climate in which people can free their resources to support God’s work. I do that primarily through teaching the Word of God so that conviction- internal motivation by the Holy Spirit-takes place, rather than external motivation.
Sturtz: In the United Methodist Church we’re ordained to “Word, Order, and Sacrament.” We stress the Word and the sacraments, but the responsibility for order, administration, also comes to the pastor. So when something goes wrong, for whatever reason, it’s the old Harry Truman statement: “The buck stops here.”
Leadership: During the money crunch, what gave you hope?
Sturtz: In the midst of the crisis, friends and colleagues would come by. Some would drive a couple of hundred miles just to say, “We want to take you to lunch; we want to pray with you.” And that made it possible for me to put my arm around people in the congregation and pray with them.
Rhoden: Adversity has a way of bringing out optimism in some people. Both of my parents were killed when I was two; a drunk ran over them. I don’t have any brothers and sisters, and my grandmother brought me up in below-poverty-line conditions. But she always told me, “God loves you and will be with you. Don’t measure who you are as a person by your outward circumstances.” I’ve never forgotten that. During the worst of our situation, something inside didn’t have time to give them of ficial notice. Later, one associate resigned and then de-resigned in the midst of this. When you have situations like that, you have to do a lot of extra mustard plastering. I had to major in seventeen-minute conversations, which usually began, “Pastor, I’ve got a concern.”
Is that putting on Band-Aids? It’s not just damage control; it’s ministry.
Sturtz: I faced another temptation because I felt guilty. If I had not been interested in reaching the community, in helping the church grow, we would never have needed the building. I wondered, Are you sure you heard the Lord correctly when he said to build? I felt so guilty about it that finally I went to a psychologist friend and said, “I’m dying inside. Something’s wrong with me. Talk to me.” We talked for hours, and I finally realized I wouldn’t do anything differently were I doing it over again. I’d want the money in the bank before I turned a spade of dirt, but I believe in people. I believe they want the church to grow and to do the ministry of the Lord.
But it took me a while to get there. There were times when I considered buying a $2 million keyman insurance policy and doing away with myself to get the church out of its crisis. I know I could never have gone through with my intentions. But there were times I contemplated that, because I hurt so much for the congregation and felt so guilty.
Leadership: Now that you have some distance from that situation, do you think accepting blame was a realistic assessment? Did the congregation hold you responsible?
Sturtz: No the congregation never blamed me.
Leadership: Even if a pastor has no responsibility for the crisis, how much is the pastor responsible for getting the church out of it?
Gay: You want an honest answer? Inside the gut of every pastor is the feeling that if he’s good at what he does, there will be enough resources to carry on the work of the church. It’s based on the old saying, “If you do God’s work in God’s way, you’ll never lack God’s supply.” But what happens is that when you don’t see God’s supply, you think you must not be doing God’s work in God’s way. Yet I see people ministering in the middle of Chicago and in South India who do God’s business in God’s way and yet have no resources, financially speaking.
My responsibility as a pastor is to nurture a climate in which people can free their resources to support God’s work. I do that primarily through teaching the Word of God so that conviction- internal motivation by the Holy Spirit-takes place, rather than external motivation.
Sturtz: In the United Methodist Church we’re ordained to “Word, Order, and Sacrament.” We stress the Word and the sacraments, but the responsibility for order, administration, also comes to the pastor. So when something goes wrong, for whatever reason, it’s the old Harry Truman statement: “The buck stops here.”
Leadership: During the money crunch, what gave you hope?
Sturtz: In the midst of the crisis, friends and colleagues would come by. Some would drive a couple of hundred miles just to say, “We want to take you to lunch; we want to pray with you.” And that made it possible for me to put my arm around people in the congregation and pray with them.
Rhoden: Adversity has a way of bringing out optimism in some people. Both of my parents were killed when I was two; a drunk ran over them. I don’t have any brothers and sisters, and my grandmother brought me up in below-poverty-line conditions. But she always told me, “God loves you and will be with you. Don’t measure who you are as a person by your outward circumstances.” I’ve never forgotten that. During the worst of our situation, something inside said, God is sovereign. It’s bad, and I don’t know if it’ll ever get better, but I think it will, and I’m gonna keep on going.
Gay: I ask myself, What is this self-pity that says I have to have funding at a certain level or feedback that I’m successful? Maybe good theology does result in good psychology after all.
Leadership: What do you wish you’d known going into the crisis that you know now?
Smith: I would like to have known it was going to happen, to have a few months’ lead time to soften the impact. But when I look back, I realize the Lord was preparing us spiritually for some of this, tuning us to be responsive to him.
Gay: That crisis is part of life. If I presume to be an undershepherd, why should my experience be different than the Chief Shepherd’s, whose life was a series of crises? I expect the current crisis to pass at some point if God so wills. And I expect another period of crisis to occur entirely beyond my ability to imagine it. Life is like that.
Sturtz: I would like to have grasped going in what my colleagues reaffirmed for me: You are not in control, Lloyd, but God is, and you can trust him.
Maybe I also needed to know the faithfulness of the congregation. Had I looked at what they had done previously, I could have seen they weren’t going to desert me.
Rhoden: It’s important to keep in mind that crisis is not all there is. That’s hard to do when you’re in the middle of one.
Gay: Right; crisis is not where we dwell. It’s a great privilege to be part of the fellowship I serve.
In preparation for our discussion today, I tried to recall past difficulties, and though we’ve had some, I had trouble remembering the details. The painful situations are overshadowed by recollections of ministry. Maybe I have the spiritual gift of amnesia. (Laughter)
Leadership: Are there any benefits from a time of shortage?
Gay: After the acrimony of the business meeting a few weeks ago, people began to come to prayer time. Our prayer meetings have been better than they’ve been in the last ten years, because people realize prayer’s the only answer. I’ve been praying to the Lord for years, “Do whatever you need to do to get people to pray.” If it’s taken this situation to bring it about, then I accept what’s happening. Crisis causes people to be the most spiritual they’ve ever been.
In my own life, each of the crises through which our church has gone has made me dig deeply into the only thing I have, and that’s my call from the Holy Spirit. When I was a kid, 7 or 8 years old in LaSalle Street Church in Chicago, I committed myself to serve in the pastorate. In every crisis I’ve dug deeply on that, and I’ve found that call to lead a church to be substantial and secure.
Copyright © 1989 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
