Speaking into the Meltdown

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and interim president of Denver Seminary.

Recently, I was invited to a breakfast meeting for financial executives where two world-class economists offered their analysis of the global economic crisis. The presentations—mostly statistics about bailouts, indexes and averages—was over (way over!) my head.

Everyone else at my table appeared to comprehend what was being said, so I pretended I did too, nodding my head at appropriate places and furiously taking notes.

What was clear, even to me, was the larger message the speakers were trying to convey: uncertainty. This much was abundantly clear: no one can say with confidence what’s going to happen on Wall Street or Main Street in the foreseeable future. The solutions being offered as a way out of this recession or depression (call it what you will) are nothing more than educated guesses. Bottom line: don’t bet on anything. Keep your seat belt tightened and don’t quit your day job … if you’ve got one.

One of the speakers suddenly stopped talking statistical language and in plain English offered some observations. Here in bulleted form is what I heard him saying:

There is all kinds of evidence that this economic tsunami (the speaker’s word) is radically changing the ways Americans think about money and the ways it has defined our modern way of life.
We’re seeing an economic paradigm shift in the way people are beginning to save rather than spend.
New and cautious views of the meaning of career, risk, wealth, success, and personal satisfaction are emerging.
Trust, the “glue” that holds financial systems together, has been almost destroyed.
Economically speaking, the world has gone from peak to trough overnight, and we are likely to remain in that trough for several years. Better to plan with that long range view in mind than keep getting disappointed by every quarterly business report.

As the speaker ventured these speculations, the audience seemed to freeze, each person appearing to turn inward as if to ask: Where am I in the midst of all of this? What do these new realities mean to me and to my loved-ones?

A new kind of leadership?

My own reaction was to wonder if we are not in a profoundly biblical moment: a time when God is seeking the attention of people and when he wishes to raise up a new kind of leadership with a different kind of message.

For forty years or so, leadership in my branch of the Christian movement has been characterized by entrepreneurial calls to vision, to the dream of world-changing, to the possibilities of large organizations with global reach via technology and marketing skill. Some of those leaders, whom I admire, have achieved spectacularly, and I am grateful to know them.

Borrowing a term, I see these past forty years as the period of boomer leadership during which there has been an impressive effort to redefine and recast the church. These leaders have given us, among other things, mega-congregations, global TV “ministries,” and books (including many New York Times best sellers). Someday history, maybe God himself, will reveal whether this was a lasting or merely a temporary contribution to the centuries-long Christian movement.

I observed how boomer Christian leaders tried to respond initially to the downturn in our economy. Their message, up until very recently, was one based on the hope that the world was merely experiencing a temporary economic hiccup and that everyone should keep on financially supporting his or her favorite (usually meaning their) Christian organizations.

One TV preacher spoke on the world situation as if he’d figured it all out and then ended his sermon with an invitation to his audience to sign up for a cruise to … (well, I won’t say where, but it is an expensive destination).

Now things are changing. Once-optimistic leaders representing Christian colleges, seminaries, parachurch ministries, and congregations are now saying this economic downturn may not be temporary and that it could in fact threaten the existence of many of these organizations.

Much of this has surprised me. For some time I have tried to imagine (and predict) the necessary changes soon to be made by all Christian institutions and churches because of new technology and social networking. But I wasn’t smart enough to realize that the changes I anticipated might be driven more by economic pressures than innovations.

It’s here that I want to dive in deep and risk a personal opinion or two and to provoke fresh thinking.

As I listen to leaders, I have yet to hear in the midst of all the organizational pain what I believe is a greater question than just institutional survival: Is God saying something in all of this international mess that a bunch of us might not be able to hear in any other way?

If we are a part of a biblical movement that believes God is continuously present and always speaking, then what is he saying now?

Is it time for a prophet?

Does the Bible have much to say about economic meltdowns, times when lots of people lose everything? Yes. They might not be defined in the same way as today’s recessions and depressions. Rather they took the form of famines, plagues, natural disasters, and the consequences of military conquest. People suffered and died during these biblical meltdowns. There were no governmental safety nets.

In virtually every meltdown in Bible times, God shows up speaking through the voice of a prophet. In fact it appears as if meltdowns and prophets go together, and sometimes it’s hard to figure out which one leads to the other.

Prophets usually came not from the center of society but from the edge. They were beholden to no one. They cared little about personal safety, reputation, or speaker-fees. They spoke with a gift of heavenly discernment, people who had insight into the meaning of contemporary events.

Sometimes they came across as rather angry people who hated human exploitation and abuse, and much of the time, their view of sin and evil had a lot to do with economics and the misuse of power.

Most prophets did not live long. More often than not, they were killed in the line of duty. The words of Ahab regarding the prophet, Micaiah, suggest why: “I hate him,” Ahab said, “because he never prophesies anything good about me.”

So allow me a speculative question. What if we are suddenly in need of a little less boomer leadership (no offense intended) and a little more of this prophetic leadership?

Where to turn your eyes

During biblical versions of meltdown, we see that fear and despair were the dominant moods. The widow of Zarephath, amid a devastating famine, describes her condition to Elijah: “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”

While few in today’s western world find themselves as bad off as the widow, we need to be aware that millions in other parts of the world might find her comments quite descriptive of their situation.

Could the widow’s experience ever become our experience? We’re foolish not to contemplate this possibility. Newspaper articles this week describe churches in California flooded with calls from people asking for assistance on their mortgage payments and help in finding food.

If the widow seems an innocent victim of meltdown, the onetime king of Israel, Ahab, (not a nice man) represents a different side of the same event. Having chosen a life that was violently antithetical to the laws of Israel’s God, he attracted heaven’s judgment.

The prophet denounces him: “As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.”

Overnight, as Elijah prophesied, everything in Ahab’s world underwent meltdown. One would have wished that he quickly repented and gotten on with a more God-friendly life. But he chose to defy Elijah’s message, and the result: everyone suffered. The widow of Zarephath is one example.

Instead of repenting, Ahab focused his energies on trying to locate Elijah and kill him … as if the prophet, not Ahab, was to blame for the meltdown.

Ahab reminds me of those who react to meltdowns by going on witch hunts so that others can be blamed—the other political party, or the bankers, or the oil nations, for example—for what has happened.

While there is always an appropriate moment to identify those who have walked outside the law, the first search ought always to begin with oneself. Prophets believed this. That means that I start with questions such as: how have I been complicit in the economic disorder which rages. Have I lived beyond my personal means? Have I incurred irresponsible debt? Have I lived indulgently, a lifestyle directed more by culture than by the influence of Christ? Has my life’s purpose been more about acquiring stuff than living a life of generosity and compassion? What bothersome questions these are!

Military sieges were usually an attempt to cause an economic meltdown of a city. The assumption was that people deprived of food and water would finally capitulate when the city’s infrastructure failed to provide the essentials. Desperation overcomes Jerusalem in the time of King Jehoshaphat when it is besieged by the armies of Moab and Ammon.

In this case, we get a rather instructive view of spiritual leadership within a meltdown.

In a public prayer, Jehoshaphat speaks frankly about the effects of the siege: “If calamity comes upon us, whether the sword of judgment, or plague, or famine, we will stand in your presence before this temple that bears your Name and will cry out to you in our distress, and you will hear us and save us.” Later in the same prayer, he says, “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.”

Jehoshaphat prays like a broken man who knows that Jerusalem’s salvation can come only through direct deliverance from the God of Israel. Unlike the widow of Zarephath who prepared to surrender to events larger then herself and die, Jehoshaphat prays with the conviction that God will hear and act.

When I survey the behaviors of people in biblical meltdowns, my favorite is always the story of the four lepers in the Samaria famine who in their final moments of starvation decided to surrender themselves to the Arameans whose choke-hold strategy was causing such misery.

“What have we got to lose?” they reason among themselves. “Stay here and we surely die, one of them says; cast ourselves on the mercy of the enemy, and we might live” (my translation).

When the lepers reach the enemy position, they were surprised to discover that the army had retreated and left abundant stores of food and accessories behind.

Here’s where the story of the lepers turns noble. Although their first instinct was to gorge themselves, one of them suddenly said, “We’re not doing right. This is a day of good news, and we are keeping it to ourselves.” Within hours a population near death was rescued because of the lepers’ generous thinking.

This reminds me of an important principle in meltdowns. In the worst of times, we are likely to see a lot of goodness arise in the hearts of some people. While bad people usually get worse during a meltdown, good people often get “gooder.”

Do meltdowns have meaning?

When the Bible describes meltdowns, it suggests there are causes or lessons worth exploring. This is part of the task of the prophetic leader. Face the why-questions. What has led to this moment? Where did we all get derailed? What sins need to be confessed? What wrongs need to be made right?

Some modern prophet might want to ask us if today’s meltdown is really the result of a few greedy Wall Street financiers. Or do we all share a general responsibility for having bought into an economic system that has allowed some to become obscenely rich while allowing many others to grow obscenely poor.

For too many years there has been silence among Christians in my tradition regarding the flaws and excesses of the capitalistic system. To even hint in many of my circles that there might be aspects of our economic way of life that are unbiblical would be for most pastors an invitation to job-loss overnight. We have snuffed out intelligent and searching discourse by saying with a dash of humor that capitalism has flaws but it’s way ahead of any other system. That does it. It usually stops conversation.

But now that many people have been “victimized” by the greed and dishonesty in the system, perhaps there may be room to get the conversation going and ask some of these formerly-resisted questions: How did we allow ourselves to mix Christian faith and Wall Street economics so completely that we find it difficult to tell where one leaves off and the other takes up?

Today’s meltdown may actually force us to deal with the justice question: is it truly Christian for some to live so well while others—not just lazy people—live so unwell.

Justice has not been well-taught subject for most of us … until now, possibly.

As one preacher out of many, I can tell you of the times when the mere use of the word justice in a sermon invited angry accusations of being “liberal” (a horrible word for many) or even un-American.

But let any of us see our retirement accounts evaporating, or our jobs being dissolved, or a few flying corporate jets while the rest of us go Greyhound, and suddenly the word justice takes on fresh and very personal meaning.

The biggest question

Maybe the most important question is this one: When things melt down, what do we do for the many people who begin to search for something that can offer them a better way of living, a reliable hope?

Some are open to a word from God. One might dream that such people would hear of a Jesus who never let money or stuff or status define him. One might be tempted to brood on the significance of His words, “The son of man (the prince of Heaven) does not have a place to lay his head.”

In these days of economic distress we will no doubt hear much about a historic 19th century depression that hit in 1859. America and much of Europe was then plunged into fiscal chaos. Unemployment in American cities neared 25 percent.

While not having a complete economic stimulus plan, a man named Jeremiah Lanphier one day got a simple idea. Why not, he asked, get some people together each day at noon to pray? Lanphier was the key guy who got churches up and down the east coast to open their doors at midday and admit people for the purposes of prayer. And by the millions—in America and in Europe—people began to pray.

I doubt that Lanphier ever got a scintilla of credit for the eventual economic recovery of the nations. But, on the other hand, he originated a spiritual bailout.

All I know is that what became known as the Noontime Prayer Revival touched several generations before its influence ended. But it took a fiscal meltdown to get it off the ground.

Jeremiah, where are you when we need you?

A fuller version of this article appears in the Spring 2009 issue of Leadership. To subscribe, visit: www.leadershipjournal.net/subscribe