Editors, like pastors, see a lot of mail. Much of it-news releases about Animal Awareness Day or brochures about cordless pulpit telephones-doesn’t demand much time.
But other items we linger over: submissions by our cartoonists (tough work, but somebody has to do it . . .), and letters from our readers. We read every word of feedback and tabulate every response on the Reader Survey (see page 139).
A couple of issues ago, the survey included an open-ended question: What has been the worst crisis you’ve had in your ministry? The responses were eye-opening. I began asking the same question as I visited pastors.
Responses fell into four categories:
1. Organizational crises, usually congregational conflict or decline in attendance, giving, or both. Wrote one pastor: “My worst crises are periods of discouragement when I don’t know if the church will survive. And when my own vision wanes.”
Another pointed out that such crises are caused by both external and internal factors: “I’m trying to work with proud, insensitive leaders while dealing with my own pride.”
2. Personal crises, usually health or family problems.
“My worst crisis? Whom to marry after my wife died. I saw my ministry being affected because I was unmarried. In thirty-plus years, I’d never considered this situation. How does a Christian leader, over 55, go about it? I was suddenly in a wholly different world.”
Other pastors struggled with cancer, divorce, the loss of a child, whether through death or rebellion. “It took years to reestablish a sense of competence in ministry,” said one.
3. Career crises, such as being forced to resign or, sometimes equally agonizing, trying to decide when it’s time to leave even in the absence of hostilities.
One pastor is facing a tough decision: “Because of our church’s financial situation, I must either take a pay cut and find part-time employment or else recommend to the board that we cut back our program. I want to do what’s best for the church, but what is that?”
Another pastor wrote: “Perhaps most difficult of all things I face is a feeling of a lack of accomplishment.” The loss of motivation, in some cases, reaches crisis proportions. “It doesn’t seem to matter whether I prepare well for my sermons or not. Nothing happens.”
4. Parishioner crises, such as discovering someone in the church family has AIDS, is being abused, or has committed suicide.
“I just learned that the son of a family in the congregation raped the daughter of another family in the congregation,” said one pastor. “What do I do?”
Another said, “We’ve had five church couples divorce in the past four years. Our congregation is reeling.”
These categories help us sense the scope of the challenges in a pastor’s life. As veteran minister Alan Redpath 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.”
Another seasoned Christian leader has said that “some great crunch is almost inevitable in every pastor’s life. It would have been very helpful to me if, early in my ministry, I had known that and understood the diversity of emotional, psychological, and spiritual catastrophes.”
Some of the articles in this issue offer strategies for handling specific crises. But I’ve been reflecting on the common elements in any crisis. What effect does crisis, of any sort, have on a minister and a congregation?
Interestingly, though crises are certainly not sought, they at times do bring positive results. On the personal level, two sources will illustrate.
The Psalmist: “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Ps. 119:71).
And Thomas a Kempis: “It is good that we at times endure opposition and that we are evilly and untruly judged when our actions and intentions are good. Often such experiences promote humility and protect us from vainglory. For then we seek God’s witness in the heart.”
On the congregational level, while crisis will probably always carry a negative connotation, it’s good to remember that crisis often precedes a positive, critical breakthrough. I appreciate the following reflection by Episcopal rector William Tully, writing in the Washington Post:
“Combat veterans, recalling their careers, sound a lot like pastors reflecting on theirs: Hours (or days) of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.
“In church life the equivalent boredom is institutional maintenance-keeping a decent building together, worrying about the budget, raising money for mission work, and hiring and caring for a staff. The equivalents of terror are those electrifying spiritual breakthroughs in worship or preaching or pastoral care of parishioners. When such a moment comes, you just plain thank God. And there is hardly a neighborhood in America that doesn’t have a community of worshipers waiting for those powerful moments.”
Crises can reorder our lives, purify our motivations, and remind us again of the essence of ministry: To live honorably before God and to invite others to do the same.
Copyright © 1989 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
