Ministry means never knowing what the next phone call will bring. A complaint? A word of praise? Or soliciting? News of a birth, wedding plans, or a death? You never know. That’s the nature of church ministry. We recently had two ministry-defining calls back to back.
One day I switched on my cell phone, and it immediately buzzed with an incoming text message. It was from my wife: SAD NEWS ABOUT MISSIONARIES. CALL.
That’s when I learned that two of our long-term members, Warren and Donna Pett, had been shot to death in Uganda. I was stunned. Just a few weeks earlier Warren and Donna had stood before the congregation, explaining what they would be doing during their next term in Africa, and then we prayed for them.
A few days later, we gathered for their funeral, the two mahogany coffins shipped from Africa at the front of the church. Two coffins for two 49-year-old people. It is always shocking with more than one casket at a funeral. Usually it’s because of an auto accident. This time it was because some utterly wicked people aimed their guns at two of the nicest people I’ve ever meet.
In some ways a church can never prepare for such a moment. Every tragedy is different. The people involved are different, their connections in the church are unique.
In other ways, however, the church is the one place where we prepare people for the unexpected but inevitable moments of tragedy.
The real story Since I was out of town when the news came, it fell to other leaders to react and respond. One pastor went immediately to spend time with the children and parents of the slain couple. Our worship leader worked with several of us to determine how to handle this in Sunday’s worship service; we all decided that night to change what had been planned in order to minister to a shocked congregation.
Another staff person became the point person for the phone calls coming from the newspapers, tv stations, and because of the interest in the story, the national media.
Warren and Donna were local farmers and much loved as neighbors, friends, and members in our church. They were involved in our youth ministry, frequently having groups out to their farm. But everyone was surprised when, about ten years ago, they said they wanted to go overseas as missionaries.
We all know that dealing with grief and helping people live in the house of mourning is as important as anything else that we do in ministry.
The local newspaper ran an article about these farmers from Mukwonago who were going to Africa. In Uganda Donna and Warren taught agricultural and other practical skills at a school in a remote region. Talking to a friend one day, Warren held up a handful of dust and said, “It’s not like farming back in Wisconsin.”
Late one night, seven men in military fatigues with guns came to the compound. They set a truck on fire, set some huts on fire, and went looking for the American missionaries. One of the Ugandan students tried to warn the Petts to leave and was shot and killed. Other students fled into the bush with bullets screaming past them. The men set the Petts’s house on fire and, as soon as they emerged, shot them dead.
In the days leading up to the funeral, the media seemed to be most interested in the Petts’s personal story. Who were these people? Why did they go? Why is the reaction in the community so strong? These were important questions. The best questions. And I was glad that the media chose to take an interest in the personal side of the story rather than the political. This was not primarily a story about a crime. The real story was about two people living and dying for their faith.
More than words The funeral service was full and long, but it was one of those occasions where you know much should be said, and so it would not be rushed.
A representative of their mission gave the facts of the events leading up to their violent deaths. The mourners at the funeral needed to hear the story, as difficult as it was. One of the difficult ambiguities at the funeral was that the investigation into the parties responsible had just begun. Was this an intertribal jealousy? A robbery? A religious extremist group? We still don’t know for sure.
At many funerals there are seemingly contradictory spiritual and emotional issues at hand. Grieve the loss, celebrate the life, offer hope in the resurrection. But when the tragedy is the result of a wanton and wicked act, there is this added dimension: outrage. Appropriate, necessary outrage. But on this day, I think because of the gracious personalities of the Petts, the focus was on them, and on falling on the mercy of God.
What nobody knew that day is that just three weeks later, we would get another shocking phone call. This time it was about a young woman named Michelle Witmer, who served with the Wisconsin National Guard and who was called up for active duty in Iraq. Her Humvee had come under attack, and Michelle was killed.
Love’s rapid response Everybody in the community knew of 20-year-old Michelle, because she, her twin sister, and another sister had all been sent to Iraq at the same time. They were all together in the worship service the day, several months earlier, when we prayed for the Guard unit that was soon to be dispatched to the Middle East.
SO MANY QUESTIONS:
The media wanted to know why slain missionaries Warren and Donne Pett decided to leave Wisconsin for Uganda. Their church was best equipped to answer.
Their story, with a beautiful picture of the three sisters together, smiling the brightest smiles, had been featured in the newspapers. At the time it all seemed such a paradox: three young women, as close as sisters can be, dressed in military fatigues, ready for war.
Now, for our church, the cycle started again: preparing for a difficult funeral, walking with a grief-crushed family, responding to calls from news media from all over the country, dealing with the insult of violent death.
Again, a couple thousand people attended the funeral, including both Wisconsin senators, the governor, and lots of military leaders and personnel. It was a privilege to work with the liaisons from the military. They learned a lot about us as a church and how we mark the passing of a believer; we learned from them how heartbreaking is the loss of a comrade.
The family had had enough of media coverage, and so, with their permission, we provided a television feed that TV crews could tie into.
A family spokesperson and one of our pastors had helped facilitate some interviews in the days prior to the service, but there were no interviews on the day of the funeral.
In the weeks following the funeral, the surviving sisters struggled with whether to return to their units in Iraq. The Army gave them the option. This, too, drew national media attention. Emotions were running high because of their severe loss, and so, with their permission, one of our pastors discussed the delicate matter with an Army official and recommended the sisters consider returning to duty, but not in Iraq because the international media attention could turn them into high-profile targets. That was the decision they made, and many voices supported them in it.
Emergency preparedness We all know that dealing with grief and helping people live in the house of mourning is as important as anything else we do in ministry. We must teach our congregations this perspective on ministry. I was personally blessed, and I know the families who were grieving were tremendously blessed, to see dozens of people from the church respond to the huge need that suddenly came up after these tragedies. All these people knew that this is what a church family is for.
We need to know when the people in our churches are dealing not just with grief, but trauma as well. Grief is the normal reaction to a loss in life. It is what you face at the funeral for the grandmother who passed away in the nursing home, or when someone has lost a job, or someone’s divorce is finalized. Traumatic loss is different. Trauma is the experience of something so shocking, physically or psychologically, that it produces some kind of inner injury and affects the person’s ability to function in normal ways. It is when the normal schemas of our lives are suddenly broken, like an earthquake in the night.
What are some of the things we can do in the church to be prepared for these moments?
1. Remember that ministry in response to the unexpected is not an interruption. The more organized we get in the ministry and the more efficient we get in running the programs of the church, the greater the risk that we will leave no margin for the unexpected. And when a tragedy or an unanticipated need comes up, we consider it an interruption that somehow displaces the “really important things” we’re doing. But we need to be organized for the unexpected.
Our field of work is life itself. When events like these arise, they become the most important thing. People want to know: how should we respond, how can we help?
If we don’t adapt immediately to the issues that suddenly come up, and instead stick with the topics we planned to deal with three weeks ago, we will not be in the eye of the storm, which is where most good ministry takes place.
2. Grief work is a central work of the church. Life and death are two items in the church’s core curriculum. We talk with people about preparing for the end, and we have to believe that when tragedy actually strikes that is when the real work begins.
I was teaching a seminar on grief in Kenya earlier this year, and the question of burial came up. I asked the hundred people in the room about their burial customs. What came out was a remarkable array of practices.
One person said, “In our tribe we bring the dead person’s body into the house for a period of several days.” Another said, “In our tribe we just bring the body out into the bush and leave it there as quickly as possible.” It was clear that there were two approaches: deal with death with a patient and deliberate ritual, or deal with death by forgetting about it as quickly as possible.
In the case of a tragedy that stuns a whole congregation, we should recognize that the days leading up to the funeral may include a series of steps for people to deal with it. Our worship service the weekend before the funeral for the Petts, for instance, included a time of Communion, a healing reminder that we are bound together eternally in Christ.
3. Help leaders develop a “minuteman mentality.” When a church’s staff and other leaders know that responding at a time of tragedy is of the utmost importance—and other things can wait—then that allows for flexibility that will help a church respond well to a complex and tragic situation.
The “minutemen” in these unexpected tragedies included receptionists handling the deluge of phone calls, audio and video technicians who provided extra feeds for news media (including a live audio feed of the Pett funeral for Uganda radio), and ministry staff who skipped days off (without being asked).
4. Spread the task around. People get weary very quickly when dealing with a tragedy. The burden often falls on one or two people. Others around need to be ready to pitch in and help out, to allow the person working the situation to deal personally with a tragedy.
This should be the body of Christ at work. Some can organize facility needs, others the food needs, someone else the service itself and the needs of the grieving family. No one person should be called upon to carry a whole body through a tragedy.
5. Have plans to communicate clearly in a rapidly unfolding crisis. When a tragedy occurs, the phones will start to ring, and people will phone each other looking for information. It is very helpful for someone at the church to become the point person for information. That helps keep the story from getting distorted.
A few years ago, I had a biking accident, landed on my head, was knocked unconscious, and sustained a severe concussion. The person who found me in the street happened to be a church member who had a cell phone and called the ambulance and then the church. Within minutes a wide network of people from the church phoned each other. They were praying for me before the paramedics loaded me into the ambulance. But by the next morning the stories were spreading that (1) I hit a car, (2) a car hit me, (3) that I had been on a motorcycle, and (4) that a deer had run into me on my bicycle
I rather liked these dramatic scenarios, but actually my mishap was simply caused by a grabby front brake on a brand new bicycle.
It is important to keep the story straight, not just to satisfy people’s curiosity, but because they really care. In this case, we changed the message on the church answering service, we put a special message on the church website, and the staff knew which person would always have the latest information.
A friend of mine did a research project in which he interviewed hundreds of people and asked them what their most spiritually formative experience was. One answer was mentioned more than any other. It was not the pastor of the church they grew up in. It was not a faithful Christian parent. It was a crisis. If that is true for individuals, it is no doubt also true for whole congregations.
For our congregation the most significant growth times have been when we were dealing with tragedy. In those moments you naturally push to the margins everything that is marginal. It is a time when you are humbled. It is a time when you are reminded just how weak and vulnerable you are.
There are lessons to be learned in the house of mourning that aren’t learned in the same way anywhere else.
Mel Lawrenz is pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
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