In the Chinese language, the symbol for the word “crisis” is actually the merging of two signs—one that means “danger” and the other “opportunity.” That is a very apt picture of what a crisis is—a circumstance that has the potential to cripple the organization, create incredible chaos, and inflict enormous pain on many. But it also has the potential to free it from its previous limitations and usher in an assortment of new possibilities. Whether a crisis will be one or the other depends largely upon how we, as leaders, respond to it when it comes along.
Some crises we can see coming and, at some level, prepare for, like a hurricane forming in the ocean and barreling down on the coastal community in which we live. We can’t do anything to get it to change its track, but we can prepare for it in ways that will either mitigate the depth of its impact or enable us to respond quickly and constructively. But many crises are abrupt and unexpected in their nature, like a passageway that suddenly collapses and traps a group of miners underground, or an act of terrorism that is carried out without warning.
One of the realities of pastoral ministry is that those of us who serve in this capacity over the long haul will be asked to lead our congregations through numerous crises. A few may originate outside the congregation, like when the plant in town that employs a number of congregants announces layoffs that will drastically alter the church’s financial reality. But I’m convinced most will originate from within the congregation, like when a high-profile lay leader is caught in an affair or a staff member resigns in a disruptive fashion. But regardless of origin, a crisis places before us two equally available and credible options—danger and opportunity.
A crisis forces us to choose—either to manage it and try to move through it, or to find someone or something to blame. Often, we choose the latter because a crisis, by its very necessity, places us in uncharted territory where we’re not certain whether a particular action is going to be helpful. It is much easier to identify a scapegoat who can absolve us of feelings of incompetence or exempt us from the notion that, if things get worse, I’m somehow responsible. For many times crises are accompanied by feelings of “Gee, I should have seen this coming!” or “Why wasn’t I better prepared for this?” or “This will cause folks to think I’m inept or unqualified.” When those thoughts rattle around in our psyche, it’s easy to choose to play the blame game rather than embrace the opportunity for learning and growth embedded in the circumstance.
I’m convinced blame during a crisis is an attempt to liberate us from having to face feelings of failure or shame. We don’t want to deal with the psychological hit of believing we are in part responsible for what happened (maybe not for the fact it did happen, but for the fact it had the deep negative impact that it did), so we set up someone who can serve as a sacrificial lamb. We’re like the local, state, and federal authorities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina who pointed fingers at each other and said “they” were most responsible for people’s widespread and extended suffering.
One of the uniquenesses of internal local church crises is that many of them are fueled by gossip. If you were to perform an autopsy to determine the cause of your average church crisis, I’m convinced in most cases you’d find behind-the-scenes political maneuvering and gossip—the passing on of information in a way that furthers accusation and blame. If the community of God refused to gossip and opted to communicate in the way the Bible spells out, many crises would die out for lack of fuel. Gossip is so dangerous because it causes the leader to devote resources to putting out brush fires or responding to false alarms to where he/she doesn’t have the time or energy to address the primary issue.
Crises also generate a need for someone to step up and take control. During a crisis, we want a leader who will take charge and make the situation go away—or, at the very least, mitigate it in some way. But the level of control people long for during a crisis can be an incredible liability at other times. For leaders that are highly controlling are typically motivated by fear. They may appear quite confident and self-assured on the outside, but they’re like the Wizard of Oz—they don’t want anyone to get close enough to see that behind the curtain is a middle-aged old man who isn’t all that gifted or altogether sure how he came to find himself in that position.
Leaders that are controlling are typically addicted to power, for increased power is an antidote to fear. We believe power will keep the river of our private fears from overflowing its banks. But the downside of controlling leaders is that they get from those around them nothing more than the bare minimum—compliant responses that are void of creativity and imagination. Controlling leaders don’t get people’s focused energy and best thinking—they get rote, robotic efforts that are designed to do the bare minimum and nothing more.
I’m convinced that transparency in leadership is a valuable thing—that acknowledging our brokenness and owning our weaknesses births in the hearts of those around us a sense of assurance and trust. And it will perhaps convince them that they don’t need to be abnormally skilled, uniquely gifted, or mentally brilliant to effectively lead. All they need is an internal urge to make the world a better place and a willingness to jump into the fray without having a complete knowledge of what is going to be required of them and a willingness to learn and grow from the situations they encounter.