SURVIVING A “Perfect Storm” In A Local Church

Last week I wrote about perfect storms in churches.

In meteorology, a perfect storm is a rare event in which a combination of circumstances creates an unusually disastrous weather event.

In ecclesiology (churches), a perfect storm occurs when one¹ or more conflict scenarios occur, typically in the unhealthy atmosphere (culture or congregational system) of a church family which was ripe for conflict.

The two key factors here are: (1) What is the condition of the underlying “soil,” “weather,” “atmosphere” – or more commonly we would say, the culture or the system? In most of these situations, no one has given serious attention to the church’s relational health for a long time.

(2) How is the conflict itself handled? Is it dealt with quickly, carefully, graciously and prayerfully, or is it repeatedly dismissed by the church’s leaders until the gale becomes a raging hurricane?²

Here’s a formula: An unhealthy church environment + an unfortunate incident + an unhelpful reaction = a perfect storm.

Last week I introduced the subject of perfect storms in churches. Next week I’ll write about how the grace of God shows up in the wake of perfect storms.  I’ll conclude this series with a post on preventing perfect storms from forming in your congregation.

Today we’ll focus on surviving perfect storms, not necessarily with your position or reputation intact (for that would be promising too much), but with your conscience intact because you have done the right thing in a difficult situation.  The following plan is based on what I wrote in Heaven Help Our Church! (improved and renamed: Thriving In A Troubled Church).

(1) Get the big picture. In the midst of conflict, it’s easy to get tunnel vision, seeing only the conflict which is right in front of our faces: that old “so and so” on the board or that difficult person in the kitchen or the nursery. The big picture shows us that the Devil is alive and well and still employing his favorite strategies: attacking the church’s unity (I Peter 5:8, Galatians 5:15, II Corinthians 2:5-11) or its purity (I Corinthians 5 & 6). As I wrote in 2013, “Your church has become a battleground in a cosmic struggle. ‘Winning’ is not about defeating your opponents, it’s about glorifying God.”

(2) Determine to do right. In the midst of a perfect storm it’s often tempting to “do wrong in order to get a chance to do right.”  Putting it oh-so-simply: Don’t do it. “Do right, if the stars fall.” Don’t ever stoop to fighting with the weapons of the world like lying, gossip, alliances, power-plays, exaggeration, etc. See II Corinthians 10:3,4a.

(3) Determine to grow. You can continue to grow into Christlikeness even in the midst of a perfect storm.  But on the other hand, you don’t have to.  You can shrink as a Christian by responding to the trials of life – like perfect storms – with bad decisions instead of good ones. Keep studying the Bible, praying and making godly decisions over and over again and, by God’s grace, you’ll become a strong and beautiful child of God (James 1:2-4).

(4) Pray like crazy. Please don’t tell me that “prayer works” as if it was some magic formula that moves the cosmos. Prayer is just talking. It’s God who works and the God who saved your soul is the one who created the universe and raised Jesus from the dead. He loves the churches Jesus died for. I believe that eternity will reveal that many churches were saved by obscure saints of God who prayed like crazy in light of statements like “…nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).

(5) Understand that good people do bad things. Boy do they ever! As I wrote about this thirteen years ago, I didn’t understand how true this is.  I grasped the part about the bad things that people do, describing them in the Heaven Help Our Church! book and these posts: When Good People Do Bad Things, When Good People Do Bad Things, Part Two and When Good People Do Bad Things, Part Three.

What I didn’t understand so well back then was that good people, godly people, do all these tacky things in times of distress, great pressure, complicated family and/or church situations, spiritual backsliding, etc. and then – by the grace of our wonderful God – are brought back, to the place of spiritual health and forward, to a deeper, sweeter, more humble and useable place of spiritual maturity.

Some of the people whom you can hardly stand to make eye contact with today will amaze you with their maturity in years to come. They will give you big hugs and you won’t remember what your conflict was about.

(6) Understand the challenge of conflict. This is a big subject of course, but here’s the bottom line: we all come into our Christian lives with “conflict styles” which we derived from our temperaments, our families, our hometowns and our home churches. Most of these styles are not good. I can tell you however, that all of us – by God’s Ephesians 3:14-21 resurrection power – can get at least reasonably proficient at handling conflict well. Is it fun and pleasant? No. But it’s doable by the grace of God.  Wise church leaders invest considerable time and effort into helping their people become good at handling conflict in God-honoring ways and they train them proactively, during peaceful times, not after perfect storms have hit their churches.

(7) Take careful action. I would put the same degree of emphasis on the words “careful” and “action.” The type of actions you take in the midst of a perfect storm depend on who you are and what kind of role you play in your church. Depending on many circumstances, actions God may want you to take include: submitting to authority, rebuking a gossip, forgiving those who have hurt you, going to a brother to explore the possibility of a damaged relationship (as in Matthew 5:23-26), confronting a brother’s bad behavior (as in Matthew 18:15-20 or Galatians 6:1-4), asking a board member to step down from his position, finding a new church home, etc.

My point here is that while we are all called to pray and do right, some of us, at certain times, are called upon by God to take loving but difficult actions which can help resolve problems. It’s never a sin to pray, but sometimes it’s a sin to just pray.

(8) Say goodbye with grace. There’s no way around it: Sometimes the Kingdom of God and the Glory of God are best served by two Christians – or two groups of Christians – going their separate ways (see Paul and Barnabas in Acts 15:36-40 for the classic case study). We never have to sin. We never have to contend with each other with malice (Ephesians 4:25-5:2). But sometimes, continuing to work together is just not going to work. When these situations are handled well, God is glorified and His work is multiplied.  By the end of this storm, you may need to find another church, your friends may need to find another church, or someone may even have to organize a new church, but it doesn’t have to be done with strife and scandal.

Here’s the conclusion of the matter: If you are a regenerated (Titus 3:5, John 3:3-8) Christian, you can survive and thrive right through the chaos of a perfect storm.

Next Week: I look forward to writing about how the Grace of God shows up in the wake of perfect storms.

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¹Last week I said “two or more conflict scenarios” but I’ve realized that it only takes one conflict in some situations, especially if the “soil” is unusually unhealthy and the leadership handles the situation poorly.

²I’m not writing about it as part of this series, but I do have two posts for church leaders during perfect storms.  If you’re a church leader, you might want to check out Leadership In A Crisis: Ten Ways To Succeed and Leadership In A Crisis: Ten Ways To Succeed, Part Two . The only thing I would add to the two posts would be the great counsel of Michael Hare (When Church Conflict Happens) that it’s acceptable to work on the individual components of a conflict matrix in just about any order; the crucial thing is for the church leaders to address these individual problems with prayerful concern, as opposed to ignoring them, and yes, you can work on several of them at the same time.