Crisis Situations
Gary Gulbranson
All pastors live squarely on a fault line. The question is not if a crisis will come but when. Even though I can't schedule them, I can, like residents of San Francisco, learn to be prepared.
—Gary Gulbranson
The day I candidated at Glen Ellyn Bible Church, following the Sunday morning service, we were having lunch at the home of the chairman of the board of elders.
Suddenly, in the middle of the meal, the phone rang, and when our host returned, his face was pale.
He quickly gave us the facts: the son of one of the church families, a college-age man who had attended church that morning, had left the service early, gone home, and apparently taken his own life.
We dropped our forks and drove together to the grieving family's home. As others gave comfort to the family, I listened and avoided treading on their grief.
As the afternoon went on, my thoughts turned to the evening service. What I had planned to preach would now be out of place. This was a crisis not only for the immediate family but for the whole church.
After we left their home, I spent the next few hours planning how to lead that service. I chose a different sermon text, 2 Corinthians 1, and outlined a new message. Although prepared at short notice, my ministry that night, by necessity, addressed the pain and grief everyone was feeling.
It was not a typical candidating Sunday. But years later, one of the church elders observed, "When we came to vote on Gary's candidacy the next week, it wasn't a matter of deciding whether or not to call him as our pastor. He already was. We'd been through a crisis together, and he had already proven to be our pastor."
The main point is this: Crises don't come at convenient times. I certainly can't schedule them in my calendar. But they ...
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