Course: Spiritual Life of the Leader

Lecture 15. Crisis is an Opportunity for Spiritual Growth (Part 1)

A transcendent crisis is yearning for the “more than.” “Is life meaningful?” “Is God good?” Can I trust my life to God or have I been abandoned by God? An idolatry crisis happens when you run after a passion rather than pursue God. Each person in your sphere of influence is going through crises in their own lives. God can use a crisis to help something in us die so we can experience and share the light of Christ.

I. Examples of Crises

A. Psalm 16

Why would Augustine talk in terms of a blessed crisis? This is so counter cultural to anything that we have ever thought of. We don’t see anything as being blessed in terms of a crisis. I think it would be good to look at some Biblical illustrations of crisis. For example, in the Messianic Psalm, Psalm 16 is one of the great Psalms; ‘Protect me, O God, for I have taken shelter in you.’ The word protect is from the Hebrew shamar to guard, protect, attend to, etc. I could as easily read, ‘preserve me oh God.’ Preservation is holding things together, keeping it from flying apart. In Col 1:17, it says that he himself existed before anything else did, and he holds all things together.’ There seems to be a crisis unfolding in the Psalmist’s life which relates to what Jesus went through during time of the last supper and Jesus is in the garden praying and the stress in his life was so great that blood vessels ruptured in his body where great sweat of blood came out. This is some very serious stress. David was asking God to hold him together as life threatened to tear him apart. Is this not a good place to begin in terms of understanding crises? Most of us not only have a crisis but usually different crises in our lives. We are fairly assured that for those in ministry; you are truly blessed with a number of crises.

B. Teresa of Avila

Teresa of Avila was pondering about of the hardship that she had to face as a leader. She complained to God sayings, ‘God, since you treat your beloved like this, it is no wonder you have so few friends.’ Crisis threatens to tear us apart; they are real. There are many imagined crises where we allow our own insecurities to run uncontrolled along with our own fears. Sometimes they are not a real crisis at all. Let consider what real crises are and give some definition to them. Think about it in your own life; think about a recent crisis. Let’s put it in a category.

II. Forced Detachment Crises

Let us look at something called forced detachment crises. These include something like death. When death comes along, there isn’t anything you can do about it. This is the worst of such a type of crisis. Someone dies; there is death which really points out the greater issue of finitude, meaning that I am a finite creature, at least in this phrase of our lives in Christ. We have a beginning and we will have an ending. Now we realize that the ending is actually just the beginning. We find ourselves with physical limitations; I use to jog for a long time but I got to a point in my life where I couldn’t continue. Instead I just walk now. This is a physical limitation that I now have. Then there are relational conflicts and meltdowns or relational meltdowns. There is a US TV commercial where a young woman is throwing all the stuff of her husband or boyfriend out of the window crashing on the concrete below. It would be safe to say that this was a relational meltdown. These things are very real and also real in church. One of the things that brought deep pain into my life after serving and loving people and being gracious to them, some even being sacrificial and then they just walk away and leave that local fellowship. Well, that really hurts. You feel this anytime where you have been in a loving friendship and ministry relationship with someone and then it just flies apart. It is gone. You see these types of detachment crisis when you have to deal with addictions; you see it in the midst of disasters. I was in India during a major typhoon that created incredible devastation.

Of course, when these natural disasters happen, people’s lives are complete disrupted. You see this in all sorts of family traumas. Certainly you see this when there is political break downs and in the midst of wars and fighting. Anytime there is political unrest or even political meltdowns where there is a disruption that simply goes through an entire nation. Even now, there is a lot of political dynamics shifting and not for the best in terms of Christians. So, political unrest; national and international conflicts; we literally see what I would call societal breakdowns. We wonder about the foundations shaking; what do we do oh Lord when the foundations shake and what do we hear in reply? The Lord laughs! These are things that one individual really has to flow with these things or you get rolled by them.

III Transcendent Crises

There are also transcendent crises; this is a crisis of yearning for the more than in life. Didn’t the Lord create us with that yearning and hunger? Augustine cried out that our hearts were restless in his autobiographical confessions. Our hearts are restless until they rest in you. So, this is transcendent longing; a deep longing for the more than. This longing will work itself out through most of our lives. We long over issues of who I am; we long to know where we fit in, what am I called to and where do I serve? Who do I serve with? These are transcendent issues for us and ultimately in a crisis, we will see this transcendence and ask some serious questions when crisis hits. Is life meaningful? This is a huge issue and the deeper one underneath this is whether or not God is good? Of course the emphasis here is whether you can trust your life to the goodness of God. Can I abandon my life to God or have I been abandoned by God?

IV Danger of an Idolatry Crisis

I also think that any of those deadly sins are going to lead to an idolatry crisis. This is where you run after any passion, any of those deadly sins. We are bowing down to something other than Jesus. Remember that he loves us enough to bring about what Augustine called severe mercy.

IV. Ministry Crises

There are also ministry crises. You are a leader and out there on the front lines. Have any of you now in Christian ministry not been through some type of crises? Ministries all over the world are stressed financially with a lack of resources. The next crises have to do with relational crisis. See how they love one another. Oh, wait a minute; see how they go for each other’s throat! Even beyond that, I do think that there are also times when the Lord simply allows ministries they may have flowed forth in goodness for a while and seen a lot of blessings, but then they seem to ebb. We can be thankful for that but sometimes they ebb back. In America, right now, there are a number of locals where you see huge growth in terms of the Gospel being effective and people regularly coming together and finding their way in Christ. There are also a number of settings where there is a huge retreat and in some areas it rare to find a solid congregation. There are some amazing congregations in Europe and England, but Christianity isn’t moving forward numerically in Europe and Asia at the moment. It takes a great deal of discernment to understand where we are sometimes, but there are times when ministry ebbs. We wonder sometimes what the Lord is doing. We have equations where being faithful will equal to things growing. The life of the Gospel always brings growth in Christ; however what are the metrics and statistics here? Sometimes fidelity to the Gospel may mean that the actual number of people you are dealing with will decrease. There was a time in Jesus’ ministry where he had to ask his disciples whether they would also leave him. We need to be careful with the equations of success. You will not be in a ministry very long where you will not be in any major crisis.

I was in a beautiful location in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was a wonderful church. St Stephen’s church. Early one morning I walked into the church; the city sewer system had backed up into that church. It was not a pretty picture at all. This was a crisis of a different kind with having a special cleanup crew to come in protective suits and taking the place apart. So, there will be crisis where you have to go through in ministry. And in regards to ministry, you are dealing with a whole congregation of people and they are also facing different crises which you have to help them through. So you have your crisis added to different individual crises within the church; this can represent a huge load for any pastor. On a normal day in pastoral ministry, it isn’t uncommon for four or five different people to come in with devastating issues in their lives. They are seeking God’s word through the pastor. No one can bear up under this type of load day in and day out, week in and week out and year in and year out. It will collapse the best of human beings. Only Christ had the ability to take such as this and absorb it on the Cross where it was nailed. We are under shepherds and servants in this way. I remember being profoundly fatigued in ministry. This is a major red flag in your life. You will get to the point of wanted to run away from people with problems; it becomes too much to take on anybody else’s problems.

All of this point to the major need for healthy rhythms of life, including daily times with God. You need to have weekly rests. God took the seventh day off for rest and you should also. There needs to be regular build in times away in order to get perspective. You need to also have time away, yearly. You need to get completely away from everything and everybody. I thank God that a lot of my ministry was before the cell phone, so I wasn’t omni-available. Omni-availability is not healthy. The congregation needs to understand that the Lord is omni-available to them. Omni-availability is a sign of sickness; never ask a pastor to give their cell-phone number out when they are on vacation. You also need to understand the true nature of crisis. When a church member has a genuine crisis and you are there, then you need to be responsive to that. These things happen and they need to be addressed. Pastors should have times of study on a daily basis where you don’t answer the phone and you can explain this to your congregation that you have to have times away. If there is a true emergency, then that is different. You can discuss this with the board and the congregation to set a time apart. You also need to be aware that if you are out six times a week in the evening then you are going to experience one of these crises. This is not good stewardship for the man or woman of God. A lot of the Stewardship can be turned over to the people of God. You need to understand your own vocation.

V. Crucifying Epiphany

Psalm 16 feels like it is going to tear us apart. There is the idea of crucifying epiphany. In crucifixion, something dies and then epiphany is a New Testament term. This is the light of God; it is the showing of Christ that is made known in dawning of the day. It is the goodness of God that comes to us. It is the goodness that comes from something dying. That is the whole point of these crises. Normally when these things unfold, the Lord is seeking to bring about purification in our own lives of something that we are holding onto. But let’s make a qualification first. Pastors usually have to work with major strategies. In one such church, there was this adorable child that just blessed everyone around her. One night, she was hit by a car and died. This just broke our hearts, lying dead on the road. There is nothing that the pastor can say at such a situation except just help when he or she can. I am not from such a theological tradition to say that this was, in any way, the will of God nor do I believe that God was enacting punishment on this family. This child was a blessed little girl who loved Jesus. God allowed the accident to happen but God wasn’t the cause of it. God is not the cause of evil. In such a situation, it is going to take a long time to see God in such a setting. I can only walk with the family, reflecting on the firm confidence that in the kingdom, all will be well and they will be reuniting.

With many of these force detachment crisis, particular the ones that come about where I was somehow involved; the crisis itself will have directives coming out of it. This is so that it can turn into a crucifying epiphany. Directives are how the Holy Spirit is involved in this; he is trying to redeem and restore and bringing repentance in order to get people back in alignment with his will. One such directive would be that idolatry has to die. If I have contributed to a crisis through sinful activity, then it has got to die. We want worship of God to be what leads and directs our lives as we are grounded and brought back into a complete reliance on the Living Word and a love for the written word to where it is becoming who we are. If there is a forced detachment crisis, where my idolatry didn’t have anything to do with this such as a natural disaster; then there are still directives coming out of this and these are you have to have discernment. You need to ask the Lord what he is doing here. Is the Lord trying to tell you that your physical possessions are not ultimate? If I have lost my house, home and clothing and all of that; am I going to take any of those things to heaven anyway?

Are you showing me things that I have had an inordinate attachment to? Have I been holding on to anything too tightly; my own status in a local church for example? I might think that if I was a good leader, this wouldn’t happen. So, these inordinate attachments could involve putting ultimate meaning in people, events or things. An inordinate attachment is putting too much meaning into something. It is defining yourself in what you drive or by the clothes you wear or by the size of ministry that I lead. If I can inordinately attach to these kinds of things, what is going to happen when those positions change or when other forces change those dynamics? I am not defined by the size of my congregation or my ministry. Both the secular culture and many Christian cultures will tell you the exact opposite. So, I am not defined by the size of the ministry I lead. That doesn’t mean that God is against large ministries, for God loves people. Remember though, a large ministry has great pitfalls for the leader. I am not defined by the programs or numbers. Any kind of a crisis that comes in; Jesus reminds us that our ultimate value is found in what Jesus has done for us on the Cross. As the father says that I am as one made in his image and my ultimate meaning is the fact that I am a part of the body of God of which Jesus is the head. At the end of all of this is a big wedding and the whole church is the bride of Christ. The bride is meant to be presented and will be presented pure and spotless to the bridegroom. This is ultimate value and nothing can take that away from us.

God allows these crucifying epiphanies in our lives and sometimes we think that it is going to destroy us. There is going to be no value or meaning in life. What does the crucifying epiphany asks for and called forth? Think about how you have tried to insulate yourself from these crises and even tried to run away from them. Consider how you handled the last crisis you were in. Some of you may be young enough where you haven’t faced such a major life crisis yet. God doesn’t take everybody through a ringer as such, but to be a human being is to enter into a crisis. Also, to be in the body of Christ is to carry some of that suffering that Christ experienced on the cross. Consider how you have looked at these things in the past. In all of this though, try to get the mind of Christ in you.