The focus of church ministry is primarily set upon the advancement of the Kingdom of God through sermon presentations, events, discipleship processes, and age appropriate programing. An area of the church that can easily be overlooked, and often is in many local congregations around the country, is having an effective and up to date crisis plan in place. This can prove to be a dangerous oversight that has the potential of stopping the effectiveness of even the most influential church body. Despite the demands of ministry, every church needs to make necessary efforts to put together a crisis management plan (Hackman and Johnson, 2013).
Though spreading the Gospel is the primary focus of local churches, crisis management may be the most demanding task of leadership (Hackman and Johnson, 2013, p. 410). As a minister of a congregation, the leader who navigates the details of the organization of the church (Northouse, 2013), it is a primary responsibility to capitalize on the precrisis stage and move the church from a state of crisis prone to crisis ready (Pauchant & Mitroff, 1992). One of the first things to be done is bring an awareness to staff members, and congregation, of the areas of vulnerability in order to become crisis ready and being alert to warning signs and identifying trouble spots on a regular basis (Hackman and Johnson, 2013, p. 414). By raising awareness and training everyone to be crisis ready, the church, and minister as a leader, creates a reservoir of credibility and goodwill throughout the church and the community (Hackman and Johnson, 2013, p. 414).
When members of the church looks for trouble areas by being crisis ready weaknesses are revealed quickly and harmful, or even fatal, crisis’ can be avoided (Hackman and Johnson, 2013, p. 417).
References
Hackman, M. Z., & Johnson, C. E. (2013). Leadership: A Communication Perspective (6 edition). Waveland Press, Inc.
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: theory and practice (6th ed). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Otis, C. (1992). T. Pauchant and I. Mitroff Transforming the Crisis-Prone Organization: Preventing Individual, Organizational, and Environmental Tragedies Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA 1992, 227 pages. Systems Research, 9(4), 71–72. http://doi.org/10.1002/sres.3850090410
