It's Time To Panic!

In an online news story this morning the story of a tragedy on the California coast was reported. A family was spending a day at the beach, mom, dad, a son, a daughter, and the family dog. They were throwing a stick for the dog to retrieve when the dog got caught in the surf and was dragged out into the ocean. The teen son jumped into the water and swam to save the dog. The dad jumped into the water and swam to save the teen but the dad was soon swept out and went under the water. The teen boy got back to shore on his own. He and his mother went back into the surf to look for the dad but soon they were swept out and went under water.

Meanwhile on shore the daughter ran to get the park ranger. The ranger's car got stuck in the sand so he had to walk over half a mile down the beach to get to the scene. Once there he located the bodies of the father and mother who had drowned but could not locate the son. A helicopter and boats came out but they were never able to the son's body.

The article ends with this sentence, "The dog got out of the water on its own."

If the son would have waited on shore instead of jumping into the water in a panic everything would have worked out fine. If the father would have waited on shore instead of jumping into the water in a panic everything would have worked out fine.

It is easy to recognize in hindsight what should have been done but there is a lesson we can all learn about panic- sometimes things are not nearly as bad as they seem and our panic'd response is ultimatley what causes the problem.

How many times does our panic response end up being a far larger problem than the initial problem itself? Remember Y2K? We were convinced we would end up back in the stone age when computers changed from 1999 to 2000?

We have this response in politics, religion, employment, families, school...

Sometimes the process of remaining calm can look pretty odd. I remember a story my grandmother used to tell me. She was driving a late 30's Ford down a highway in east Texas right after she got married when a big dog ran out in the middle of the road and stopped. My grandfather had warned her about the danger of flipping the car if she swerved at high speeds and as usual she was going too fast so instead she centered the car on the dog and ran it over. When she got to where she was meeting my grandfather he got upset that she had dented the front of the car until she told him that it was the dog or rolling the car which helped him not to be upset anymore.

I have been full time ministry 22 years and have watched time after time at church after church as groups of people panic about what is 'going on'. They become convinced that the church is about to descend into some sort of spiritual apostasty or that there is something going on that is being covered up. The typical response is to create a firestorm at the church or to flee to another church. What most intrigues me about these situations is that 9 times out of 10 there is no foundation for the panic and the damage done by the panic is far, far worse than what the panic itself was focused upon.

I have seen this same dynamic play itself out in interpersonal relationships at church, work, school, and in the family. At times we connect the dots on things that should never have been connected and we develop a panic'd paranoia. We believe the sky is falling. We believe 'it's the end of the world as we know it'.

I wonder what the correlation is between panic and faith in God. I wonder if sometimes the reason we panic is because we believe if we don't take care of the problem then the world will spiral out of control. That would be a form of idolatry- we see ourselves as a god or even as GOD.

I wonder if Satan uses panic and paranoia as a temptation to get us to act without seeking God first. As I think through what would solve these damaging panic and paranoid responses it begins with seeking God in prayer. Really? Yes, seriously! Somtimes this prayer might have to be quick but think how differently things would play themselves out if we began by seeking God. What if we began by asking God to give us His clarity. What if we asked God to guide our actions, our words, our thoughts, our feelings. What if we asked God to give us wisdom to help us recognize how to respond.

Following God

At the very end of the year 2000 my family and I moved from Colorado to Northeast Texas. We lived in a small town outside Longview for just over 2 years while we adopted 3 children from Russia and worked with a church to help them start a youth ministry. It was obvious within our first couple of months at this small town church that this was not the place we needed to be so we began searching for a new church.

We identified that one of the primary criteria for the church we were seeking was a willingness to be led by God. You might think this willingness to be led by God would be a given at every church but my experience has shown me that all people and even church leaderships are fallen and at best struggle to allow God to be in charge.

Over the course of 18 months we interviewed with around 45 churches scattered around Texas. A common question I had for the leadership had to do with what role God had in their decision making process. I could write a book about the range of responses this question received including one minister that told me God doesn't really have anything to do with our day to day decision making process.

The response to this question is ultimately what caught my attention at Sugar Grove. The answer I received from person after person at Sugar Grove described a passion and a journey at understanding how to hear God's voice and apply that into the direction of the church. The answers I received were not marked with confidence saying 'we've got this all figured out' but instead with humility recognizing it is about God, not about us.

In my nine and one half years at Sugar Grove I have marveled time and again at how the leadership has heard God's voice and responded in faith. Faith responses are characterized by a journey, not by a finished product. Sugar Grove is a church on a journey... a journey of learning how to listen to and follow God.