How to Respond to People in Crisis

In 1999 I had a crash course in dealing with people in crisis when I was actively involved on scene with the Columbine High School shooting. The tragic shooting in Connecticut brings back way too memories but it also reminds me of the importance of sharing some of the things I learned.

1. When speaking with someone in crisis don't say you understand what they are going through or feeling because you don't. You can't get inside their head and feel what they are feeling. In fact, truth be known, they don't even know what they are feeling. Instead affirm your care and concern for them and express your sympathy at what they are going through. 
2. Don't try to explain why this tragedy has happened to the person in crisis because it is too soon to fully know and since you aren't God you don't truly understand why it happened. In particular don't ever say it was God's will that this or that person die, or live- you are not God and you don't fully understand what is or is not God's will. Plus there are dramatic spiritual implications to assigning death or life to God in crisis situations... The bottom line is sometimes we don't understand why something has happened. It may take years and years if ever to come to a better understanding of God's role in a crisis. 
3. Stay off the news! The worst thing you can do in a tragedy is to do an interview with the media. You will inevitably say something that is misunderstood because you or the person in crisis is in shock, the media will invariably change what you said to fit their agenda, and in years to come when you see yourself on the news it will bring flooding back the sorrow and pain that was felt for you or anyone around you. 
4. Let people talk but don't talk about how they feel, instead talk about facts. Where were you when the tragedy occurred? When did you learn about it? etc... Facts are pretty straight forward and the place to begin. Feelings are elusive and at the beginning of a crisis most people are in some form of shock.  

The Alter

This past week I built two stone altesr on the stage that were used on Sunday morning December 9th during the morning worship assemblies. I love building stuff  so about a month ago when Mark Howell asked me to build this alter I was excited. I began chewing on how to build it. Should it be cardboard? Styrofoam? A table with a table cloth?

After I thought and prayed about it for a while it struck me that this needs to be the real deal, it needs to be built out of stone. I did some research about alters from the Old Testament and looked at recreations of those alters and then started looking for stone. I had a limited budget so I was more than excited to find the 'clearance aisle' at a stone store at Kirkwood and Hwy 90.  Clearance aisle at a stone store?! That's way better than any Black Friday sale but I digress.

I purchased 3800 pounds of stone for pennies on the dollar and started building the alters.  Projects like this are fun because it exercises your brain. It's like a crossword puzzle that requires gloves and a weight belt. It took about 6 hours to put together and I fully spent a quarter of that time praying over the alters and the people who would use it on Sunday.

It's fascinating how there are some things that never occur to you unless you physically do something. Here are a few things that occurred to me in the process of building and using the alter:

• In the Old Testament when God said to build an alter and sacrifice an animal I had always envisioned those people fretting over locating an animal to sacrifice. It had never occurred to me that they had to locate, move, chisel, arrange, take apart, rearrange, fine tune, and put back together a vast quantity of stone. My alter was hollow and smaller than Old Testament alters and still weighed 3800 pounds. Building an alter was a significant undertaking for God in the Old Testament. 
• Everyone that leaned on the alter Sunday morning was marked with some of the white limestone dust. A number of people will continue to remember the alter as they run their clothes by the dry cleaner this week trying to explain why their clothes are covered with white powdery dust. In The Old Testament anyone who worshiped God at the alter likely had rock dust and blood on their clothes. They had a physical reminder of their commitment to God.
• The pile of rocks that was the alter is now in one of the lawns of the church building. In fact the way it is piled looks a bit like a crypt so the pile is going to move before too long. But it is significant to realize that alters, no matter where they were built in the Old Testament, would have been a long term reminder that someone had worshiped God there. 

We tend to make Christianity a tidy and sterile 'religion' with few physical reminders of our sacrifice and commitment to God. Constructing this alter has reminded me that it's good to put out effort to worship God and its good to have some physical reminders of our commitment to God. In the Old Testament there were many physical reminders of commitment to God; alters, meals, tassels, circumcision!... Some of these reminders were associated with a ceremonial worship and some went with the person to school, work, and in the market.

Today we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts but even with the ever present Spirit it is good to have physical reminders of our commitment to God.

It's Time to Panic Part 2

The first church I worked for after I finished my undergraduate degree almost 23 years ago had a number of interesting members who inspired me to make sure my life did not follow in their footsteps. One of these people was an older man who had lost his wife a few years earlier and now spent a great deal of time volunteering at the building. He gave a sizable amount to the church each year which helped a number of people overlook some of his oddities.

He had his own parking space under a covered drop off near the church office doors. I learned the hard way it was a bad idea for anyone else to park in his covered space. When an unsuspecting person did this he would park very close beside their car and bang his car door against the other car.

Since he was at the church building so much during the week he became the energy saving watchdog. If you were in the restroom it was best to take a flashlight. If you needed to make a copy on the Xerox machine you would need to allow an additional 4 minutes for the machine to warm up because he would not allow the machine to stay turned on between copies. He was known to turn off electric breakers to make sure everything was off. On more than one occasion I lost my data on the computer because I could not save to my floppy disk drive fast enough when I would hear him flipping all of the breakers off. He never understood the difference between a computer and a typewriter...

But the most odd thing I discovered about him was why he was alone. He and his wife were married sometime around World War 2 and they decided to never have children because they did not want to bring a child into such a messed up world. The day he told me this I was taken back and was not sure how to respond. In the subsequent years I have time and again chewed on the reasoning for his decision.

Without a doubt the world is imperfect and will be so until God brings this present age to a close and fully reveals his kingdom. We know that I John 5:19 tells us that this whole world is under the control of the evil one. But we also know that God and his forces are actively at work in this world. We know that throughout history God's people have lived by faith as can be powerfully seen in Hebrews 11. So the question becomes, do we trust God to take care of us in an imperfect world or do we panic?

People throughout history have reacted out of panic because they thought things were so bad that they could never get better. The Anasazi who built cliff dwellings in what is now southwestern Colorado are believed to have moved onto the cliff faces out of a perceived threat. At the end of World War 2 much of the population of an island in the Pacific jumped to their death because they believed when the United States liberated their island life would not be worth living.

A lifestyle characterized by panic ultimately misses the point of the Bible. God created the world, sin damaged the world separating us from God, and God began a plan involving his son to redeem all of creation. This damaged world is not our destiny, it is simply our journey. Our destiny is with God. God will bring this present age ruled by sin to an end. We will be resurrected with new bodies just like Jesus was resurrected. We will live on a redeemed and restored earth able to literally walk with God. The kingdom of God glimpsed when Jesus walked the earth will become the norm. There will be no more pain, no more suffering, no more crying, no more sadness, no more hunger.

There is no need to live a life of panic because we can live expectantly with the hope we have of resurrection and eternal life. We can live with confidence if we have received God's precious gift of salvation offered through the blood of Jesus. There is no need to panic about work, school, politics, church or anything else we tend to get worked up over. Instead we can live filled with peace, love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self control- not because anything in this world warrants this type of life, instead we live a life of faithful calm because God is our god.

We panic because we try to control what we cannot control. Faith in God recognizes this world is messed up and we can't fix it, only God can. Relax and trust God, it'll be o.k., it really will.