4 Helpful Practices When Leading in a Crisis

There have been a ton of leadership articles published on how to best navigate this current season. 

Some of it has been inspirational. Other writings have been informative. And other pieces have been reflective.

Every angle has been needed during this crisis season. 

In this post, I aim to give a practical angle on leading during a crisis. 

Here are 4 practices that I believe can have a lasting healthy effect on us as leaders and therefore health for the people we lead. 

1. Sit Before You Run  

Someone once told me, “Leaders are problem solvers. They go look for problems to solve.” 

While I agree with this, the reality is that when a crisis hits, the problem(s) are not always immediately clear. So a leader must discipline him or herself to sit, learn, consult, pray, and strategize before running off to the races. 

There have been times I’ve ran off to the races only to circle back after realizing I had pulled the trigger too quickly with the right ammo but for the wrong target. 

This skill of precise timely decision-making is especially critical during a crisis. And wise management of energy, time, morale require assessment before action.

2. Make New Abilities Scalable

Crisis can require a church to extend ministry capabilities or create brand new ones. 

For example, taking existing small groups to Zoom would be to extend an already existing ability since small groups usually already have leaders and Zoom is an accessible application. But live-streaming a service with online moderators? That may be a brand new ability for a church.

But whether you expand or generate, it’s important to tailor things in such a way where ministry can be handed off to others as much as possible. Why? Because God may send virtual growth. Because the needs of the surrounding community may explode. Also, because this is the Biblical model of church! (See: Eph 4:11-13)

A helpful practice may be to “procedure-ize” a ministry construct, document a training guide (through GoogleDoc), and hand-off through remote training. 

3. Create a Check-List 

“Seriously? A check-list? Do you know how many things I have to do right now?” 

I know, I felt the same way… until I read a book called “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right” by a general surgeon named Atul Gawande. In it, he makes a convincing case for a check-list with a barrage of compelling stories and statistics that demonstrate how easy it is for brilliant people to literally lose lives because of one missed step as opposed to miracle hospital stories because everyone followed each simple step with precision. 

Remember, this is a pivot moment for every single church. Old routines are gone for the unforeseeable future. There are new rhythms, new systems, and new workflows.  

It’s better to use a post-it or a task management tool such as Asana or Trello which requires a little bit more work but will get things right the first time than to lose time because of erroneous steps along the way. 

4. Pastor Your Own Inner Voice 

Crisis creates a strange dilemma for leaders. We constantly feel overwhelmed by the responsibility or guilt for not feeling like we’re doing enough. Sometimes, we can even feel this way at the same time! 

As a pastor friend in Houston told me, there’s an internal dialogue that’s always occurring inside each one of us. 

So to properly pastor others, we need to courageously shepherd our own internal dialogue. 

We can do this through prayer, reflection, Scripture reading, and confession. I’ve made extra efforts these days to tell my wife my fears, guilt, and sadness. It’s expedited my personal hurdles and helped me think more clearly about those I lead. 

Conclusion

There is no replacement for the Holy Spirit. Leaders can have sound practices but in the end, we must be empowered and led by Him. 

But I also believe that the Holy Spirit leads us into wise practices. Because it’s one thing to know the right thing, but it’s another thing to apply something in the right way. And these little applications can make the world of a difference during a time when we need to be the difference for the world. 

Disregard any practice that isn’t translatable to your current context. But if anything applies, please run with it. 

Just be sure to sit on it first.