Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste

How disruption can become a gift for disciple-making and church renewal.

For more than a decade, from 2010 to 2020, I had been trying to work out ways for churches to think more multiplication-driven in their church planting methodology.

Our team had been experimenting with how to plant churches on university campuses that were evangelistic first, discipleship-oriented, cost-efficient, and failure-tolerant. We wanted models that did not require an unending and ever-growing stream of finance, and where we did not need a 100 percent success rate to be considered fruitful. Sometimes it would not work, and that had to be okay.

We explored all sorts of ideas. Many of them were truly terrible, and I am glad they remained conceptual.

At a high level, we wanted to shift to a more bi-vocational and simpler approach to starting campuses, but it was difficult to implement those changes without creating confusion in our existing church.

A Question That Became Reality

In mid-2018, we began designing a church strategy around a simple question: What if we could not gather on campus? This question was driven by the changing culture around us and a real sense that the question was more of a “when” question, not just “if.”

Even though we were in a sense planning for the worst from a culture shift perspective, we had no idea how prophetic that question would be and how the answers we had begun to come up with would equip us to navigate 2020.

The COVID era gave us the exact circumstance we had been brainstorming about for two years. We were unable to gather in any formal sense on any of our campuses. Rather than doubling down on a modified version of the existing paradigm through livestreaming, though we did that as well, we were able to test our ideas about multiplying evangelistic first, discipleship-oriented, cost-efficient, and failure-tolerant churches.

As a result, much of who we are today was shaped during that season of widespread global lockdown. In short, the crisis became an opportunity to rethink what we were doing.

Seeing Crisis as Creative Opportunity

I try to look at major challenges, especially those outside of our control, as creative opportunities. They invite us to question our assumptions and explore new options.

If we can learn to embrace the never-ending stream of challenges as creative opportunities, we can unlock a great deal of ministry potential. As a bonus, we may even find more joy in navigating a changing context.

Why is that?

Crisis Reshapes Our Plausibility Structures

I first encountered the idea of plausibility structures through Lesslie Newbigin. It refers to the underlying assumptions about what is possible in our world. For example, my plausibility structure includes the supernatural, while an atheist’s would not.

In a church leadership context, when significant challenges come, the Holy Spirit may use them to expose where we have attached ourselves to assumptions about how things must be that are not actually essential.

We should not discard the hard-earned traditions we have received too quickly. But crises can help us distill what is truly vital and what we must hold on to.

Crisis Unlocks Our Missional Imagination

If crises help us clarify what is essential, it also creates space for imagination and innovation.

As an engineer by training, I learned that every project has constraints. There are limitations, requirements, and scenarios we must work within to achieve a goal. Great engineers thrive by creatively designing solutions within those constraints.

The challenge comes when we grow accustomed to solving problems with the same constraints over and over again. Creativity begins to diminish. But when the constraints change drastically, we are forced to think differently.

The same is true in ministry. We always operate within constraints, and a crisis represents a sudden shift in those constraints. It forces us to look at the problem in an entirely new way.

The beauty of the church is that we operate within a defined plausibility structure, anchored in the sovereignty of God and the beauty of the gospel. Within that, we are invited to be deeply creative.

Crisis may be one of the primary ways the Lord expands our missional imagination.

Crisis Exposes My Lack of Faith

Jesus promised that he would build his church.

My tendency toward panic, anxiety, or fear does not reflect his heart. More often, it reflects my desire for control and the absence of faith. When a crisis goes unaddressed in my heart, it can surface as fear, anger, or even panic.

None of those responses are godly or desirable.

I often return to the prayer, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

In many ways, crisis becomes an invitation for me as a leader to deepen my intimacy with Jesus and grow in trust.

There Is No Crisis

Jesus is never surprised.

He is building his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

That simple truth may be all we need to respond with a quiet confidence:

“Well, this is interesting, Lord. What are you doing? It is your church. You build it.”