We have previously discussed a few things we learned from our experience in the Hurricane Katrina relief. This was not something we had done as a ministry before, and we specifically engaged in this because we were told we would learn a lot from it about leadership in the church in the coming times. As the Scriptures make clear, there will be increasing troubles at the end of this age, so we will need to know how to function in them, helping to bring order and peace in the middle of chaos. Even now many problems have grown beyond human remedy, and they are increasing. This is presenting the greatest opportunity for the light to shine in the darkness.
Because the chaos coming upon the world is basically the result of mankind trying to run the world without its Creator, peace and order will come out of the chaos whenever we turn back to the Creator as we seek to live according to His ways. It is that simple. As the world continues to fragment, the church will start to come together in a unity that will be in stark contrast to the world—a unity that is based on serving the Lord and obeying Him.
The good news is that the worst of times can be the best of times. The Lord is a God of order, and He is never the Author of confusion, but the Holy Spirit loves to deal with chaos. He moved upon the chaos in the beginning and brought forth a beautiful, harmonious creation. He knows how to deal with chaos! He can even turn the worst chaos into something very beautiful. Therefore, we need to see the chaos as an opportunity to see God do something wonderful.
The way that we will be prepared for the major troubles coming upon the world is to learn to deal with the smaller ones now. Look around you: Where do you see chaos and troubles? Are your neighbors having trouble? Are there increasing and seemingly insurmountable troubles rising at work? Ask the Lord to intervene. Ask Him to use you to bring words of encouragement and peace into the place of worry and conflict. This is our calling—our purpose for being here—to be a light in the darkness.
Give God your chaos and watch Him work! The future leadership will see chaos and troubles as opportunities for the Spirit. They will not run from them—they will run to them.
After the debriefings with our leadership and relief workers in the Katrina crisis, we designed a plan for the kind of leadership and other training that we will need to be prepared for the next disaster. Then we were shown that our U.S. government had already come up with the same conclusions many years ago, and they already had manuals and people employed to train for these same things. FEMA and the federal government see the church as an ally and do want to help us in any way they can in these situations. We have a wide open door here.
There are many in the U.S. government who see the church as a huge ally and a huge asset to the citizens of the country. There are also those who would like to abolish the church in any way they can. Some in the government are working to build a better relationship with churches, and some are seeking any way that they can to harass the church. Different governments in the world treat the church differently—some see it as good and others as a threat, or something evil that should be destroyed. We can expect both of these attitudes to increase as the times become more intense and the church increases in light and power.
The church will grow and thrive in both circumstances because she is going to rise to fulfill her purpose in these times. We should be ready to assist the government in any way we can to help their people. I also believe we should accept government assistance as from the Lord when it is offered, but not become dependent on it, as we should only depend on the Lord as our Source.
We brought in one of their instructors for CISM (Crisis Intervention and Stress Management) training at our home church in Fort Mill. It was so good that just about everyone who attended said that they thought every Christian, and without question, every pastor should go through this training. The principles learned from the CISM training were not only applicable for a major disaster such as Katrina, but for everyday life.
People go through things in this life, and every Christian should be equipped to help their neighbors. The ones who went through this training, which only took a couple of days, would tend to be proactive in almost any situation that before would have paralyzed them. They instantly became lights in their neighborhoods whenever there was a car accident, major illness, or anything that put a family under great stress.
When we started hosting the IFOC training (International Fellowship of Chaplains), our folks all said the same thing again—every pastor, and probably every Christian, should go through this training. I could immediately see how this training could turn what was grief and frustration to many pastors into opportunities that they would actually thrive on. Just about everyone has experienced the satisfaction and fulfillment that comes from truly helping someone. To help someone in a real crisis is one of the most gratifying things you can experience. This is what attracts people to police work, to become firemen, or to join the Coast Guard. Once you experience this, it could be addictive, but there are worse things we could be addicted to!
Certainly a prepared person will be far more effective than one who is not prepared. In the future, there will likely be two kinds of pastors and church leaders—those who have this training, and those who wish they did. The former will be thriving and productive in just about any situation, while we can expect the latter to be burning out and collapsing under the weight of the problems, becoming a part of the need instead of a provider of needs.
That is not a negative prophecy, but a biblical principle. Those who fail to discern the times and prepare for them will pay a dear price for their negligence. Again, the Bible is clear that in the last days of this age "difficult times will come" (see II Timothy 3:1). If we are prepared for them, we will interpret this as, "In the last days great opportunities for the gospel will come, and we will be thriving on them!"
Those who are negligent by believing that the Lord will just download into them any knowledge when they need it obviously do not know the ways of the Lord and will be an increasing burden in these times. Certainly the Lord can do it this way, and there are times when He does, but those are rare exceptions. The only time He tells us not to prepare is for what we will say when we are brought before judges in the persecution. As we are told in Psalm 32:6:
I strongly believe in training and preparation, but the main preparation we need is to know the Lord and grow in faith in Him. There will be many situations when CISM training is going to fall short, far short, of what is needed. We will need miracles from God. Many who are the best trained in the natural tend to lean on that more than the Lord, and those who have learned to lean more on the Lord tend to shy away from preparation in the natural. For the days to come, we need to increase in both. God gave us our minds and our natural strength, and He expects us to use them when we can. He also expects us to have the wisdom to do all that we do with Him, and to have faith in Him that He will make up whatever we lack if we are abiding in Him.