Preaching in Times of Crisis: Humility, Connection, and Action
And what if—like most of us—you are in a “purple” church? What if you are blessed with a mixture of every opinion across the spectrum, on just about every issue, in your pews? The churches that I have served over the past fourteen years have all been made up of people who hold a variety of viewpoints. They have mostly been smaller, family-feel congregations who just want everyone to get along.
And for small churches especially, the fear of offending looms large. Because if one person or one subset of the congregation gets upset and leaves, it is a big percentage of the membership. And though we might not want to say it out loud, that is one fewer pledge card, one fewer set of hands to help, and someone who was truly family now in some way estranged. It really hurts.
At the same time, when something big happens—the school shooting, the viral video, the nationwide protests, the election around the corner—we all bring it with us into worship, longing for a word that speaks to our deepest fears and pains and questions. So, in the midst of a crisis (or multiple crises), I try to summon up the courage to at least name it, and to invite worshipers into humility and introspection, connection and empathy, and action.
Humility and Introspection
Several years ago, there was one of those viral videos going around. We are all too used to them now. It was an act of violence captured by witnesses on their cell phones.
In this case, there was a teenage girl, sitting in her high school classroom. A teacher had asked her to get out of her seat, to leave the room and go to the principal’s office, and she refused. It was never clear what the original problem was—some people were saying chewing gum, some were saying she wouldn’t put away her cell phone. At any rate, the teacher called on a school resource officer for help. The child remained seated and silent. She did not appear to engage with either the teacher or the officer, and it quickly escalated into the officer flipping this student’s desk over and across the room while the child was still in it. The officer was white, and the child was Black.
That video especially caught my attention because it came from Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, where I had graduated as a teenager. I had sat in those classrooms and walked in those halls, and I felt a sense of pride and ownership about Spring Valley High School.
I hope that most of you feel the way I do about my high school, mostly remembering the good parts—the friends, the sports or theater or music programs, the best senior prank, the antics you got away with, maybe some of the ones you didn’t get away with. But you can look back and laugh.
I cannot answer for that school resource officer, and I will never know whether his specific actions were racially motivated or not. This could have been a combination of unconscious bias, adult anger management issues, and the general presence of police in schools. Still, I was nostalgic about my high school, and feeling (selfishly) sad that its image was tainted now.
What I really remember, though, is that after the video went viral, there was an outpouring of stories that I started to hear from my high school classmates who are Black. They started sharing on social media about all the times they had gotten threatening notes stuffed into the slats of their lockers. Or the time one of my friends was running for student body president and someone wrote racial slurs on the windows of her car while it was parked in the school parking lot, telling her she better drop out. The times my peers were suspended for things I got away with, like forgetting to wear a student ID.
And I had no idea. These were my friends. Some of them, I thought, were my close friends. We played in the band together, or went through magnet school together, or tried to survive advanced Latin class together. And I had no idea that they had gotten threats in their lockers, or that people were writing slurs on the windows of their cars. As far as I knew, everything was great.
Because everything was great for me.
But everything is (obviously) not about me. And not everything is great. My eyes had to be opened to their pain.
I shared this story as part of a sermon for the congregation I was serving in June of 2020, a time when our national crises were on full display. It was one month after George Floyd was killed. Protests against police brutality were erupting across the country. It was during the height of COVID closures, but long enough into the pandemic that people were starting to get antsy. Our “we’re-all-in-this-together” attitudes had soured into downright fights about how to handle school, or masks, or worship, or travel. There was not a vaccine yet, and it would take another year for big gatherings (or singing during church) to resume. The presidential election was right around the corner.
For my predominantly white, small-town, Appalachian congregation, those problems seemed both close and far away at the same time. COVID was around, but population density was not. Racism was certainly at work in our midst, but we weren’t really sure we wanted to talk about it or possibly offend anyone. Yet in that season, we needed to stop and listen. We needed to “hear the voices of peoples long silenced”1 and pay attention to them. We needed to re-examine our own lives in light of their stories.
Every week when we gather around God’s Word, we dangerously pray for our eyes and ears to become open to God’s will. We pray that God will speak anew to us, through Scripture and liturgy and proclamation. That prayer alone requires humility, a willingness to allow our minds and hearts to actually be changed by what we hear.
But it seems rare these days that we change our minds about much or engage with perspectives different than our own. In a day when we have access to every point of information or opinion on earth, we flock to the voices that are most like our own. Maybe worship can offer something different. Maybe the preaching moment (or however it is that we engage with Scripture) can be the time when we truly open ourselves to hearing a new and living Word, through ancient and diverse texts.
Connection and Empathy
In May of 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released an advisory on “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” Dr. Murthy’s study was based on observations that began prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. He describes the overwhelming sense of isolation in this nation, names it as a public health crisis, describes its consequences ranging from cardiovascular disease, to dementia, to stroke (among others), and writes:
This Surgeon General’s Advisory shows us how to build more connected lives and a more connected society. If we fail to do so, we will pay an ever-increasing price in the form of our individual and collective health and well-being. And we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country. Instead of coming together to take on the great challenges before us, we will further retreat to our corners—angry, sick, and alone.2
We are a people who are desperate for connection. We have a physical, biological need to be seen and heard, and to be in relationship. On the surface, a worship service—and especially the preaching portion of it—might seem like the opposite of connecting. I can sit in the pew of a predominantly white Presbyterian congregation for an hour and never speak to or be spoken to by anyone.
But even in that type of (hopefully rare) experience, it is possible to feel connection. And indeed, every church has the come-late-leave-during-the-last-hymn worshiper. What is it that keeps that person coming week after week? What keeps our homebound members logging onto YouTube, when they can’t shake hands or speak directly with anyone? There is something to be said for shared, collective human experiences, especially when they engage our sense of awe and wonder.
In her “Sunday Musings,” Diana Butler Bass has pointed to the work of Dr. Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at University of California, Berkley, who studies the importance of “awe” for human well-being.3 Dr. Keltner and his colleagues argue that even small, daily experiences of awe can have a huge impact on all aspects of our lives. They can make us humbler and more generous, and give us a healthier perspective on our place in the world, including a greater sense of connection with our own communities.4
Awe is listening to a symphony and getting goose bumps. It is hearing testimony or reading powerful stories of resilience or forgiveness. It is seeing the Grand Canyon, or a vast starry sky, or noticing tiny tadpoles. These experiences lead to what scientists label “pro-social tendencies”: the desire to help others, to care for the suffering, to share, to cooperate, to seek a greater good—something beyond ourselves.
In a former congregation, I had a mostly-homebound church member who would tell me pretty frequently—unprompted—that if she were ever going to preach a sermon, all she would say is “Look up! Open your eyes! Look around at how beautiful God’s world is!”
This was a woman who suffered with debilitating depression and anxiety. She was lonely; she was often in physical pain. So, this was not some kind of trite, surface-level optimism. But I remember her sermon often. I can still picture her saying it—“Look up! Open your eyes! Look around at how beautiful God’s world is”—as she looked down the street from her front yard, where you could see the mountains rising up ahead; or sitting under her favorite tree in the fall, waiting for the gingko leaves to rain down on her. Look up. Open your eyes . . . look around at how beautiful God’s world is.
On our best days, our worship and preaching should be filled with moments of awe just like this: awe at the goodness of God, awe at the beauty around us, awe at the neighbors in our midst, awe that we are here—together.
A Call to Action
If the psychology professor is on to something—that experiences of awe and wonder lead us to pro-social tendencies—then a call to action will flow naturally in our worship and preaching. Most people really do want to make a difference, to do something positive, to participate in God’s kingdom. But the ins and outs of what that looks like can get hairy, especially in seasons of crisis. Some crises have become so routine that we are hardly moved by them anymore. Others are so overwhelming that they threaten to paralyze us.
The book of Acts tells of a time when Paul and Silas were imprisoned. They had cast out a demon from a slave girl without permission and ruined the financial prospects of her handlers. They are accused of “advocating customs that are not lawful for . . . Romans” (Acts 16:21). Everyone in town seems to agree, and a big crowd participates in having them stripped, beaten, and locked up in the innermost cell of the prison.5
One has to imagine that after a day like that—being followed and shouted at by a spirit-possessed woman, dragged into a public place, arrested, stripped of clothing, flogged, and thrown into maximum-security prison—that Paul and Silas would be feeling pretty shaken, maybe even discouraged, at a loss for what to do next.
Even if you have never been arrested or beaten or jailed, you have probably had those moments of complete discouragement and overwhelm. Maybe it is a car accident or an unexpected diagnosis. Maybe it is a job loss, or a falling out with family. Or maybe it happens when you turn on the news.
Our collective overwhelm plays out when we see or hear stories of another mass shooting, or the devastation of war or a natural disaster. What do we do in the face of such pain and violence and suffering? What do we do as a church, as a nation? Why does this keep happening? And why does it seem like our prayers for peace are not yielding any change?
When Paul and Silas are in that inner jail cell, they turn to worship. By about midnight, they start praying and singing hymns. The other prisoners are listening to them. And in the midst of their prayers and singing, God sends an earthquake that shakes the prison walls, opens the doors, and unfastens everyone’s chains.
It is terrifying. When the jailer sees what has happened, he is so disturbed that he plans to commit suicide. It is too much change, too much holy power, too much freedom, and all way too fast. But as the jailer draws out his sword for self-destruction, Paul stops him. And instead of taking his life, the jailer changes his life. He wants to know more about this God who shakes foundations, who sets prisoners free, who saves and heals. Ultimately, he and his household are baptized. Much like Paul himself, this jailer goes from imprisoning Christians to becoming one. He even takes Paul and Silas back to his own house, washes their wounds, feeds them, and eventually makes arrangements for their permanent release. It all started with worship: with prayer and the singing of hymns.
Today, we need God to shake our foundations too: to shake us out of our fear, to shake us out of our complicity, to shake us out of our destructive habits, and to free us for new life.
The same could be said about so many of our collective crises, but I always find this to be the most compelling when it comes to gun violence. After more than twenty-five years of school shootings, we have fallen into a predictable pattern as a nation. We see the news. We express our shock and grief. We shake our heads. We pray for the victims. And then we argue with each other. Do we need stricter gun laws? Do we need better mental health care? Do we need to address bullying? We fight with one another until we decide, on some national level, that we might as well do nothing at all.
So, we send our kindergarteners off to learn active-shooter-drills. We look into the possibility of bullet-proof backpacks. Maybe we hand our teachers some blackout curtains. That is its own kind of prison. It is prison to drop your child off every day, and somewhere deep down, wonder if today it will be their school. It is prison to think that it could easily be our grocery store, our concert hall, our movie theater.
We need God to shake the foundations of this prison, to turn our society completely upside down—or better yet, right-side up. And we need witnesses—apostles, jailers, prisoners, and passersby all around—who will fall down before the Lord and say (like Paul’s jailer did), “What must I do?”—people who are willing to change everything about ourselves in order to follow Christ.
Every one of us has a part to play: in releasing the captives and in making the change. These topics have become polarizing, but we don’t actually have to agree in order to make some progress.
- If you think that the problem lies in gun laws, then write to your lawmakers. Be specific. Get involved in an advocacy group.
- If you think that the problem is a lack of good mentors and role models for young people, then volunteer to be one. Reach out to the local Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, local recreation department, or neighborhood school. There are so many ways to support the youth of your community.
- If you think that the problem is in mental healthcare, then advocate for better access. De-stigmatize treatment; talk about it. Stigma and shame have not worked so far, and they are not going to
- If you think the problem is bullying, if you think kids are desensitized to violence, if you think it is loneliness or isolation, do something to help.
Start small, but take a step. Be part of the change that you are longing for, that God is longing for. We will not be any worse off for pursuing the good.
And first of all, pray. Proclaim God’s stories of freedom. Sing loudly from this prison cell. Invite God to move our very foundations and unfasten our chains.
Notes
1. A Brief Statement of Faith.
2. Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community, www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf, 2023, p. 4.
3. Diana Butler Bass, The Cottage: “Sunday Musings,” June 23, 2024.
4. Summer Allen, “Eight Reasons Why Awe Makes Your Life Better,” Greater Good Magazine, September 26, 2018, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/eight_reasons_why_awe_makes_your_life_better/.
5. Acts 16:16–34.
