Churches can face all kinds of crisis situations. Is your church’s leadership and communications teams prepared for this kind of a crisis?

What is a crisis? Many might say, it’s an emergency event. I would add: it’s a challenging situation where God has many, many opportunities to move and act!

For church leaders, it’s any situation that is unexpected but that can lead to a high impact within our staff team, Elders, congregation, community and other audiences as well.

In our complex and media-saturated world, crisis communications is a critical topic for churches to explore, understand and plan for.

In fact, earlier this year, The Table – a networking group of church communications professionals – explored crisis communications during our January meeting. Thanks to Kingsway Christian Church in Avon, Ind., for sharing their hearts and tips about this important topic! 

So what is crisis communications? All communications planned and completed to help in a crisis situation. Specifically for a church, it is the information that informs, aids and encourages the church's leaders, congregation, local community or other interested groups.

And while no one hopes for an emergency event, these situations are to be expected (although you don’t have much warning about when, what or who will be involved).

Our best advice? Pray. Plan ahead. Pray. Be prepared for a variety of potential crisis situations. Pray. Then, in the moment, you can pray, act, communicate, continue responding and carry on.

Even though most crisis situations are unexpected, we want you to feel as prepared as possible! See our download for a few ideas and tips shared at Kingsway,  plus others from Fishhook.