I have a textbook for COMS 360 entitled Business and Professional Communication (DiSanza and Legge). The textbook defines an organizational crisis as “a major, unpredictable event that has potentially negative results. The event and its aftermath may significantly damage an organization and its employees, products, services, financial condition, and reputation.” The chapter also defines crisis communication as “what the organization says to its employees, the media, the community, customers, suppliers, stockholders, and creditors during and after the crisis.”

There are five options an organization has when responding to an organizational crisis, according to DiSanza and Legge. They are:
1. Denial. “It didn’t happen.”
2. Evading responsibility. “We were forced to do it because of them.”
3. Reducing offensiveness. “It’s not a big deal.”
4. Corrective action. “We’ve paid back in full those affected and taken measures to prevent it in the future.”
5. Mortification. “We did wrong, and we apologize.” (The “most extreme” communication response”)

These are the ways I may respond when the crisis of my sin hits me. My heart takes one of those postures when I do “crisis communication” with myself and God.

1. I will simply deny that I have sinned
2. I will evade responsibility for the sin, deflecting it to something in my environment (“The woman you gave me…”)
3. I will try to downplay the sin (“Look at those guys. They’re the real people with the issues.”)
4. I will take corrective action. (Penitential actions.)
5. I will confess to God that I have sinned, accept responsibility and culpability, and beg his forgiveness. Mortification is an appropriate word for this, because it’s root means the process of rendering something dead.

Where I land on this scale of response corresponds to how bad I perceive the crisis to be. It is clear that those who perceive the mortal danger of their sin respond with mortification and accompanying corrective actions, whereas those who do not consider their sin to be a crisis respond in the other ways (possibly including some corrective actions).

Sin renders natural man in mortal danger. May God engender in us the awareness of our sin and the power to respond with the proper mortification of soul.

The Law of Private Confrontation

“Do not go out hastily to argue your case; otherwise, what will you do in the end, when your neighbor humiliates you? Argue your case with your neighbor, and do not reveal the secret of another.” 8-9

Then I said, “Do not be shocked, nor fear them. The Lord your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place. But for all this, you did not trust the Lord your God, who goes before you on your way, to seek out a place for you to encamp, in fire by night and cloud by day, to show you the way in which you should go.” – Deuteronomy 1:29-33

The All-powerful Creator Being “will fight on your behalf.” What?! That’s like an NCAA Division I basketball player playing in the kindergarten class. That’s like Chuck Norris vs. a white belt. There is no even match, no equality there. “No contest.” If it were a sporting event, we would get bored, knowing the outcome without a doubt. The only excitement would be the intensity of the royal pounding that our adversaries and adversities will get when he steps onto the field. Is this true for us? We can know, not only hope, that God will win if he goes up against…well…anything. He’s the Incredible Hulk and Satan himself is a Cabbage Patch Kid.

He carries us “like a man carries his son, in all our ways.” He says, “Hold onto me tight,” and then we bury our head in his chest as he plunges into the night with the speed of a chariot. When the quicksand sucks us down, he lifts us up – and his feet can walk on water. In all our ways. There is no part he forgets; even if we forget to mention it or confess it, he deals with it. He is more aware of our needs than we are. Nor does he leave us for a moment like the child who gets lost in Macy’s among the clothes, that we would be overcome by the Enemy. No, in all our ways, his watch is vigilant, like a lover who can’t take his eyes off his bride.

“He Himself,” and no other. God does not send G.A.s to teach his classes. No lesser substitute we have on our side, but the very King of Kings. The one who controls the U.N. like a collection of marionettes has set his intentions on your success.

Indeed, if “the Lord goes before us,” whose voice makes the mountains skip like rams, our path will indeed be made straight and clear. He will eat the spider webs for us, since he walks the trail in front. If there is a gap too far to jump, he will straddle it and help us across. He will make sure we are following with him, but urge us to hurry up. He will absorb the brunt of attacks and be the first target for marauders.

What does it mean that he “goes ahead of you on your way”? It means he is not behind you, sitting in some tent, with a large battlefield map, who is unable to accompany you because he is too busy coordinating the big picture. No, he is able and willing to be our personal guide, our Sacajawea, our Sméagol. To go ahead of us also means nothing which besets us will catch him by surprise. Anything that happens to you has been filtered through him. He hacks through the underbrush with a sword that pierces joint and marrow. You need only follow his back (in its glory as Moses saw), and the trail of destroyed barriers he leaves behind.

We are allowed to have no fear of the future with the Lord fighting for us, going before us. We only need keep our eyes on him, as he moves ahead, as he engages the enemies. Lose sight of him somehow—that’s when we need to fear. Life is not a path, so much as a person.

“And He was saying to them, ‘To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, so that WHILE SEEING, THEY MAY SEE AND NOT PERCEIVE, AND WHILE HEARING, THEY MAY HEAR AND NOT UNDERSTAND, OTHERWISE THEY MIGHT RETURN AND BE FORGIVEN.'” – Mark 4:12

Why in the world would God want to preach the gospel in ways that nobody could understand!? What are you up to, God, that you would make the gospel intentionally opaque to some?

“For whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.” – Mark 4:25

This seems quite counter-intuitive. Maybe not even fair? But it is the Lord’s rule, so we submit to this way of things. Lord, reveal to me how this works.

“And He was saying, ‘The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows–how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.'” – Mark 2:26-29

This is how people are saved: sometimes there is no definable point of salvation, but we “wake up” and realize that God has sometime during the “night” done a work in our hearts, and we have begun to show fruit. That is a blessed revelation. And when the grain has continued to grow to maturity (like we do), it will be harvested (into heaven), which is the consumation of salvation.