Shepherding the Storm

What Crisis Care Taught Me About Ministry

“Don’t match her volume. Keep your hands open. Watch the door.”

That is the internal script running through my head while a teenager, carrying layers of profound trauma, is screaming inches from my face. For years, this was my world. Working in residential care with teenage girls meant living with two realities at the same time. My work was deeply relational. I was building trust with young people who had experienced enormous loss, creating stability, and helping twenty teenage girls do very ordinary things—eat breakfast, get to school, shower, laugh, argue, and somehow live together.

But I was also constantly reading the room.

Is this teenager just angry, or is she about to become unsafe? Is that group by the stairs joking around, or is something brewing? Do I need to step in? Do I need to move everyone else? And maybe most importantly: Am I about to make this worse?

Because one of the quickest ways to escalate a crisis is to overreact to one.

As I moved into ministry, I started realizing how much of what I learned in crisis care followed me. The setting and stakes were different. But people were still people. I found myself noticing when someone's tone changed, when a student suddenly withdrew, or when frustration was beginning to spread through a group. And I began to recognize something that now shapes the way I think about ministry:

The people who walk into our churches carry the same wounds they carry everywhere else.

People don't leave their trauma, grief, family systems, or emotional wounds in the parking lot simply because they walked into a church. Yet I don't think we always train church leaders for that reality. We train people to teach Scripture, lead meetings, build programs, recruit volunteers, and plan events. But what happens when someone falls apart?

What happens when an angry parent confronts you after youth group? When a volunteer reacts strongly to something that seems small? Those moments require more than knowing what to say. They require learning how to shepherd the room.

Shepherding Means Watching the Flock

The more I've moved into ministry, the more I've realized that much of what I learned in crisis care is really about something Scripture has expected of spiritual leaders all along:

Pay attention to the flock.

When Scripture uses the image of a shepherd, it isn't describing someone standing at a distance occasionally checking on the sheep. Shepherding required presence. A shepherd had to know the flock, lead them toward what they needed, notice when one was wandering or vulnerable, and remain alert to danger.

Proverbs 27:23 says: “Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds.”

There is something deeply relational about that command. You can't know the condition of a flock you aren't paying attention to.

Jesus takes that image even further when He describes Himself as the Good Shepherd:

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.”
— John 10:14

I keep coming back to that word: know. The Good Shepherd knows His sheep.

Of course, we will never know people as completely as Christ does. But I think there is something here for those of us entrusted with caring for people. Shepherding requires enough closeness to notice. That kind of attentiveness was one of the most important things I learned in residential care. I knew the girls. I knew who was loud every day, whose silence was normal. I knew who needed to complain for ten minutes before she could move on. And I knew the girl who never caused problems—so when she suddenly wasn't acting like herself, I paid attention.

That's shepherding. A shepherd doesn't simply react when a wolf appears. He notices who is wandering, who is vulnerable, who is falling behind, and when something in the flock has changed. Not because he is suspicious of the sheep, but because he has been entrusted with tending and protecting them.

And Jesus' description of the Good Shepherd reminds us that protection isn't detached either. In John 10, the hired hand runs when the wolf comes.

The shepherd stays. There is a presence in shepherding. You cannot shepherd people well from a distance. You have to know them well enough to recognize their rhythms and notice when something changes. And that's where crisis care taught me some of my most practical lessons about ministry.

The Volume Isn't Always the Crisis

One of the most important lessons crisis care taught me was to separate the intensity of someone's reaction from the severity of the actual situation.

Parents understand this almost instinctively. A toddler can collapse onto the kitchen floor because their sandwich was cut into squares instead of triangles. Emotionally, they are at a 10.The actual emergency is probably a 1.The emotion is real. But the emotion doesn't determine the severity of the situation.

The same thing happened constantly in residential care. A teenager throwing a chair and threatening another person was an actual crisis. Immediate intervention was necessary.

A teenager screaming because breakfast changed? Still loud. Still emotional. But not the same crisis. Church leaders need that same discernment. Someone can approach you with Level 10 energy about a Level 3 problem.

If every Level 10 reaction causes us to panic, defend ourselves, rewrite a policy, call an emergency meeting, or immediately change direction, eventually the most anxious person in the room begins setting the direction of the ministry. That isn't compassion. It is reactivity.

Before You Manage Them, Manage Yourself

When someone comes at you with Level 10 energy, your first job isn't solving their problem.It's making sure you don't become part of it.

I learned very practical things in crisis care: plant your feet. Drop your shoulders, slow your breathing and lower your voice.

Sometimes my entire internal dialogue was:

Don't match her.

There is something deeply biblical about that posture.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”
— Proverbs 15:1

Scripture understood escalation long before we gave it clinical language.

Harshness produces more harshness. Anxiety feeds anxiety. Anger invites anger.

The leader doesn't have to match the emotional temperature of the person standing in front of them. Sometimes leadership looks remarkably unremarkable: keeping your voice low when someone else's is rising. And that doesn't mean becoming passive.

You can acknowledge someone's pain without agreeing with everything they are saying.

“I can tell you're really angry about what happened. I want to understand.”

That's different from saying, “You're right.”

You're communicating something basic:

I see you. I'm listening. You don't have to get louder for me to take you seriously.

Stabilize Before You Solve

There is a point in emotional escalation where continuing to argue is simply useless. Someone is furious, overwhelmed, crying, panicking, or completely flooded, and we start explaining policy. Or correcting their theology. Or defending what happened.

Usually, it goes nowhere.

When someone is deeply escalated, their capacity for careful reasoning is limited. Their body is responding to threat. That isn't the moment for a twenty-minute explanation of why the ministry made the decision it did.

The immediate goal is not resolution.

It's stabilization.

God did this for Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Elijah is exhausted, afraid, and ready to die. God's first response isn't a lecture.

Elijah sleeps. He eats. He drinks. He sleeps again. God cares for the exhausted human being before addressing everything else going on inside him. That matters for ministry.

Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do for someone in crisis is give them somewhere quiet to sit. Sometimes they need water. Sometimes they need someone to stay with them. And sometimes they simply need time before anybody asks them to make a decision.

There will be time to talk about what happened. But first, help the person become safe enough to have that conversation.

Protect Their Dignity

Not every crisis looks like anger.Sometimes it's the mother who gets a devastating text in the church lobby and suddenly crumbles. Sometimes it's the ministry leader who has held everything together for months and finally can't anymore.

One thing residential care drilled into me was the importance of altering the geography. If someone was falling apart, we didn't need twenty teenagers watching. So we moved. Not dramatically. Not as punishment. Quietly.

“Hey, let's walk over here where it's quieter.”

When someone becomes vulnerable in a crowded church environment, one of the kindest things a leader can do is protect them from becoming a spectacle. Move toward privacy. Reduce the noise. Limit the audience. This is how we protect their dignity as an image bearer.

Learning to See Green, Yellow, and Red

Watching the flock also means learning to recognize what is happening in the room around them.

Over time, I learned to think about rooms almost like a traffic light.

Green: The environment is safe. People may even be loud or chaotic, but the underlying energy is healthy.

Yellow: Something has shifted. Tension is building. Someone is withdrawing. Nothing is necessarily unsafe, but I'm paying attention.

Red: Someone is in danger. The situation requires immediate intervention.

The goal isn't to walk around church mentally assigning everyone a color. It's a way of asking a shepherding question:

What is happening with my flock right now?

Picture a room full of middle school students.

Music is blasting. Kids are yelling. Dodgeballs are flying. Someone's shoe has somehow ended up across the gym. It looks like absolute chaos.
But everyone is laughing. Bodies are relaxed. Kids feel safe. That's Green.

Now imagine the same volume, but one group has gone rigid. Someone's jaw is clenched. Kids are backing away. The yelling sounds different.That's Red.

Chaos and crisis are not the same thing.

If I shut down every loud room because the noise makes me anxious, I'm not reading the room. I'm reading myself. A shepherd has to learn the difference.

But there is another layer to this. We often assume people walk through the doors of our churches at Green. Many don't.

The teenager sitting in youth group may have spent the afternoon listening to their parents scream at each other. The volunteer greeting people may be caring for an aging parent. Someone else may be carrying grief nobody knows about.They may look fine while internally they are already at Yellow.Their margin is thin.

That doesn't excuse unhealthy behavior. It means a shepherd learns to become curious before becoming punitive.

What am I actually seeing here?

What happened before I entered this story?

Do I need to correct something right now, or do I need to help them calm down first?

If all I see is behavior, I may respond only to behavior.

We Aren't Called to Control the Flock

Maybe this is the deepest lesson crisis care gave me. And I think it's also one of the deepest lessons of shepherding.

A shepherd watches, tends, protects and leads the flock. But it is not the responsibility of the shepherd to control every person who walks through the door.

I cannot control whether someone gets angry. I cannot prevent every panic attack or guarantee that everyone will communicate maturely or respond well when they're hurt. And I don't have to.

My job is to be faithful with the people and spaces God has entrusted to me—to pay attention, protect people, tell the truth, maintain appropriate boundaries, preserve dignity, and recognize danger when danger is actually present. And when someone else's world becomes chaotic, to resist becoming chaotic with them.

I have stepped into situations where I genuinely did not know exactly what to do next. Some were frightening and others were heartbreaking.

Over the years, I've become increasingly aware that calm leadership isn't ultimately about having perfect technique. It’s about depending upon the Holy Spirit.

There have been moments when I have walked into volatile situations praying for wisdom because wisdom was exactly what I lacked.

Help me see what I'm not seeing.

Help me know when to speak.

Help me know when to stay quiet.

Help me protect this person.

That dependence matters.

Because ultimately, these aren't my sheep. They belong to Christ.

And that's important to remember. The same Jesus who says, “I know my own,” is the Shepherd whose flock I have only been entrusted to care for.

I am called to pay attention and to respond faithfully. But I am not their Savior, and I don't have to control every outcome.

Christ did not love hurting people from a safe distance. He entered our world. Perhaps Christian leadership in crisis should reflect something of that same movement. We don't stand across the room shouting instructions for hurting people to pull themselves together. We come near. We remain steady. We pay attention to the flock entrusted to us.

And sometimes, when the storm rises, one of the most faithful things a shepherd can do is remain steady enough to tend the flock through it.