3 Things Churches Can Learn From Fire Departments
Aug 31, 2009 
4 Comments
If you haven’t noticed, Southern California is on fire.
This hits especially close to home, because I can see the fire from my house. I know a few families that have evacuated, a few more that stand on the brink of evacuation, and at least one family that has lost a home due to the fires. One of the churches in our network is a few hundred yards from the flames.
In such desperate times (100,000+ acres burning), we have seen an incredible amount of teamwork across several departments of firefighters. These fire departments are from all over the state of California, as well as other states and even Canada (they flew in some of their super scoopers).
The combined and coordinated efforts of these departments have saved countless homes, despite the mounting threat of what the news has dubbed the Station Fire.
(The photo was taken by me from my house.)
What Churches Can Learn from Fire Departments
- A common enemy and a shared goal are necessary for teamwork. The enemy is easily identified as the fire and the goal of saving homes and putting out the fire. What is the shared enemy of the church?
- Submission for the sake of unity. The fire departments have their own hierarchies, but are willing to surrender those command structures to the state and local departments. This preserves the coordinated efforts of the firefighters and allows their work to be more effective. Are church leaders willing to submit to other church leaders?
- The whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Even if these fire departments worked individually toward the same goal, they would not have been as effective as they are working together. This concept is known as synergy and is a major concept that I have been focusing on here on this blog. How much more can we accomplish by working together?
Additional Reading
- 8 Benefits of Networking with Other Churches (related blog post)
- LA Times on the Station Fire
- Residents flee Sunland-Tujunga (my community)
- Robber’s Cave Experiment. A sociology experiment from 1954 that studies how a common enemy can bring two competing groups together. Wish we could do something like this at summer camp! Warning: This website is very academic in its language. Not exactly light reading.
- Human synergy on Wikipedia
What Do You Think?
What factor(s) prevent or encourage churches to work together?
Please pray for…
- The families who have been evacuated.
- Those who might soon need to be evacuated.
- The firefighters who are risking their lives.
- The families of the two firefighters who died trying to defend our homes.
- The strength of the community after this disaster and our resolve to come together.
are you guys okay?
Thanks for the thought, jz. Since my house is on the other side of the 210 freeway, I should be fine. My church, though, is just south of the line where the firefighters have said, “This is our containment goal.” That containment goal does NOT include the northern half of Sunland-Tujunga, so people are freaking out. I know a lot of people who live there. But no homes have been destroyed, except for a few in the Big Tujunga Canyon (about 10 mins north of the main part of Sunland-Tujunga.)
Nick, I found your blog via Josh Griffin and so glad I did. Love what you are doing here. It appears your heart ticks for some of the same things mine does. Keep up the great work… and I'll continue to pray for the victims of the fire and those who are concerned about keeping it at distance.
–Terrace Crawford
http://www.terracecrawford.com
http://www.twitter.com/terracecrawford
Thanks for the encouragement! I appreciate the work you've done on your blog as well (I've made my way there from time to time). I'll add you as a friend on Facebook so we can keep in touch.