Resiliency: Preparing for Emergencies
The May 18, 2009 Alban Weekly article, “Increasing Resiliency to Hardship” (based on the recently published book, A Ready Hope: Effective Disaster Ministry for Congregations), emphasizes the importance of strengthening a congregation’s assets so that they can be drawn upon in times of emergency.
Included in the resources accompanying this article is the enormously valuable book, The Power of Asset Mapping. If your congregation has not yet seen this book, or used the tools presented in it, we at the Congregation Resource Guide (CRG) commend it to you. Here is our review of the book in the CRG.
The more recently published book, A Ready Hope, features a list of national nonprofit disaster relief organizations, along with web addresses you can access for further information online. The Congregational Resource Guide has made linking to these groups easy for you. Click on our “Disaster Relief” list for the names of (and links to) disaster relief organizations—many of them faith-based. This list is also available in a print-ready version.
In addition, many congregations may need or want information on how best to respond to various kinds of disasters—including earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and pandemic diseases. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has clear and concise information for families, individuals, and responders. Click on their “Preparedness” page to learn more. (Special thanks to my husband, Tom Greer, for this link; Tom works in emergency preparedness for HHS.)
And for those of you attuned to the recent swine flu “pandemic” scare: there is information on the role faith-based organizations can play in response. Click on Scott Santibanez’s article, “Faith-Based Organizations and Pandemic Preparedness.”
We at the Congregational Resource Guide are always grateful for information and ideas you may have about emergency preparedness. Please let us know what you think and what you have learned!
Albanites of the World!
How timely and how necessary an article. Kudos to the folks who envisioned this book, this article and these thoughts! I hope that denominational and judicatory folks also can find your work helpful in their efforts to help congregations prepare for what is surely to come!
One other thought: “Resiliency” seems to be turning into a new buzzword for lots of folks. So it’s good you are picking up on that thought. But I have a small quarrel with the word because its meaning actually rests in the idea that resilient things/people will find their way back to their original state. “Bouncing back” is the synonymous phrase for resiliency, but isn’t that what we DON’T want to have happen? Do we want to encourage congregations to keep doing and being what they’ve always been and done? (Knowing the wisdom of Albanites of all stripes, you doubtlessly have anticipated this thought and have included it prominently in the book, right?)
Granted that my strict interpretation might be true — we wordsmiths insist on ages-old meanings as the only ways words can be used — I still applaud your insistence on the attitudes that underlie the book’s tenets: tenacity and hope. Maybe also wisdom under stress?
Thanks for what you’ve done. We will all thank you in future months — this summer? — as Greenland and Antarctica melt and storms rake the country. Also as runaway zuchinni plants overtake thousands of churches in the Midwest, from all the new home gardeners forsaking their plants for just a few moments! (I worry about things no one else names as disasters!)
Keep at this, folks! It’s God’s work you’re doing here, and God’s will that you’re serving!
God keep you joyful!
Bob Sitze, Another Alban Author
I question the overall validity of one statement in the article (while agreeing with the general premise):
“the more assets an individual has, the fewer negative behaviors he or she engages in—such as addictions, stealing, casual sexual encounters, violence, and the like.”
If those “assets” are non-tangible, perhaps. But if those assets are monetary, then surely the behaviors of Lindsay Lohan, Bernie Madoff, Jim Bakker, and other celebrities would contradict the assertion about “fewer negative behaviors.” Isn’t more a case that if you can afford it, you will do it?
Granted, these negative behaviors may not have as many personally damaging effects in an affluent film star or sports figure or investment banker as in a homeless transient, but I question whether that makes them more acceptable.
Jim Taylor
natural contrarian
In “A Ready Hope” we used the term resiliant or resilancy to try to get at the reality that some traumatized folks eventually get to a place of “new normal” and incorporate the trauma as one of many key events in their lives vs. some who seem to remain stuck in a place where they identify themselves primarily as a survivor of whatever the disaster was. For some the disaster becomes the dominant way they define themselves from that event forward.
Into each life some traume will eventually come. What enables some to survive and thrive in a new way after the trauma? What causes some to let the trauma be the deciding factor that causes them to continue to define themselves as victims long after the trauma has ended?
I don’t claim to know this–but the presence of caring community during and for a long time after the trauma seems to be one critical factor.
Kathy, co-author of “A Ready Hope”
Thanks, Bob, for those thoughts about “resiliency.” I agree that “doing and being what we’ve always been and done” isn’t the most faithful response after a disaster—but that tenacity and hope, as you say, are components of a meaningful response.
Merriam’s Dictionary defines “resiliency” as the ability to recover from misfortune or change. This definition brings to mind the image of palm trees in Florida that manage to remain upright after a hurricane. And two qualities these trees manifest are groundedness and flexibility. Arborists emphasize that the soil surrounding palm tree roots is crucial to its long-term stability, its ability to stay grounded when adverse weather strikes. And the ability of a palm tree to keep from breaking during hurricanes depends on the flexibility of is trunk, bark, and branches.
Perhaps it’s a stretch to say so, but might that be a metaphor for how congregations can remain sources of hope and strength after a disaster? By being grounded in the rich soil of their faith traditions and practices? And by having the flexibility to adapt to change, to “bow and bend” when the conditions are ripe for doing so?
What metaphors come to mind when you think of “resiliency”?
Our thanks too at Mennonite Church Canada for the timely article and forthcoming book. As a denomination we have also been preparing our congregations for an eventual pandemic – and need for a faith-based response. We have recently launched a new website – http://www.churchpandemicresources.ca/ that provides a theological and pastoral framework for preparing for pandemic flu, with practical ideas about ways congregations can serve its members and community – right now, and when a pandemic strikes. Two new books on this topic from our denominational publisher, Mennonite Publishing Network are due to be released in summer – “Beyond our Fears” – http://store.mpn.net/productdetails.cfm?PC=1179 and “Don’t Be Afraid” – http://store.mpn.net/productdetails.cfm?PC=1181. Thanks for your efforts to move this important agenda forward and to encourage our churches to remain faithful in disastrous circumstances. Blessings!