Pastor: Our church building burning down "really helped us to refocus."

Pastor Chris Lohrstorfer shared today about how his church not only survived, but grew, in the aftermath of their church building burning down.


Recently you had an event to mark the ten-year anniversary of your church burning down. Talk to us about that.

It's really interesting. It was really a celebration.

A local fireman set fire to our church, at least our church building.

I found out that when a church burns, the pastor is usually a suspect.

He was burning a lot of things in town.

Really in the last ten years, the exciting thing is, in the first year of that....it really helped us to refocus.

We were pretty ingrown and focused on ourself.

After the fire, we had to rethink that: Why are we here? What is our purpose?

What were the thoughts of you and your congregation as you watched your church burn?

My initial thoughts were, we were starting to get some momentum, "Uh-oh."

I was so afraid as a pastor that this was going to ruin us.

It's hard to see beyond that moment.

We immediately began to try to refocus...and to try to let it strengthen.

Was there ever a thought, let's just shut down?

No, no. Although I did suggest that to the congregation to make them think.

This community needs a church.

What are the major dynamics of refocusing a church?

When you refocus something, you have to get into the head of something, and not just the heart. Why do we exist? What is the purpose of the church? What is the purpose of our church?

You can't make your church be something it's not. You really have to ask the question, "Who are we?"

I think you just have to really think through that and ask the hard questions.

You can be defined by a fire...and or you can be refined by the fire. You can let that fire purify your faith.

Don't you think that a church needs to take that opportunity to really refocus and figure out what your church has already figured out?

If you're not rethinking it by the time you hit a plateau, it's probably too late.

In the last ten years, we've rethought it several times.

I do think you have to do that, for your own personal spiritual life, for a church, for an organization.

The world's always changing around us. People are changing. If you're not rethinking who you are....you're going to be in some huge trouble, I think.

What are some things you quit doing after the fire?

Sometimes you get stuck in a process.

There are times you have to look at this and ask, "Is this successful?"

The fact is, if it doesn't accomplish it, you need to ditch it.

Review for us the biggest difference between your church today and pre-fire 10 years ago...

I would say the biggest difference is that we're outward-focused.

The real kicker for us is that if we don't rebuild the church, the community won't have us.

Our church burned down and within a few weeks of that we were talking about how we need to rebuild.

I thought, "Well, we're going to survive this thing."