Who Makes the Call? Winter Weather and Church

The second of a three-part series on weather cancellations and the church.  You can read part 1, "When to Cancel?" here.

If weather and road conditions make travel treacherous, or if the forecast strongly suggests that travel will become treacherous, someone needs to decide whether worship services or other church activities will be canceled or not.

In most situations, the person making the final decision should be the congregation's senior minister or solo pastor.  Partially, this is because the pastor should have the best understanding of who would be attending the worship service or activity and what their travel would be like.  Mostly, though, this is because a senior minister should have the respect of the congregation to abide by the decision, even if they disagree.

In almost no situation should the senior minister or pastor make the decision in isolation, though.  It is a good habit to discuss the matter with other leaders in the congregation (understanding that some leaders have formal titles and others may have no official title at all).  The pastor should ask their advice and listen to their stories of past experiences with weather and the church.  And then the pastor should share her/his thinking too.

If you are not the senior minister and you have strong opinions on the matter, you should respectfully reach out to your pastor and share your thoughts.  Again, this important decision does not need to be faced alone.

Here are some basic things to help the senior minister make the call:

1. Clarify in your mind what weather/road conditions will necessitate a cancellation.  (See part 1 of this series for advice on this.)
2. Understand when you need to make a decision.  It takes time to communicate a church closing.  (This will be explored in depth in part 3 of this series.)
3. Pay attention to the weather forecast when it becomes obvious that a decision of whether to cancel might arise.  Understand that computer modeling is still imperfect, but that it points to likely conditions.  (If in doubt, consult the official forecast/advice of your local National Weather Service office.  Many of them post updates through social media to help government officials, school superintendents, and business owners make decisions about when to shut down or close.)
4. Keep in contact with other staff people and volunteers who are a part of the service or activity that may be cancelled.  Ask their advice.  Some of them may already have heard from people who will not attend regardless of whether the activity is cancelled or not.
5. Trust your other leaders.  Be honest with them and encourage them to be honest with you.

Unless the roads are completely impassible or (as has happened to me before, there is a power outage affecting the church building), the decision of whether or not to cancel a worship service or church activity is never completely obvious.  Others will second-guess the decision, and you may even second-guess it yourself.  

Evaluation of the decision after-the-fact is important because it can help clarify how such decisions should be made and communicated in the future.  However, don't beat yourself up too much, regardless of what happens.  Make the best decision you can, and if hindsight suggests you probably should have done it differently, that's okay.

Having made the decision, there is one more essential action to take: you must communicate it clearly and quickly.  The worst thing to have happen is to cancel an activity and receive a call from someone who later arrives at the church and asks where everyone is.  (Yes, that's happened too.)