This paper explores how Lottie Moon’s 1889 letter to the Foreign Mission Board functioned as a strategic model of crisis communication in a missionary context. Facing a significant shortage of male pastoral leadership in Northern China, Moon articulated a crisis that was both biblical and organizational in nature. Grounded in Matthew 9:35–38, she framed the situation not simply as a normal issue, but as a crisis that required urgency, contingency, and adaptability. This study analyzes how Moon’s rhetorical strategies reflected modern principles of crisis leadership: urgency, contingency, and adaptability. Her appeals combined biblical conviction with organizational insight, pressing the Southern Baptist Convention and Foreign Mission Board to respond.
Using Ian Mitroff’s five-stage model of crisis management and additional frameworks like Situational Crisis Communication Theory and Stakeholder Theory, this paper evaluates how Moon’s message exemplified core principles of effective crisis management communication. She discerned the role of communication in prompting organizational change, mobilizing financial and human resources, and depicting the need for theological integrity. Her refusal to compromise biblical convictions regarding pastoral leadership, while still urgently advocating for action, exemplifies the tension between pragmatism and faithfulness in a crisis management strategy.
Moon’s leveraged ethos, pathos, and logos in ways that demanded attention and action. Her crisis communication exposed issues in the Southern Baptist mission strategy and raised enduring questions about how organizations respond to leadership deficits on the field. As modern churches and missions organizations continue to face challenges in mobilizing pastoral leaders and responding to missional crises, Moon’s approach offers a timely, biblically rooted framework for crisis management communication and organizational response.