Disaster Recovery involves a whole lot of effort in a short period of time. Planning ahead helps by bringing order to the chaos and helping the recovery go smoothly. You can’t always prevent a disaster from striking. You can support the community of faith by helping them recover. The Church needs to recover, too.

Planning for the recovery of the administration of the Church involves many aspects. The Church can learn from IT Disaster Recovery, but it has some unique needs. People come first; administrative systems come after that. Planning for the recovery of the administration involves all of the following steps:

1. Get church/leadership support
2. Select a disaster recovery team
3. Conduct a Business/Ministry Impact Analysis
4. Build a Technology Recovery Plan
5. Testing and Monitoring
6. Document the plan

For more information, see the following references:
Protecting church data from the unthinkable : information technology (IT) disaster recovery planning by Brian J Shoup.