Features: December 2006

Reflections from the Past on Division, Unity, Property, and Vows by Vernon Broyles

Women in the Church: The Story Goes On by Presbyterian Historical Society staff

Blame and Excuse by Cathy Ulrich

Good Days and Bad Days by Joan Gray

Human Rights Day 2006 by Presbyterian Peacemaking Program

Christmas Message 2006 by World Council of Churches

Past Issues

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Blame and Excuse

by Cathy Ulrich

A reflection offered at the Office of the General Assembly Fall Polity and Leadership Conference, Tucson, Arizona, October 2006

Mark 10:35–45

We have two hospitals in our town. One of them is a non-profit, stand-alone, community hospital. It was built for a time when one went to the hospital for a tonsillectomy and stayed three days. Now one goes for a tonsillectomy and stays five minutes.

I serve on the board of this hospital. I find, as I go to board meetings and committee meetings and talk to the administrators, that the hospital, as an institution, is facing the same challenges as the church. The jargon is different, the costumes are different, and the salaries are different. But the challenges and concerns are parallel: questions about out-dated governance models, shrinking dollars, and recruiting doctors to smaller practices or towns.

Our community hospital is in trouble. We looked around the country to find hospitals our size that were doing well. A group of us from the hospital board attended a three-day seminar presented by a hospital that successfully implemented a turn-around plan. We wanted to see how they did it.

I need to tell you: the hospital we visited is called Baptist Hospital. But they told us clearly it had nothing to do with the Baptist church or the large Baptist Health System.

But we did learn how they turned their hospital around. Guess how they did it.

It was not by having a praise band or a contemporary worship service.

It was when their administrators and leaders took on a servant attitude.

The CEO was responsible for new employee orientation. It sounded to me like church officer training.

They talked about “service recovery.” This sounded like “leave your gift at the altar, and be reconciled with your sister and brother” (adapted from Matthew 5:24).

And they talked a lot about mission, vision, and value statements, which could be translated to the Great Commission, the Great Commandment, and the great ends of the church.

The polished people presenting this material said all of this with a straight face, like they were the ones who invented these concepts. At the end of the first day, the doctors and administrators who were with me on this trip were all excited about how these could be applied at our hospital. “Where could we find out more about this?” one of them asked. I wanted to answer, “Go to church,” but I was not certain that was the right answer. If the truth be told, once I set aside the startling realization that the hospital was teaching the church’s message, I was caught up in the excitement, too.

One of the unique concepts the seminar leaders introduced was “no blame/no excuse.” It was a way of taking responsibility for yourself and your team. Excuses, no matter what—excuses for not meeting goals, for being late to work, for not ordering supplies—excuses were not acceptable. And neither was blame. There was no passing the buck. There was shared responsibility for the success and failure of a department or project.

Since attending the seminar, I have been trying to share this concept of no blame/no excuse among some of the groups with which I meet. In one group, a young woman said, “Why would we want to do that? Blaming someone else is so much fun.”

It certainly is, and there is so much of it to go around. Making excuses is my personal favorite past time. I can spin with the best of them.

But if I stop to think about how much energy is spent doing that, I realize that it is a colossal waste. If I could push past the blame and excuse, I could come much closer to the cause of Christ.

One of the scripts the Baptist Hospital teaches their medical professional is to ask, “What else can I do for you? I have the time.” They are to ask this each time they encounter a patient or a family member.

“What else can I do for you? I have the time.”

Now the intuitive reaction to this offer is that it is not completely accurate. Someone is going to ask me to do something to throw off my busy day and make it impossibly more busy. They are going to add yet another task to my over-tasked schedule. But, that is what folks say and do at that hospital.

One of the participants in the seminar was a very busy surgeon—she happens to be my surgeon. I was in her office a couple of weeks after we returned from the seminar. We talked about the hospital and the challenges it faced, and after we solved all of those problems, we talked about my case. At the end of the conversation, she looked me in the eye and said, “What else can I do for you? I have the time.” She and I had both read the book. She and I had both taken the seminar. Like my brother Gradye says, “We’d both drunk the Kool Aide.” I probably knew it was coming. But I will testify that to hear those servant words filled me with such gratitude toward her, and such trust of her, a peace surrounded me I could not explain.

I was talking with one of the seasoned saints of our congregation. She asked me, “Cathy, what did I do to you to make you mad at me?” I had no idea what she meant.

“Last Sunday, in the sanctuary before church, you walked right by me. I brought my friend Rita to church and you did not stop and talk, or wave, or anything. What did I do to you?”

I promise, I did not recall seeing them before worship. But I did recall what was going on:

• the organist had been hospitalized the day before, and the guest organist needed a hymnal and instructions about worship;
• the candle lighters needed matches and their candle-lighting sticks were globbed up with wax;
• someone wanted distilled water for the baptismal font, which was usually under the Communion table, but was not that Sunday;
• someone needed the key to the boiler room to get a wheelchair;
• AND, this woman was coming in the side door, which was well outside of my peripheral vision, so there was no way I could have seen either one of them.

Doesn’t she know what Sunday mornings are like? Maybe someone with better interpersonal skills than I would not have been hooked by attempting to answer the question she asked. But remember, I’m the queen of excuses. I was ready to launch into a litany of reasons why I did not and could not talk to her.

Instead, I took a page out of the Baptist leadership model and the example set by my surgeon. I said, “Vivian, what can I do for you? I have the time.” She beamed. Then she said, “I think you better take me to lunch.”

“Great idea.” I pulled out my calendar. “I have time next Thursday.” And, I thought of service recovery. “I’ll call your friend Rita. I did not have a chance to visit with her.” So the date was set.

When Jesus answers the request of James and John, they have much to learn about their roles as servant leaders. They are thinking of power and status. Jesus, of course, shows them service and relationships.

He does not use the words, but “blame” and “excuse” are not part of the commission.

The health of the church rests upon those who are servant leaders. I know I need to see someone else doing it, because being task oriented and checking things off of a list is more my style. Placing blame and making excuses come much easier for me. I need to be reminded about being a servant.

Will you help model that for me? I’m more like James and John. And it seems the church needs those who, like Jesus said, “wish to become great by first being a servant.”

Amen.

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