Laura Richter | Formation at the Top: Catholic Healthcare, Mission Integration, and the Shape of the Soul

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, before we start today's episode, I wanna take a moment to tell you about usefultogod.com. From online courses to free downloadable study guides, I'm confident you'll find something to help you live faithfully in today's world. You can also check out some of my books, including Christian Resistance, Serpents and Doves, and my most recent contribution, the D.L. Moody Essentials Collection. As always, if you find this podcast valuable, take a second to like, share, and leave a positive review. It really does make a difference. And if you haven't yet, subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more content to equip and encourage you. Now, let's get into today's episode. Hey everyone, it's Dr. James Spencer here on Thinking Christian. And today, I have a special guest, Laura Richter. She is an executive advisor to SSM Health and Providence, which are both healthcare systems, on this idea of mission integration. And so we're gonna be talking a lot about mission integration, what it is, and how it works, particularly in the Catholic healthcare systems. And so, Laura, welcome to the podcast. Really glad you hopped on here. Thank you, and thank you for the invite. I'm super excited to talk about the work, specifically some of the fun work we're doing with executive formation, which is sort of an interesting area to talk about meaning and purpose with these high-level executives. Yeah, I will say, so my experience with this is pretty minimal. It's almost just through osmosis, you know, with my wife working in Catholic healthcare. When she first started talking about it, I'm like, this is fascinating because Protestants don't do anything like this. I mean, not even close. I remember going to work for the first time, and they gave me a book on, I happened to be working at Moody Bible Institute. They gave me a book on D.L. Moody. And that was as much as I got, really. Other than that, you just sort of felt your way through the culture and tried to figure things out, but there wasn't a whole lot of honing on this. And so maybe just, we could start by you giving us a little bit of a framework for what mission integration is and does. Absolutely. Yeah, sure. So mission integration is a field, if you will, a specialized field, that really came about in sort of the late 90s, specifically within Catholic healthcare, because I think at that point, the religious sisters, many of whom, there are religious brothers and priests too, but the high population or percentage was the religious sisters, knew they were getting older and there were less sisters. So like if you would have looked at a hospital, a Catholic hospital in the 1960s, 95% of the senior roles, your CEO, your CFO, your CNO, would have all been religious sisters. By the time we got to the end of the 90s, very few of those roles were held by sisters, and usually it was something like over mission services or pastoral care. And the sisters were very mindful if these ministries were going to continue on looking and feeling as they had up until this point, they were going to need to do some more formalized work to ensure that these ministries would continue on with the Catholic character in the charism, which is, you know, a gift given by the Holy Spirit and each order has a particular charism. And so they began working with this idea of mission integration. So mission integration is a very large term, a big umbrella that encompasses a lot of things, but it usually is dedicated towards preserving and ensuring the Catholic character of the ministry. It happens in very technical ways, in the ways that you orient staff and talk about the history and heritage, pastoral care services. Usually ethics will report up through mission integration. And from there, you might have other things like care of the poor and community benefits, fertility care services reported up through me once because it was an archdiocesan initiative. But those are like the departments specifically that would generally report up to mission integration. But writ large, mission integration ensures that we are in every way possible living out the mission statement of the organization and our policies and procedures and the way we treat people and the way we pay people. So within Catholic healthcare, there's been a lot of work to create a just wage, to have fair benefits, and all of those things. And so mission integration writ large is all of those things. From a specific work perspective, mission integration usually works with those pieces around history and heritage, archdiocesan relations, pastoral care, ethics, and then other duties as assigned. So it's a very particular set of work. And this work we've been doing with the executives is considered formation, which is sort of, even formation is probably even more recent than mission integration because there was also this sense, if we wanted our executives to be able to carry on these works in the same way, they were going to have to be educated. For any religious sister, their first piece of formation was to spend two years, right? Just learning and being formed and getting degrees and then going out and doing ministry. Lay people don't have that sort of background, right? Right. And so trying to figure out how do we empower and educate our leaders to know a little bit about vocation, about the healing ministry of Jesus, about the founders who founded our order. For example, SSM comes from the Franciscan heritage and the Franciscan Sisters of Mary. St. Francis had a very particular charism. He was known for his love of nature. He was known for his humility and service. So trying to figure out how do we teach them to know about this so that they can continue this on in a way because each ministry of the church is a little bit distinctive based on the order of sisters or brothers who founded it. And so it isn't that every executive now is even Catholic, even that they're not even necessarily lay Catholics, correct? Correct. And so how is that formation done? You mentioned like the healing acts of Jesus. And so obviously you can call back to that sort of as a historical marker for what Catholic healthcare does. But I'm assuming like Catholic social teachings come into this pretty widely. Like, do you use the transcendentals, like the good, the true, the beautiful as sort of an anchoring point for all humanity, you know, that they wouldn't necessarily have to have a commitment to Christ to really understand that aspect. How does that work? Yeah. So within both systems I work in, we create a very thoughtful pathway because as an executive walks through the door, you want to orient them, right? You give them about a day and a half of just the key things they need to know. So we teach them a little bit about Jesus. We look at some healing stories. We talk about the Franciscan Sisters of Mary. We talk about the ethical and religious directives, which is a booklet written by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops that sort of mediates how ethics happens in a hospital. We talk about servant leadership. We talk about, I'm going through all the sessions. Catholic teaching, basic principles, common good, human dignity. And then we do that all within a day and a half. And that gets them started within that first year, just so they have a basic sensibility. And from there on, we start to build on that. So for example, the program your wife Kim is in is a two and a half year program that's considered to be a deeper dive. So they come together once a quarter for two to three days and we take an even deeper dive into one whole retreat is on vocation. The second whole retreat is on the healing ministry of Jesus. And at that same time, we cover the structure of the church. What does it mean to be part of the church? How did the church evolve over the years? You know, because it went from a very different structure. And each of these Catholic healthcare ministries, hospitals as part of the church. So getting them to understand that, and they don't have to be Catholic, right? But they have to have a sensibility enough to understand this healing ministry of Jesus is what we're trying to continue in the communities that we serve. They get a whole retreat on the Franciscan Sisters of Mary. We do one on mission-inspired leadership, Catholic social teaching, the moral tradition. So we talk about and sketch out how ethics changed from back in the Jewish tradition, where if somebody did something wrong, you would have talked about an eye for an eye, right? Versus Jesus comes along and says, well, now hold on a second. Let's think about that a little bit differently. Thomas Aquinas goes even further. And so we sketch out, obviously, you could spend a whole semester on any one of them, right? But giving them enough to get what they need to know so that when they're dealing with an ethical situation, organizational or clinical, they one, know the right people to call to have in the room, but have some basic sensibility. And then we continue throughout the whole time. We also talk about whole person care. We talk about suffering and signs of the times. And then we close up at the end with in partnership with others because we don't pretend we can do all this work all by ourselves, right? We oftentimes have to partner with others in the community. And what does it mean to have a value?

face partner, so they are trying to partner with someone who shares some of those same values as you do. So two and a half years, two to three days at a time. And what I'm most proud of about the SSM program is that we've really worked hard to create a sense of applied theology. So for example, during the class on Jesus and his healing ministry, we also go visit our Wish Clinic over at St. Mary's, which is a very particular program that focuses on mothers with addiction during their pregnancy and takes care of them and medically manages them through their pregnancy so that they have a safe delivery and works then to wean them off the drugs over the course of time and then wean the baby off when the baby is born. And to talk about, you know, the manager of the program there talks about the fact, not everybody can work there because some people have very strong feelings about mothers who use during pregnancy. But if we take the healing ministry of Jesus seriously, then we have to care for everyone outside or in, right? Like, and really think about how do we make this real? Just last week, we were in Oklahoma talking about suffering and signs of the times, and we made a visit to the Oklahoma City Memorial and Museum, which recalls the bombing, you know, and all the work that they did to memorialize those 168 lives that were lost. We also talk about the fact that our hospital, St. Anthony, was right around town, right across town, you know, and received some of those first victims and what was it like? Some of the coworkers that were there 30 years ago are still able to talk about what it was like to be all way and accept those patients. So we work really hard. We do each retreat the same for three hours at the very beginning, we put the theology up front. We generally bring in an outside theologian who is an expert in their field. And then for the rest of the day and a half, we unpack that with them, either by reflecting on our own policies and procedures and seeing, wait, can we see human dignity in that policy and procedure as well as making visits out to the community to try to see if we can put our finger on what we just learned about in the book knowledge, if that makes sense. It does. I mean, I've been doing a little reading on cybernetics, which I know sounds really weird, but it was a legitimate like management sort of system back in the day. Stafford beer kind of pioneered it. And he had these four different systems, but the fourth of his systems was identity. And what he talked about with identity was identity helps you to eliminate alternatives up front. In other words, because you have this strong identity, you can look at something and go, yeah, that won't fit us. It just, it just won't work. That's not something we're going to do because it's not who we are. It's not what we're, it's not what we're doing. And it just strikes me that a lot of what you're doing with mission integration is that it's, if this is going to fall outside of who we are, we don't do it. And so it's not even something we need to entertain. We can just move that forward. And, and having everyone on the same page with that, even evaluating partners based on that would seem that that identity would, would actually, if you get it right, sort of feed through the entire organization and allow you to make decisions in a much more expedient manner. And sometimes at some points also making difficult decisions at other points, I would imagine. Yeah. You know, we really do focus on that idea of identity when we do formation and we do formation, not just for executives, but for all the, all the employees all the way through the organization. And that's most of Catholic healthcare now has a person in generally a vice president role who is sort of overseeing all that work because they understand the importance of it. But when we talk about identity too, yes, it's very important that people understand the organizational identity, but it's also super important that they understand their own identity, who are they, what are their values, what motivates them, you know, spirituality at its core is what gives you meaning and purpose and everybody, regardless of religious tradition has something that gets them out of bed in the morning. And so give them time and space to think about who they are first, and then to think about who the organization is allows for a certain sort of synergy. So for the people who do love common good and human dignity and want to be of service, I think they develop an even tighter connection with the organizational identity because they're like, whoa, this mission-based, you know, approach, I like this. By the same token, I think we also have people who are like, well, hold on a second, like I'm just doing this to get my paycheck. And that's a very real thing, right? Everybody has needs, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You need your food, you need your, you know, the roof over your head, but I think by the same token, there are some other people at times too, who say, I mean, this is great and all, but this isn't how I'm wired. And so they might self-select out of the organization as well. So I think it works both ways. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, when I think back on my time in Christian nonprofits, Christian nonprofits have their own culture. I don't think they can articulate it quite as well. From what I've been able to glean from Kim's participation in formation, the benefit that Catholics have over Protestants and particularly individual Protestant organizations, I would say, is that you have a solid and fairly cohesive tradition to draw from. Whereas every Christian nonprofit might have a little bit different angle on everything, which makes coordination across organizations really difficult. And it makes it much more tedious to get down to when you're thinking about like bringing a Protestant worker into a Protestant nonprofit. Well, their church may have very different distinctives that they're emphasizing than the nonprofit organization. And so there just isn't that cohesiveness to it beyond some very core sort of doctrinal concerns and constraints. Beyond that, you know, the way we think about these various issues, ethics, justice, you know, a lot of the things you've mentioned could differ pretty widely. And so I don't know, I don't know whether I have a question there. I'm just sort of in, maybe I'm just sort of jealous of the cohesiveness of the Catholic tradition. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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Do we have this Catholic social teaching? Yes, but most people don't know about that. The average churchgoer doesn't have a sense of that other than how they experience it in church on Sunday, which is why I want people in mission integration to have a theological background. In fact, we were talking before, you know, you don't have to be Catholic to work for a healthcare ministry, but more often than not, that VP of mission and usually the director of pastoral care, those are the two roles within a ministry that you do want a Catholic in, preferably one with training. So I have a master's in divinity from Weston Jesuit School of Theology. It was one of the Jesuit schools, which gives that basic knowledge, you know? And I think about I got all sorts of book knowledge while I was in school and a fabulous education. But like where I really learned about Catholic social teaching was working with some of our lowest paid coworkers, was working along at the bedside of some of the people working in the community and understanding what some of the struggles were for the people who lived in the area around our ministry. I mean, that to me was where I would tell you I learned the most about Catholic social teaching because it's one thing to read a book about it or read a pastoral letter. It's another thing to have someone tell you their life experience. You know, I think about a CNA who told me once, I don't want to leave my child at the bus stop because I live in a crime-ridden neighborhood. But then by the time I take three buses to get to my ministry, I'm late and I'm in trouble. You know, so trying to think about how do we learn to see the people for who they are and learn to make things better. Some of the stuff we can work with, like, I mean, many of the Catholic ministries have done a lot of this work around a just wage, but we haven't been able to figure out how to, you know, figure out crime where some of the folks live. So it's, I mean, there are still things we are challenged with. But yeah, we do have the benefit of this teaching. We have this benefit of this tradition. But you know, we are doing this now too in a postmodern world. And the ministry has this

People who are worried. And actually, you know, I've heard people who have participated in some of these programs who in the end do decide to become Catholic. And I'm always like, can you not tell that story first? Because I'm afraid they're going to service that we're going to baptize them. And that's not the goal, you know, I mean, really, and it's about a person's own spirituality, right? And by nurturing their spirituality, I think they become better human beings. And then we try to work with that in terms of, you know, connecting them with the mission and purpose of the organization as well. Yeah, your goal just really, it is alignment with the mission, not conversion to Catholicism. To the extent that that happens, it's probably great, you know, but the goal is not evangelistic is, you know, in any real sense. It's, hey, we're all on this sort of healthcare mission together and we want to make sure that we're actually aligned in that healthcare mission. This is where this tradition comes from. You may bring other facets to it, but at the end of the day, we're all going to align right here. Is that kind of the, is that an appropriate way to articulate it? Yeah, I think it is. I don't know that we ever say it quite that strongly. We really do. I mean, and I'll say this is my own personal bent, right? I err on the side of the personal because what's more important to me is that, you know, that they as human beings have the potential to flourish and know who they are. I think one of the biggest things we do, especially in the executive program, is to create and protect time and space for them to reflect. Like you think about, I had a colleague I saw him at a conference last year and he was talking about the fact that God tries to get our attention 30 to 50 times a day and that we're lucky if we catch one of those times. And I think about that a lot, right? Like all the things come at us on any given day and we're so busy just getting through the day that we don't have time to reflect on that. Very often, just giving them time and space to reflect is sort of our first job. Then it's to educate because then they're in a better space to sort of take all this in and think about it. I mean, some of the reflections they have, I remember once when we were teaching Catholic social teaching to the cohort before Kim and we had this great teacher in and we went and visited a couple of local organizations. And the second day as we were wrapping up, this doctor in the group raised his hand and said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like, I want to make sure I'm getting this right, because if I'm hearing this right, are you telling me, like, I have an open basement, like a room in my basement? Should I be bringing in someone off the street to live in my house? And I was like, um, I've never heard someone ask that question before. But I mean, I love thinking about that, right? Like to see him processing all of the different things he had learned over this time. Yes, I think the ideal situation would be alignment and ensuring that they want and can live out the mission of the organization. I don't know that we've ever aimed for 100% alignment. I think, but we do want to empower them and enable them to be thoughtful and competent leaders in a ministry because there are not sisters running around anymore. And across one of my organizations, there's only 14 mission leaders for 45,000 people. So you can't expect just the mission leaders to be the ones doing the work all the time. How does that work? I mean, you know, it is a pretty, even with just, you know, 14, it's a pretty substantial effort and resource for an organization. You know, I mean, even just having, you know, four people would be a pretty big spend for any organization, right? And so how do the mission integration folks actually work with the rest of the staff outside of the formation experiences you've talked about? What's sort of the day to day push and pull on that? You know, where do mission integration leaders feed in, maybe? So, and I'll talk about, so I've had the privilege of working for five different Catholic systems now over the last 25 years and each of them does it a little bit differently, but I'll sort of talk about the key features that end up being important. Great. One, you have to have a person at the vice president level in that mission integration who serves on the executive team. It doesn't work if you don't have someone who's at that top level of the organization hearing what's going on, participating in the conversations, and being an equal thought partner with whatever it is that's going on at the time. So that's a key feature and I would say almost across Catholic healthcare, maybe except in smaller rural standalone places, you're always going to have a mission vice president who's considered to be part of that executive team, both at the system level as well as the local level or regional level. It depends on how they're set up. Gotcha. And within that region, whoever that person is there, they will often have a team of people. So again, I mentioned, I'll think about the last time I was in a management position. I had a director of pastoral care and a bunch of chaplains. We had a department of community benefit with a director and several community health workers. We had an ethicist on site because we were a level one trauma center. So we had someone to us and then on-call got split up a couple of different ways. But then you have a whole team of people who are focused on that work. And on any given month, I would have all five of those leaders come together. We would talk about all the things that were happening across all of our work because oftentimes a chaplain might get wind of an ethical issue that needs to be passed off to the ethicist and all of those things. And you work hard to make sure all those people are integrated because an OR nurse might also come up with an ethical issue and she needs to know how to access the ethicist as well. Sure. And that's part of why we educate everybody as they come through the door. So, you know, every coworker probably gets at least half an hour of mission integration orientation, history and heritage. How do you call the ethics line? Where are the chaplains on their first day as part of their overall orientation? And then over time, they'll get more of that depending on how the programmatic structure goes. But there's always administrative responsibilities. For one of the places I was in, I was also the administrator on call every eight weeks. So I knew what the life of that ministry from abuse calls in the middle of the night to snowmageddon when we were there for 24 hours, right? Right. I mean, and that's, that is a little bit different than being a pastor at a parish, right? Like it's a different sort of having to do the budgets, like the whole nine yards. Like there was no class on that in div school, right? But it's, that's where the real life of the ministry is. And so you have to have whoever that mission integration person is be well integrated into all the levels of the organization. But it definitely starts with having them be part of that administrative team and then having a team of people who then are integrated into the ministry as well. Oddly, I've had the snowmageddon administrator on call experience just by proxy. I think I was the chauffeur for the administrator on call for a few times. So it is challenging. And that is a different role than I would have expected for mission integration. And so, but that, it sounds like then there's a representative role where you're sort of on the, you're speaking into the upper level leadership decisions that are being made. There's a proactive role where you're bringing issues to the table and then there's a reactive role where you're responding to some challenges and serving as almost a resource for the organization. I'm interested in the ethicist, you know, in most of the organizations I've worked for, you don't have an ethicist, you have a lawyer. And so I know, I know hospitals have both, but maybe talk a little bit about the ethicist position and how that functions. Yeah. Again, it would be different setups in different organizations across Catholic healthcare, but by and large, you'll have some sort of ethics resource at the system level, right? Because you want someone who's there when policies and procedures are being developed for the whole system, but you also want someone local. So in the middle of the night when you have a woman in pregnancy, you know, who has a difficult decision and the doctor's there that you have someone you can call locally as well. And on-call coverage happens in a variety of different ways. You know, those ethicists usually are very good friends with the lawyers because more than half the time you need both of them. If there's an abuse case, if there's some sort of something going on. Yeah. And that's, we even had a team of people who would come together that was like a small subset of the ethics committee because to pull all of them together sometimes takes time. And when you need a, there were four of us who kind of got together faster than that so that we could make quicker decisions. But yeah, you have a person who's a PhD level trained more often than not. Sometimes you'll get a physician who's got some background in bioethics. I mean, it can happen any number of ways, but that person has some sort of official training again so that they understand both sort of the rules and regs of bioethics, but also then they understand the ethical and religious directives. And so you have those people there and you would also have the lawyers involved as

How should we handle those? There could be some bleed over, I assume. But like you would, you could understand why an ethicist would need to understand the law, but even if they're not an expert in the law and almost vice versa, you can understand why a lawyer would need to understand some of the ethics involved because they don't always, you know, coincide. But that is a fascinating role. I just find that like amazing. Again, so I mean, my background is in theology. And so a lot of times in the organizations I've worked for, you're not only an administrator, but you're also sort of a theologian on call. You're asked to do the discerning work of the ethicist and the decision maker all at the same time. And that's actually really can be really challenging. It creates a fair amount of dissonance because when you're having to make a tough call, you know, it's sort of like you're just on your own. Whereas I could see the value of having multiple voices sort of speaking into this and saying, no, here's, here's sort of where the ethical boundary ends, right? So you can't go past that. You know, and if you're tiptoeing that line, maybe think about a different decision, right? You can, you can see how that would be really helpful from a, almost like a counseling perspective, as you're trying to make these tough calls. Well, and even pastoral care, right, sometimes plays into that. I think about some of the, that I've sat in on over the years where they're deciding whether or not to withdraw treatment, right? Because it's not just sort of the practical decision that you're making, but there's a whole philosophical and sometimes religious, you know, sort of piece there too, about what are you bound to do? And there's, you know, been all kinds of ink spent on different issues like nutrition and hydration. And that's actually a place too, where you talked about earlier, you know, that the church sometimes has this big tradition. Yes. And sometimes there are different people who talk with a different voice. Like I'm thinking back in the, maybe the early two thousands, there was a group of bishops in Dallas who wanted to say something different about nutrition and hydration because sometimes it can be taken too far. You know, and so I think there are different voices going on. But like an issue like consent, right? You do have a legal perspective and you have an ethical perspective. And so more often than not, your ethicist and your law would work together, your, your lawyer, because there are state and other regulations that are at play there as well as the ethical considerations. Have you seen this? Because I know you said, you know, this really whole mission integration field came about in the nineties as the sisters started to shrink and those numbers started to shrink. Have you seen non-Catholic healthcare systems start to pull in certain aspects of mission integration? So like, do other hospitals, non-Catholic healthcare systems have ethicists on call and, you know, biomedical experts or what have you? Yeah. You'll notice some of that. So some of that comes from because one of the commissions that accredits hospitals, the joint commission, there is a regulation in there that says something along the lines of spiritual care must be provided to all people in the ministry. Now they don't tell you how many people that looks like. They just say that spiritual care has to be provided. So that could look like a local clergy person or it could look like a chaplain. There are very particular regulations within healthcare, Catholic and otherwise, right, that allow them to function and operate as a hospital. And those commissions come in every one to three years and make sure that you're able to keep. Yeah. So there are rules about that. I would say some of the Protestant healthcare and some of the other systems who do have a religious tradition or backing, whether it be Baptist or Adventist, or they have sometimes started to have a mission integration person and sometimes those partnerships happen, then you'll have a mission integration person on the Catholic side and the Adventist side. So that they can talk about where are the places where that overlap needs to be sort of minded. Because those are two different religious traditions. Catholic healthcare has also, I think, given some good witness to Catholic education. I mean, many of the schools are going to be in situations very similar to Catholic healthcare and education is similar, right? So like if you're going to educate people in a particular tradition with liberal arts and a religious tradition, you want someone there who can speak to, you know, it's funny. My daughter is looking at Catholic high schools here in St. Louis and she has the unfortunate luck of having me go with her for all the tours, right? And so one of the questions I asked when I'm on the parent tour, and she was there for it last time I asked. So in the first place, I said, tell me about mission integration. And they went on and on about it. And I was like, really impressed. The motto was painted up on the wall and like, you could see my little mission integration person, right? Checking off all the boxes. And then we went to the second school and we were down in, I don't know, campus ministry or service learning. And so I said, I'm just curious, how do you all do mission integration here? And you could tell she kind of looked up at me and looked over at her colleague. And she said, well, we don't have a particular person doing that, but we kind of just share it all. You know, and in my head, I was like, Yeah, this is never going to work. So you're saying is you don't do it. Like, mom, quit like giving them some hard time. And I was like, but this is serious to me, right? Like, because I think about education, like, I want her to come out with a concern for the dear neighbor or, you know, whatever the charism is there. I would want that for her. So it was interesting. I think she got a good look at my, you had said, you know, your Bible self, like, or all the stuff, you know, like I bring that to whatever I do. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, as I've, you know, when you talk about schools, I think there is a lot of overlap between hospitals and schools and I could see particularly like, well, like, I know this is a Catholic college, but Judah, my son goes to SLU. Yes. And so I've just been interested to kind of watch. He's doing a history and a theology major. And I was like, hey, way to go, son. The, you know, like, I'm not sure what you're going to do with that after, but I think it's awesome. But I would say a Jesuit educated both in undergraduate and a graduate degree, right? The way that they taught me to think about the world, the way that I, how to find God in all things, the idea of being men and women for others. That was a huge part of my education. And it's something that flows through the work I do still today. Yeah. And it's fascinating. You know, I, I got into theology after my undergrad. So I never had an undergraduate Bible or theology degree. So I went straight into an MDiv, very similar to what you would have done on the evangelical side. And so everything on the evangelical side that I had was just evangelical, right? And so when he's doing SLU, he's, you know, he's being exposed to a breadth of theology that I didn't get until I was much later on in life and was, you know, just reading myself and doing those kinds of things. So it's interesting to watch, but you can see how, and I see this on the school side a lot. Whenever I advise Christian parents about where they want to send their kids, I usually give them a little list of questions and they're very similar to what you're talking about with mission integration. It's like, don't just take the, you know, the name on the sign as Christian as if that's should be comforting, right? That can cover up a whole host of sins. And so you need to be asking these types of questions, you know, how, you know, how does this stuff work? Because if that's not there, what you're really sending your kid to is probably a Christian in name only sort of school. And you want to, if that's not what you want, then you just need to be aware of that. Nothing necessarily wrong with it, but that's, you just have to be aware. And so I, I do think that there's a real value in having these mission integration type conversations because otherwise things get real, how would I say it? It's almost like a bait and switch. And I don't mean that the institutions are trying to do that, but it does feel like you lose control of it so quick if you don't have it. Right. You know, and things just start to become little processes and, you know, whatever. It doesn't have a direction. It doesn't have a good, a strong purpose. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed with inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty? More families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. 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field. And then I sat through a PhD level class where they like debated the law and our gaining an interpretation of natural law. And I was like, make it just like I need to find a practical way to sort of apply this. But I would tell you that mission integration is like doing virtue ethics because we as an organization are saying, who are we? Who do we want to become and how do we get there? And so for me, it was sort of fun to figure out many years later that I am still doing that work. And in fact, when we teach the moral tradition, my colleagues, they are very kind and they let me teach a little bit about that because they know that that's my passion. But I really believe that's what we're doing, right? Is sort of help people, one, to be better individuals, but also for us to be a better organization and to be aligned. Because I think you're right. If the mission statement is just something that's up on the wall, but it hasn't taken root in the people, right? If they're not doing service, if they're not caring for the community around them, then they're failing at what the original call was of that ministry. More often than not, sisters went into places that had no infrastructure. They were brought out there by a priest who said, we need a school. We need a hospital. We need. And they would come out there with, you know, themselves, five bucks and a couple of sisters and set up ministry, right? Like I think about these brave, courageous women who did, like, it's so funny because we'll have people nowadays say like, oh, it's so hard. The sisters wouldn't have even been able to imagine. And I was like, I'm sorry, the sisters who traveled by covered wagon out into like unwandered into territory. Like they didn't know what tough, like, I'm sorry, stop for a second. You know, I think about these men and women who were brave and did this and did all this work out of love for God, right? And to care for the neighbor. And I think it's something that if we're not doing that still today, you're right, we failed. And so that's part of why this formation work is so important, not just for the executives, but for all levels of the organization, because it's a way of being in the world. And it continues this ministry. You know, I think about, I am the last generation, so I'm in my early 50s. I am the last generation who will know what it's like to have worked with a sister. I think about the gray nuns, Sisters of Charity of Montreal who drove me up to Montreal and let me walk in the footsteps of St. Marguerite. You know, they would tell me stories about going over to Africa on a boat that was like sticks wound together. You know, this was part of their lives. And I always say to people who are in the formation programs, like I want you to understand, yes, this is an absolute privilege, but with it comes a huge responsibility. Because I'll use the Franciscan sisters of Mary as an example. There are 33 of them left. And if we haven't done a good job educating all these leaders about who they were and what they did in a way that allows them to continue it, everything they did will die out when they die. And I don't think we can do that. I mean, there are just too many wonderful stories and charisms that we just can't let that go. So I work super hard. I feel that sense of responsibility. And that's why I'm so passionate about this work. Like I feel very lucky just within the last five years, I've been able to sort of let the rest of mission integration and administration go, which has been helpful for me for a number of reasons. But I just do the formation work. And to me, it's just amazing. And it's amazing to watch these executives come in and like the days that the light bulbs go off, it's like amazing. And the insights they have about themselves and about others, like, and that we do it not just so that they can be better administrators and workers, but so that they can flourish as human beings. Like it's an amazing thing that healthcare has invested in this kind of work, not just for the organization, but for the individuals who serve in it. I agree. I think it's fantastic. And part of the reason I mentioned this before the interview, part of the reason I wanted to have this conversation is because I just feel like there's something missing in some of our Protestant structures. And I think this approximates what's missing. It's this idea of what is our mission? How are we forming, you know, those three questions Alistair Mac and I are asked. I think it's a really great way to think about it. And then how do you build a leadership structure within your organizations or institutions or however that looks to actually help people move toward who you want to be and, you know, what you want to look like. And I just feel like sometimes we're missing that broad continuity, maybe. Because I think part of what you're talking about with mission integration, it really is a continuity. It's a continuity from the sisters away from them into another era where their legacy isn't going to just sort of be completely lost. It's still, you know, it's still there. It's still influencing things. It's still part of the identity of the institution and a major part of the identity of the institution. And so I do think it's really crucial, the work that you're doing. And I know Kim's appreciated it. So she always comes back from her formation times with a lot of thoughts in her head. And I think she really does enjoy them. And so I, you know, from a husband's perspective, I appreciate it. Oh, well, absolutely. One of the fun, I remember the very first class she went to, for whatever reason, she was staying afterwards. And she was like, I'm going to go home tonight and talk to my husband about this. Like, so she had all these things that she was like so excited to come home and talk with you about. Like, and it's, it's sort of fun. I think she probably told you, we had her come back as a panel member on a retreat recently. And I one of the questions I pitched to her is like, what's it like to have this experience and then go home to your theologian husband and like, talk about like, well, what did you do today? You know, I mean, because that's part of life. And when we talk about she was on a retreat where we were talking about mission inspired leadership and vocation, you know, and for her, like, I mean, there's a vocation to being a pharmacist as well. And I think about often jokes. She's probably one of our best cheerleaders because I think all of her direct reports are either in our program or lined up to go through the program because she believed in it. Right. And she's found it so meaningful. And she wants them to have that experience too. Yeah. We even went to, and I'm going to blank on the name of the city when we were over in Italy, we went to Assisi. Yeah. It was really cool. So we got to see, you know, the sort of the home base, I guess is, you know, the origin story for the organization. And it was, it was a really cool little town. We had a lot of fun on the trip. So totally worth it. But that was something, you know, when she, when we were going to go over there, she's like, Oh, we got to go to Assisi. So pilgrimage, right. As part of formation. We, I've often joked in one of the roles I'm in, because sometimes they'll get somebody who comes through the door and they send them right over to Assisi. I was like, hold on a second. Like you should orient, then make them go through the two and a half year program. Then you send them to Assisi. Like, cause like, if they don't even know where the bathroom is telling him who Francis is, like, doesn't make sense. Like you've got about like age, these things in an appropriate sort of. Right. So now they have started saving a couple of places every year. They do the pilgrimage. And so now some of our graduates of our executive program get to go do that because then that's a deepening of something that they've learned a little bit about along the way, but that's the. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. You can pilgrimage. I've listened to your, your reformation, right? That's a pilgrimage too. It is. Yep. Reformation. I've done Israel, done a few different places and it is interesting to be in those spaces and understand the background. I think I enjoyed Assisi, right. But not having all the background that Kim had, I didn't appreciate it the way that she did. And so I think that's a big part of it. So. Well, and I think it's an interesting thing to be in this space, but then to think about how does this connect with, so yeah, I told you I was Jesuit educated. I didn't doubt until I was in college that I was actually born on the feast of St. Ignatius. And so over the years that has taken on sort of a new fascination for me. And so in my early thirties, I actually did a pilgrimage to Spain and walked in the way of, and I didn't do it with anybody else. I just did it on my own, but it was a random sort of thing. I ran into some guys I knew and I ended up in the cave where he wrote the spiritual exercises. And it was just this, like when I went to his house, I thought that was going to be the place. Like, and I walked through twice and I kept waiting to think like something

So we can have a continuing enrichment from what they've experienced. And I, yeah, I love the work you're doing. I think it's, it's fascinating to me. I think as I look at leading organizations or, you know, even just sort of trying to help churches or educational institutions figure some of this stuff out. I, you know, I've gotten this sort of scratch on my brain that the structure is just wrong. Like that, that no one president can actually attend to everything that they're asked to attend to and this. It's just a very difficult thing to do. And so as hard as it really is a pill to swallow, it's like I've been starting to recommend to people, no, you probably need a position to do this. And it needs to be a position with some heft to it. And it has to be an allocation. But I think overall, it'll be helpful in the end. And what you're describing just gives me at least a paradigm to point to and say, hey, look, they're doing it. This could definitely work. The sisters had great wisdom, right? And knowing that it's a defined role. I think the other thing that I would say too is, as you were talking about formation, we often use the line, life is a formative event. You know, I often tell very humorous stories. I have an 11 and 13 year old daughters and they are trying to form me all the time, right? But part of the big piece is trying to sit down from time to time and reflect about what's going on and what is forming me because we're being formed whether we like it or not. Having that time and space, you know, so yes, it's about the position, but it's also about creating time and space. Like, so that when people are going to make business decisions, that they can see it as a discernment and they can slow it down and just not think about getting to the action at the end, but taking the time to ask the questions throughout the process, starting with a prayer and reflection, right? There are very particular tactical things that we can do from a mission perspective that help get you to a better ending by going through the whole process, if that makes sense. It does. It makes a lot of sense. I think, yeah, I mean, if I think back of the times where, you know, you don't have time for formation, it's because you're not taking that time. And so building in those little mini sabbaticals almost for leadership to actually get away, set aside as much work as possible and actually concentrate on this is actually super crucial. And again, I think we sort of, at least in Protestant world, from what I've seen, we tend to leave that to the leaders to figure out themselves as opposed to building it in for them and saying, no, this is something we're all going to do and we're going to make sure you have the time to do this. There's very few organizations. Now, the one I'm working for now does. They allow me a sabbatical, which is great, but it isn't like a communal thing the way you guys do it. You know, it's more, I could take a X number of days off and go to a retreat or something like that. Right. Well, and, you know, we're starting to work on Kim's class because they're getting ready to graduate. So the things we do with them on each retreat is we teach them a new spiritual practice. And what we do is we do it while they're there with us. But as we start to get to the end, I start to say things to them like, now, listen, you've had the benefit of us making and protecting this time for you, but we're not going to be here in six months from now. Like you have to start thinking about, and I tell the story about, you know, again, as a div student, I took all this time to journal and do art and go on eight day retreats. And then I had babies. Right. And that was, I was getting ready to do my, my writing. And so I'd have to get up and go be with her. And after the second daughter was born and I was like coming to my wits end, I was like, you know what? I'm just going to have to start getting up earlier than them because otherwise my whole day was about someone else. And I was so cranky by the end of the day. And that's what I was actually a night owl up until the point I had babies. And then at this time, the second one came around, I started getting up at five in the morning, which was a really big struggle. Yeah. 30 minutes to myself with a nice hot cup of coffee that didn't have to be reheated and to write in my journal and just sort of orient myself to the day. I mean, I think you're right. We can help put that in place for them, but in the end they have to know how to do it for themselves. And that's part of having or living a reflective life. Yeah, no, it's a really good point. I love that. I think it's, I don't know, we're kind of coming up on the end of time and I want to, I want to make sure I give you the last word. So maybe just, you know, we've kind of touched on so much, you know, the mission of the organization, the sorts of thing the organization can do to sort of lead the horse to water, so to speak. Right. And then the necessity of the horse to actually drink the water, which is that personal responsibility. What would you say to folks who are, I don't know, leading an organization, thinking about this, having trouble with missional alignment? I mean, what would your advice to them actually be? It's a big question. You know, I think about, I think it was Irenaeus who said, right, the glory of God is the human being fully alive. I think God wants us to flourish. And I think if that's going to happen, we both have to individually make time and space for that, but organizationally time and space for that. And I think if an organization really does want to stay true to its mission and have their folks engaged, to have some roles that are specifically focused on that. I mean, the idea is that all the people will be eventually oriented in that way, and hopefully you work your mission leader out of a job. But just in case you have that person there, right? So that there can be a person whose whole job it is to focus on the life of the ministry and the people in it. Because I think that that balance is only achieved when you have the individuals engaged and the organization engaged. Very good. Very good. Well, I appreciate you. I appreciate you bringing Irenaeus into it. That's awesome. We've talked to Alistair MacIntyre. Right. I mean, Thomas Aquinas was thrown in there. So, I mean, this has been a fun episode and I really appreciate you being on, Laura. This is a great conversation. And it's one that, like I said, I've just been curious about what you all do and I find it fascinating. So I appreciate you being on and talking me through it. Absolutely. My pleasure. And thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to reflect on the work. Absolutely. All right, everybody. Well, thanks for sticking with us. We'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hi, I'm Nicolette Bell, host of the Everyday Prayers podcast. Each weekday, we take just a few minutes to focus our hearts on God's word through powerful scripture-based prayers designed for real life right where you are. Whether you're in the car, folding laundry, or taking a rare quiet moment for yourself, Everyday Prayers is here to help you connect with God and center your day with truth. Follow Everyday Prayers with Million Praying Moms wherever you listen to podcasts.