A Word to Y Staff

Based on a sermon by Nancy Ortberg

This is about the wonder and the gift of work, and a reminder that when we were kids, and someone asked us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” we had a magical response for them.

I want to share with you about the possibilities and the gift of work, whether your work is doing the payroll, or whether your work is scheduling life guards. Work is about the creation of value. And no matter what your job is, you have an opportunity to live that out every day. Work gives you an opportunity to make a meaningful and significant contribution to the world. Work gives you an opportunity to live out what it means when Jesus says, “You are salt, and you are light.”

I love when our Y is in a groove, like when we are away at a retreat. We not only accomplish great things, but we become better people in the process, and I believe that is the kind of release that is available in our work.

It is a shame that many people go to work every day where there is no direct correlation between what they do and any meaning or sense of significance. There is no creation of value. For those of us who are Christ-followers, I believe it is incumbent upon us to create YMCAs and departments and work environments where there is what Ortberg refers to as “The Nobility of Service”—the reminder to people that whatever it is that you do, it is a noble thing to serve.

It is the nature of God to serve. We forget sometimes in our jockeying for positions in the politics at work that it is a noble thing to be a servant.

Early on in my career I watched Harry Brace, the late CEO of the Charlotte YMCA. Even though he was from this huge YMCA you never got the sense from him that what you did was any less important than what he did.

Oftentimes, after our YMCA made headlines, he would call me and congratulate me. Sometimes, he would run into somebody from Shelby and he would write me and thank me for doing my job and starting this Y. I saw him talk to Charlotte program directors and thank them by name for doing a job well done. I heard about him picking up the phone and calling a branch staffer and thank her personally for being a part of the team that made a difference in somebody’s life. I bet he knew the names of everybody in the housekeeping department, all those who would come in late at night to clean up and get the facility ready for the next day.

One of the things that I saw Harry do repeatedly—I never saw any other CEO do this—was to visit his people and tell them specifically that how they were doing their job had made his job easier. He would thank them for serving. He had a very quiet way of living among us and reinforcing the nobility of what it meant to serve. He had a great impact on me as I started off in my leadership role.

It doesn’t matter what you do if it’s true that God sees work as the creation of value. Then everything you do matters, whether you go back to work next week and create sports schedules, or manage aerobic instructors, or organize after school, or lead volunteers, or take care of preschoolers. When you serve, you are most accurately reflecting the character and the nature of God. What an amazing transformation would happen in our places of work if those of us went to work today with that first and foremost in our minds.

One of the great days for me in mt career was reading a letter from a woman who a year before was so heavy that she had to be wheeled into the Y in a wheel chair. Her husband would help her change and then wheel her to the lift so she could get in the pool. Today she can walk in and change and get in the pool unassisted more than 100 pounds lighter. And she attributed it to Pat Darty calling her name and encouraging her every time she came to the Y. WOW, just because Pat knew her name.

As leaders, we can go about getting change out of people by doing the typical external motivational things or we can start to tap into the deeper issues of meaning and significance and the nobility of serving other people. I believe it becomes sort of a perpetual motion machine, a ripple or a pay it forward. Because eventually that is what motivates people to want to serve. It sure changed the life of Pat’s friend.

There is nobility in serving that we sometimes lose sight of that adds meaning and significance to work. Part of what happens to us that hurts a servant mentality is we get our scales out, and we start weighing people according to their job titles in a way that compares them and dismisses them. On the heavier side we will put Exempt staff, or a CEO, or an Executive or an Associate Exec. Those people might be more important and have more meaningful work.

Then in our minds, the lighter side of the scale gets filled with other management or serving positions of administrative assistant and receptionist and people behind the scenes. When we do this in our minds and in our behavior, we are operating out of a false economy. We are valuing things very differently than God values them. We would be wise to remember that the person at the front desk, or the person that drives a bus, and the person that runs the Y are all part of meaningful work and part of the nobility of what it means to serve.

The second phrase that Ortberg uses is meaningful work. We should understand what it means to bring meaningful work back into the workplace is to provide the context and the vision, to remind people of the role they play in the overall big picture of what the organization is trying to accomplish.

Another letter I received a few years back was from a woman who noted that she had not spoken to her neighbor in several years. It had been so long that she barely remembered why their friendship had ended. At the start of her aerobic class one day, the instructor had a read a simple bible verse that talked about forgiveness. And she thought about her young son who was criticizing the neighbors at breakfast that morning. She knew that it was her hatred that was poisoning his mind. She left the class and went home and apologized to her neighbor. They are back as best friends and all because of a simple bible verse.

When I think of that story I think about what great leadership is — it is when we remind our people that they don’t just fill slots, but they do work for a greater purpose. We need to be reminded of the incredible responsibility we have, because leaders shape lives. We are stewards of that kind of change.

Our team needs to take very seriously the responsibility that we hold in our hand from a position of prestige and privilege that we can use to learn to serve. When we do that as Christ-followers, we remind ourselves of what Paul says:
You do not work for other people. Whatever you do in your job, do it with all of your heart, because God gave you this work to do. It is God that you work for in an audience of one. (Colossians 3:23-24)

The last thing Ortberg stressed is about the idea of relationships at work. How many people come to work and nobody knows their story or much about them? They’re just viewed as cogs in a wheel in sort of an invisible way. As Christ-followers, one of the ways that we can create value in our workplaces and build relationships as a primary way out of which we lead is to provide a place where people can be known.

The other day I had an appointment in Rutherford County and I found myself near one of our after school sites. I quickly called our director to get the names of the staff working. Instantly I could see how important it made them feel when I called them by name. On a fluke of an idea, I had made two employees feel valued. Just knowing the names of our staff may seem insignificant yet in reality that small gesture can be monumental!

Another phrase Ortberg uses that will help us figure out how to do this relational piece is the “dignity of people.”

One of my most embarrassing days was while sitting at my desk, pounding on my computer, preparing for an appointment, I heard a staff person come into my office. As they asked for a second I stuck my hand in the air while I finished my thought. They said they would come back later. In that one sentence I could hear the pain and anguish in their voice. As I chased them down the hall and begged for them to come back. As I begged for her to give me another chance. As I begged for them to forgive me. Eventually I heard a story filled with pain and heart ache. And I heard this unbelievable desire to be listened to and valued.

We need to remind ourselves that everybody is made in the image of God. That automatically bestows on each person great dignity that you and I sometimes miss. As Christ-followers, we must move towards people whom we work with recognizing that they have great dignity as human beings.

Every one of us who is a Christ-follower is called to take seriously our responsibilities of creating meaning and significance for ourselves and for other people when we go to work.

A few years ago, we had a slogan; there were signs in the lobby that said simply, Dreams Begin Here.

There is only so much we can do in here to be “salt and light.” You are already sitting next to little pieces of salt and light. We come together for a very important purpose. We come together corporately at retreats and meetings to do what we can’t do apart: to see each other, to feel community in the room, to be together. But when we leave, I think that that is really when dreams begin—when we move out into our jobs and communities and ask God to go with us in the creation of value.

So when you go to work this morning and whatever it is you go to do—whether it’s today or tomorrow, when you go to work—whether you work at Dover or at GWU, whether you work at the corporate office or the Girls Club, whether you’re at the Ruby Hunt YMCA or at Kings Mountain, —wherever you go to work, if what God says about the creation of value is true, work is a gift. You can show up at work with a completely different attitude, convinced that over time you will convince other people of the meaning and significance that sits inside the role that they do, and you will become sure of the great relational connectedness you can offer in the workplace. That is the true meaning, I think, of what it means to be Salt and light.

So Cal Saturday - It is going to be a long day!

Let me take you back to 1973. I was 9 years old and I had just spent the fall watching the Notre Dame football high light show on Sunday mornings before I went to church. I can still hear the late Lindsay Nelson’s voice say, “And now to further action.”

It was a Saturday afternoon in the Spring of 1973. My father had taken me and several of my friends to swim at the Greensboro Central YMCA. As we were leaving, the TV in the lobby was playing the UCLA vs. Notre Dame basketball game. My dad said, “we might want to stop and watch the end of this game. Notre Dame just might upset UCLA.” The UCLA Bruins had won 88 straight basketball games. And this my friends, was how my sports marriage to Notre Dame sports was born during the last ten minutes of that game. Screaming and cheering wildly at the TV in the lobby, my father could only chuckle or note to passersby, “Do these kids not have parents?”

When Notre Dame won that afternoon, I must have practiced throwing the ball in the air like John Shumate 10000 times. I wanted to die my socks Green and Yellow. I asked for Green carnations for my lapel for Sunday Church. I quietly aspired for my nick name to be Digger.

Like a smoldering volcano, my love for all things ND lay dormant for many years. There was no request for conversion to Catholicism. No, special requests for the pope. And I promise you there were many things to go to confession over but to this day they stay locked in the vault.

I suffered under the Gerry Faust years. I anguished when they ran off Digger and I cheered for a few years the acquisition of Lou Holtz. Lou Holtz came about in my college days and my roommates thought it would be funny to burn all the ND memorabilia off my door. That day stays in the vault.

I became a true ND fan. Pulling for basketball as well as football. In the advent of the internet even looking at baseball, hockey, women’s basketball, etc. Could I name my first born Muffet? Then the movie Rudy came out and I felt in some way that the script was for me. The music, the tradition, the culture, the aura of all things Notre Dame. Hard to believe that the small town southern Baptist bred wished he was born red headed with the last name of O’Shannon or something.

Today I am a 42 year old man with one hobby; Notre Dame. I don’t ask for much but please let me see my football games every Saturday and the occasional basketball game.

As I reflect, I almost broke off the engagement to my wife, for during the national championship year of 1988, she made me go to dinner with her parents [promising to tape the USC vs. ND game.] Later that evening as we returned for the evening my future brother in law met me at the door screaming the results of the game. “I am sorry April, but the wedding is over! Oh, and I have to kill your brother Joe.”

We play Southern Cal on Saturday. I hope we keep it under 45 points. It is not going to be pretty but you have to love them during the tough times. Love hopes all things and endures all things. Love never fails.

Go Irish!