Located in St. Louis, Mo., the Deaconess Foundation is a faith-based grant-making organization focused on building the capacity of nonprofits that serve youth and children.
But that wasn’t always the case. The organization started as a health system with three hospitals in the St. Louis area. After rethinking its role in the community, it decided to help other organizations in the area build and sustain their own infrastructures.
“We sold all the assets, put the proceeds into a foundation and addressed the health needs of people who come from low-wealth communities,” says the Rev. Jerry Paul. the foundation’s president and CEO. “We went from a health organization started by German immigrants to building a modern health system and going back to the same issue of addressing the needs of the poor.”
The decision required an open mind and resourceful problem-solving. “It’s really a matter of trying to figure out where there are creative alternatives that keep us close to our mission, but allow us to serve in new ways that may be bigger, smaller or better — but at least continue serving,” Paul says.
Commitment to service and attention to need are just a few characteristics of what author Dr. Gary Gunderson calls a “boundary leader.”
According to Gunderson, “Boundary leadership is all about bringing into alignment complex webs of social assets for the purpose of advancing health. What was seen as ’on the margins’ is actually at the center of what matters most.”
Gunderson, vice president of Memphis-based Methodist Healthcare, will give a keynote address on the topic at CHHSM’s Annual Meeting March 5 in Kansas City, Mo.
Sheila Helgerson is yet another example of a CHHSM member who exemplifies this type of progressive leadership. She’s the executive director Earl’s
Place, a United Ministries program based in Baltimore, Md., that specializes in giving recovering men a place to call home. However, when the program first opened its doors in 1997, only paying clients were accepted into the program.
“It soon became clear that this was not meeting our mission based on Matthew 25,” Helgerson says. After reanalyzing the needs of the community, Earl’s Place leaders decided to welcome all qualifying applicants, regardless of their ability to pay.
Helgerson says that it became obvious that everyone deserved safe and affordable housing, not just those who could afford it.
“Jesus did not work with the mainstream, but rather with those on the margins,” she says. “He taught that the ideals of justice, charity, forgiveness and love of neighbors were more important than going along with the majority.”
CHHSM President Bryan Sickbert calls this leadership a “counter-cultural” state of awareness and encourages CHHSMmembers to embody boundary leadership as part of the Diakonic movement.
“Diakonie is always about resistance, about living and working in boundary zones, because it values most those whom the dominant culture values least,” Sickbert says.
To Gunderson, these boundary zones are where CHHSM members have the biggest opportunity to make a difference. He encourages all CHHSM leaders to go boldly in the direction of need, just as Jerry Paul and Sheila Helgerson have.
“I think of CHHSM as a boundary organization filled with ministries that have emerged from a spirit of service to boundary zone people and conditions,” Gunderson says. “The root spirit is of Diakonie, service in and to communities. This is very basic spiritual growth 101 to release our fears of the boundary zones. God is already there, calling us.”
