Hospital or Hospice -What is the Church here for?

Running a hospital must be a hard job. Imagine all the complaints hospital administrators receive from patients and employees. Take just one example, the temperature. Many people often complain about the temperature being too cold in Hospitals. Those tables in the X-ray room can sure be cold. Some places in the hospital the temperature is kept cool because some of the diagnostic equipment is sensitive temperature and must be kept cool.

Imagine you are a hospital administrator who learns this in a medical journal. You realize you have been keeping your temperature 5 degrees too high in your radiology department. It’s a proven fact in studies that hospitals with temperatures 5 degrees lower than your hospitals have fewer problems with the delicate equipment and can help more patients. So you send a memo out to the radiology department and explain the need to lower the temperature to maintain optimal performance of the equipment in order to heal more people and save more lives.

Now imagine that some, not all and not even most, but some of your nurses are now cold at work. They feel it’s chilly and want you to raise the temperature back. They start to really complain. You explain that some think it’s too hot and others think it’s too cold but you have to find the best balance you can to protect the equipment and help patient. You remind them that the mission of the hospital is to heal those who come in sick not keep the staff cozy. They then say you don’t care about the staff.

You explain to the nurses that the hospital’s priority is to help the sick and then if you can also make the employee as comfortable as possible you will. You explain that the needs of the patient out way the desires of the staff. You offer to buy them sweaters but the nurses won’t compromise. They say the fact that they have been there for dozens of years serving faithfully should mean the hospital would care about them enough to keep the building at the temperature they like. They insist you either raise the temperature back to their liking or they are going to leave the hospital and leave you short handed without enough nursing staff in the radiology department.

Imagine you are the hospital administrator…. what do you do? It’s hard because you have known these nurses for years and really care about them. Do you keep these four or five nurses by giving in to their demands or do you let them go in order to best utilize your equipment and help heal more patients? Do you please the healthy or save the sick? What would you do?

This is the same dilemma church leaders sadly face. Do you design church services to please the saved and lose the lost or do you meet the needs of the lost and lose a few members who are more interested in their personal comfort than the mission of the church? In Mark 2:17 Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."