A Message from The Rev. Dr. Walter J. Smith, S.J., President & CEO

I am beginning my tenth year of ministry with HealthCare Chaplaincy. To select the word "ministry" to speak about an executive leadership role in a not-for-profit organization might appear at first glance an odd choice. When I was being interviewed for this position by the Chaplaincy's 's board of trustees, one member of the search committee asked me if I could be content in a purely administrative job. Given the fact that my previous jobs as a Jesuit priest had involved teaching, writing, clinical practice as a psychologist, preaching and pastoral care, would this be too formidable a change? Might organizational development, strategic planning, and fundraising tasks present too great a transition?

Of course, the simple answer to these queries is to be found in one's ability to discern and embrace a vocation in administration. As in other forms of ministry, administration implies service to the community, a particular way of responding to God's call. The ministry of an administrator at HealthCare Chaplaincy requires embracing its whole mission. In a real sense, the Chaplaincy's asks its administrators to help it clarify its goals and objectives, remember its history and charism, stimulate new formulations of its mission while conserving its traditions and values, and serve as a catalyst, encouraging everyone to vitalize the Chaplaincy's continuously.

For me, these years have been far more than cheerleading and fundraising. They have been more than an aggregate of writing foundation proposals and reports, developing organizational charts or explaining balance sheets. Walking in mid-town one afternoon after a sub-committee meeting, a seasoned trustee commented: "Your parish is getting quite large." He wasn't referring to the impressive growth of our institutional partnerships and programs, the size of our educational budget, nor the number and diversity of our student chaplains. He was talking about the extent of my own pastoral care. I smiled at the statement of recognition. His comment provoked a deeper level of reflection within me.

One cannot be associated with illness, disability, aging and dying as HealthCare Chaplaincy is and not become directly and personally involved. When our senior vice president for finance and administration was diagnosed last year with a recurrence of breast cancer, her manager also became her pastor. Several of our benefactors and trustees have experienced personal and family health crises and have turned directly to us for guidance and spiritual support. Our chaplains routinely invite me directly into their world, not to solve a management problem, but to care alongside them for a patient's special spiritual or religious needs. And I find myself as frequently attending a bris or making a Shiva call, or joining a Jumah prayer at a local masjid as I do officiating at a marriage or baptizing a child in my own religious tradition. A good friend of the Chaplaincy's , Jack Rudin, routinely introduces me to others as his rabbi. "Your parish is getting quite large." Indeed, it is.

All of this is to say that the business of the Chaplaincy's 's chief executive officer is not without its own regular and direct immersion into the work of caring for the human spirit. Rather than becoming a bureaucratic functionary, the ministry of administration has opened for me an enlarged and rich pastoral landscape, inviting me each day to be an ambassador of God's love and hopeful promise. Without this dimension, the role might easily deteriorate into just a job, not a ministry. So for these wondrous years, HealthCare Chaplaincy's center on East 60th Street has been my monastery and ashram, and all of you‹our staff, trustees, friends and benefactors, have become my fellow sojourners. As Islam so wisely teaches: "All creatures are the family of God . . . and the most beloved of God are the ones who do the most good to their family."