A hospital system - one organization, many parts

The hospital where I work is part of a larger organization that is made up of 3 hospitals, along with various clinics, pharmacies and other facilities and offices that are spread throughout northeast Iowa. The organization is staffed with people who do all kinds of work: physicians, nurses, secretaries, administrators, housekeepers, nurse aides, dietary workers, managers, lab assistants, maintenance workers, materials and distribution workers, and so much more. I was just reading a report that shows that as of June 30, 2008, there were 3,020 associates who worked in one way or another in the organization.

It's pretty easy to walk into a medical clinic or a hospital and give no thought to what and who actually makes the place run. But with me being a part of this organization - and being one who happens to visit a handful of the clinics and other offices daily (I'm a courier) - I have sort of an 'insiders look' at what makes it all run. In the various places I go, I interact with lots of different associates every day, of all types of different occupations, and I can see how so many seemingly little things work together to make it all happen. And the thing is, when everyone is doing their job, the whole thing generally works out very well!

But what if a person who is trained as a physical therapist were to go in and try to perform heart surgery? Or what if an office manager were to go in and attempt to cook the patients' meals? What if a courier (me) saw a nurse drawing a patient's blood and said, "here, let me take over for you!" I don't think the patient would appreciate that very much! Not to mention that that would mess up the entire system, and there would be disastrous results.

See, for our purposes here, the system works this way (in general): The patient comes in with a problem. The secretary handles the necessary paperwork. The physician works to diagnose the problem. The nurse draws the blood. I come and take the blood to the lab. The lab techs run the tests on the blood. They then send the test results to the office, where the secretary files them and gives them to the physician, and the physician gives the patient the proper care by either prescribing medicine, a medical procedure, more tests, etc, etc, all of which requires other staff within the organization to do their own jobs!

Each associate plays a very important part in the whole process. So again, with the what if's... What if the nurse drove the blood from the clinic to the hospital? Who would be there to draw blood on other patients and do all the other duties of a nurse? What if the physician had to handle all the paperwork? Who would treat the patients? What if the lab techs decided they wanted to see the patients themselves and try to diagnose their problems? Could they properly diagnose the problems? And who would run the lab tests on the blood? I'm being absurd to make an obvious point. With each person doing what they're specifically set apart to do, the organization runs well. And really this is only a very tiny glimpse into the many roles that each of the above people play.

No one in the organization is unimportant. Sure, some of the higher-paid doctors act like snobs... LOL... but yet they couldn't do what they do unless everyone else was doing what they do. And some of the lower-paid associates may feel unimportant when they compare themselves to some of the higher profile associates, but yet if you remove them from their positions, the whole thing can fall apart quickly! Each person does their part, and allows others to do their parts.

In my "One Body..." post I said that in this post I would give some practical applications to life in the Body of Christ... and really I didn't intend to go quite so far with this one particular example, so the next post will be where I had intended to go. Still, to me the hospital system example is a great example of how there are no unimportant parts in a "body" and how it's important that each person knows their part and sticks to it, and doesn't try to be what they're not!

One Body, Many Parts, Members of One Another

I've said before that if life were college, my "major" would be God's grace and my "minor" would be "the body of Christ." I know it's probably quite a deep revelation to you that I really love discussing God's grace! Haha! However, my "minor" doesn't get enough time on this blog. I've written about it several times, but not nearly as often as it's on my heart.

The identity and the functions of the individual members of the body of Christ (you, me and everyone else in Christ), is all woven together with God's grace. Along with that, the life of each individual member is woven together with all of the other individual members to form one body. "The body is a unit," Paul says in 1 Cor 12:12 (NIV). "Though is is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ." In the same chapter of a different epistle, Paul writes, "For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another" (Rom 12:4-5 NKJV).

What I want to point out here is that we're one body and we're individually members of one another. Not all the "parts" are the same. We're each unique in our individual functions within Christ's body, but as one body we are individually members of one another. Christ Himself is the Head of this body, and we are all fully part of Christ's body and fully indwelled by His life that flows throughout the entire body, but we're not all the same "part" --- and that's a really good thing!

In all my talk of "grace" and our "identity in Christ," I love encouraging individuals in who they are in Christ. Each individual is a new creation (2 Cor 5:17), born again of incorruptible seed (1 Peter 1:23), complete in Christ (Col 2:10), and so on and so on. This is all good news for us to individually digest and be rooted and grounded in! But I would be remiss if I spoke of our identity in Christ solely in terms of who we are individually. The life of Christ flows throughout the individual parts of His body and makes them all work together. Our identity in Christ is not simply who we are as individuals, but who we are as many parts that make up one body.

In both 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, Paul talks about some of the "parts" that people are in the body of Christ. He talks about those who teach and those who prophecy and those who heal and those who exhort. He talks about tongues and the interpretation of tongues. He talks about "the word of wisdom" and "the word of knowledge." He talks about so many different things that go on in the body of Christ. I don't believe his list is full and complete. In other words, your "part" in the body may or may not be mentioned by Paul. And the various things that Paul does mention may or may not have anything to do with who you are in the worldwide body of Christ. But his overall point is solid and clear: we're not all the same, yet together we form one complete body. Isn't that beautiful!

By using the human body as an illustration, Paul makes it clear that we're not all the same, but that each part is equally important!

"Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body" (1 Cor 12:14-20).

I think it's absolutely wonderful that the fullness of Christ dwells in each of us, and yet we're not all the same and we don't all function in the same ways... and yet we all form one body! In the next post I'll get into practical applications of all of this.

Here are a few of my past posts that relate to all this:
We're All Important Parts of the Body of Christ (an article I wrote for a church publication)
One body, many parts - We're not all the same!
Fixed Eyes