Tracking spiritual Key Performance Indicators

Early last month I wrote about my husband and I bantering and debating how to translate Key Performance Indicators from a business perspective into our personal lives. KPI’s are measuring tools that businesses use to ask, “How are we doing?” in order to keep tabs on the overall health of operations. We liked the idea of keeping tabs on ourselves as we operate as Christians and began with the examination of conscience, an Internal Process Quality check as we grow in relationship with God and our neighbor. Next was our Financial Performance Index. While that black number is important to a business’ bottom line, the cheerful giver is much more important to a soul and the world. James 1:27 points to these two KPI’s – where’s your money and how’s your mind? — with laser intensity: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this, to care for the widow and orphan in their distress and to keep oneself unpolluted by the world.”

The third KPI is Customer Satisfaction. According to my husband’s CEO, a customer is defined as, “Whoever is before you at this moment with a need.” How delightful. Wouldn’t anyone want what he was selling? Webster tells us that a customer is a party that receives or consumes a product with the ability to choose between different suppliers. Servicing customers is part of every company’s interaction whether or not a purchase occurs; satisfaction can make or break a business. Just as I have remained a loyal patron to several companies because of wonderful service, I have also eschewed others for the opposite treatment.

Christianity is in the business of “leitourgeo” to customers; that is, “Public service, performing religious or charitable functions, to minister.” We get the word “liturgy” from this and while its genesis is Roman public servants, it is now wholly religious and translated in the New Testament as “service,” as with Zachariah in Luke 1 and Epaphroditus in Philippians 2, or “ministry” as in Hebrews 8:6. Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular have given the world great services, from universities and hospitals and the preservation of books and legends to soup kitchens and homeless shelters and crisis pregnancy centers ~ “purchase” of the Faith not required. Pure service for anyone who shows up with a need, anywhere on the planet.

Jesus had a lot of customers. People came to Him for help, for answers, and for love. Some went away sorrowful, like the rich young ruler from Mark 10 and those who would not accept the Bread of life discourse from John 6; but some turned away from their sin and became loyal followers, like Mary Magdalene from Luke 8 and Zaccheus from Luke 19. “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting,” penned Britain’s prince of paradox G.K.Chesterton, “but has been found difficult and not tried.” Because we do, of course, have free will.

The final KPI is Employee Satisfaction: the extent to which employees are content with their job and work environment. It involves personal engagement, passion for the work, and effort toward goals. Businesses have myriad ideas on how to keep employees happy, including flexible work options, real face time, clear goals, and communication of the big picture.

Those of us in Christianity know that it can be difficult but its eternal truth is not wanting, even (and I daresay, especially) in the troubles and tragedies in our valleys of the shadow of death. We certainly have flexible work options; Christians can be found working and praying for decent legislation or decent housing or decent families – all this and more is part of “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” You can’t get more real face time and clear goals than reception of the sacraments! Communication of the big picture? Got the Holy Scriptures and “the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15).” So we, as “employees” of Christianity, are satisfied and content.

Customer and Employee Satisfaction are the final two Key Performance Indicators that my husband and I discussed as manifestations of the Christian life. We pray that we will continue to examine our consciences, give cheerfully, “leitourgeo” well, and remain engaged.

“Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee (Saint Augustine Confessions, 1.1.1. 397­398 AD.).”

Allison Howell and her family are longtime residents of the Valley. They are Catholic converts and keep a hobby farm full of animals and children.

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