Of Compliance and Confession

Just about one year ago, I became a Director of Compliance at Wedgwood Christian Services, a non-profit human services provider where I’ve worked for more than 36 years. Over the course of those decades, I’ve been assigned to various roles ranging from direct care provider, team supervisor, staff trainer, and for the past decade or so as an administrator overseeing Wedgwood’s quality assurance efforts. 

The clarification of my job title as “Director of Compliance” is both an honor that I’m grateful to have received and also somewhat intimidating in its implications! Who am I, even with three dozen years of experience working in this field, to presume that I can direct my coworkers to comply with the myriad of policies and procedures, rules and regulations, laws and contract requirements, and professional service standards that apply to the complex array of counseling and treatment services that we provide? It’s a big enough burden just trying to keep myself informed and maintain an adequate grasp of all that information. What can I realistically hope to do to ensure that my colleagues not only learn what they need to know, but that they then go on to conduct themselves within the guidelines and limits that apply to their work? 

Despite my sincere desire to remain humble and be an example of servant leadership in my work, I can’t deny that accepting the assignment to be a Director of Compliance runs the risk of reinforcing aspects of my personality that can become arrogant, self-righteous, or even vindictive if left unchecked. The title implies a certain degree of authority and knowledge on my part that ought to be considered definitive, the “final word” on a given question or topic if it’s presented to me as a matter to be resolved. And yet, in the work we do at Wedgwood, we constantly run up against situations that are murky, complicated, fraught with intense emotions, and informed by a history of conflict, misunderstandings, and traumatic events. In helping our clients sort out the problems that led them to seek assistance from our care providers, we often have to work through ethical and relational dilemmas of our own making, or that thrust themselves upon us as major distractions from addressing the core issues at hand. 

In such a challenging environment, with stakes that are often very serious and outcomes that are hard to predict, deciding on the right intervention to meet therapeutic needs while also remaining within the scope of best practices can be quite daunting. Because we are all humans impacted by sin, mistakes and other forms of non-compliance are inevitable. Responding to such events in ways that put us all back on track to restore hope and healing rather than sink into a volley of acrimonious blame-casting and excuse-making when things go wrong is a goal I try to focus on whenever it’s necessary to request corrective actions in circumstances where compliance was compromised. 

My position within our agency can easily put me in the role of “head bean counter” and “chief traffic cop” – not something I aspire to at all, but I do recall harboring such thoughts toward my predecessors in this job when I worked at other positions earlier in my career! I’ve tried to maintain the posture of being an encourager and coach, even as I do my best to instruct my colleagues about the rules we’re expected to follow in the work we do and create systems that support them in their efforts to enact Wedgwood’s mission of “extending God’s love to youth, adults, and families through professional counseling and educational services.” 

I share all this as a prelude to expressing my appreciation for the series on I John that the pastoral staff at Christ Church has led us through over the past two months. Drawing our attention to the sufficiency and power of our triune God’s redeeming grace at the beginning of the series laid the foundation to take a candid and clear-eyed look at the forms of darkness that we face each day, whether it lurks within our hearts or surrounds us daily as we go through our lives. 

In particular, Pastor Andrew’s recent sermon focusing on confession spoke clearly and powerfully to my condition, in the work I do at Wedgwood and the roles I occupy as a husband, father, and member of our church and community. Talk about compliance issues – I’ve got ‘em! I am painfully aware of my own failures and flaws in so many areas! Yet I was grateful for the encouragement I received in his message to honestly present myself to God “just as I am” and to rest in the assurance of forgiveness bestowed upon us by faith, through the loving grace of Jesus. What a blessing it is to know that, while the rules and regulations, policies and procedures, and expectations for maintaining best practices (regardless of whatever domain or discipline we enter) all remain in effect as guides and measures that can steer us in a right direction along the way, they do not have the final say. Indeed, we can put our trust in one whose authority is much higher than a mere “director”, and who maintained perfect compliance from beginning to end! “We have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the righteous”. (I John 2:1)