"Unfortunately, Father, you don't answer to me"

...said Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson to a priest whose zeal for social justice passed on to one of his civics students. This student, wooed by the apparent faith in God and assumed injustice of an inmate the class was following, was manipulated into orchestrating the death of an innocent classmate.

Today at work we spent eight hours training to learn to use a brand new pricing model. Such a program assumes and considers the cost of packaging and originating a loan (time spent by personnel, resources expended, systems utilized, etc), the pricing of relationship's deposits, and shows you how to make a profitable loan to customers. Such a model, like all formulas, shows some loans, especially at community banks, are simply not profitable-we actually sustain a loss on some. Does this mean such loans are not worth our time? Not in all cases. Small business, our own Maine Senator Olympia Snowe (who is the current Chairwoman of the Senate committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship) says, is the backbone of the American economy. By national standards some of the loans we do are to "small business", but most of our clients are ultra small businesses. Without these entrepreneurs how would "small business" ever grow or get its start? Where we are a small Bank such dilemmas are well addressed - some small loans will never be profitable but that will not prevent us from offering stellar service to our customers, whatever their loan or asset size.

Accountability.

The priest, whose claim, "I had not idea Kendall was involved in this way!", prompted the quote that is the title for this blog. He was trying to regain the respect of the Deputy Chief, who had been skeptical of his zeal. Brenda's observation of the priest's chain of command is a sobering one. It is true that the priest did not committ any crimes. His conscience still prompted his vocal claim of innocence. Why is this? I think our conscience is a very helpful tool. If we are bothered by something, chances are we should take notice.

I am in the middle of the Divine Conspiracy (essential reading for any thinking Christian) and Dallas is discussing the Sermon on the Mount. Ok - let me be more specific. Dallas is describing the evidence and attributes of a Kingdom heart in one of Christ's followers. Whereas the Jews were blessed with the law and prophets, Christ has played one-upsmanship with the law in his Sermon on the Mount. The Christian is meant to be transformed from within - "the law will be written on their hearts" he says. This is essential to our faith. Certainly the priest is sobered by the truth of the situation wherein one of his parishoners was murdered - and perhaps he ought to be. He has not broken any law per se - certainly not any civil laws. His conscience, however, informs him that he had some reponsibility.

Business people are warned to not "give away the bank." This was the thrust of our seminar today. Senior management is responsible to the board and stockholders for the profitability of the bank. If we are giving away the bank there is something wrong. Let me rephrase - if we are giving away the bank indiscriminately (without good reason) then there are some loan officers who shouldn't be officers anymore. The first step, however, is KNOWING whether our loans are priced to return a profit - hence the model.

If, as Christ says, we have the "law written upon our hearts," why is society not experiencing revival? Ok, lets be more narrow - why is the Church not experiencing revival? If the bank had the model but paid no attention to it, what would happen? It may succeed, it may not (after all - the bank is nearing its hundredth anniversary, so it hasn't "sufferred" without it). Even if we did put the model into use, what if Managment has not properly maintained the assumptions the model uses? What if our cost of putting together a loan increases and they don't update the model? We will be thinking our loans are more profitable than they really are.

The same is true of us. Our inner compass (if you will allow me to mix metaphors -the inner compass=model) is not helpful if we don't know what to call the direction the needle is pointing. We have similar results if we do not consult our inner compass.

Food for thought anyway. Thanks to TNT's "The Closer" for prompting my deep thought for the day.

Possible blog comment topics:

Evangelism
Missions
Psychological/Sociological reflections on the conscience
and many others

Maybe I will do some more blogging on this course, but I still have to get to Katie's question of another metaphor. I recommend you visit her site (insert hyperlink here - oops, don't know how. Darn it. https://beta.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=18246136&postID=640658842780183733 is the url) to read about that fascinating topic.