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What Signal?
“Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly, or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” — 2 Corinthians 9:7
Jim wonders: What signal does God want me to send today?
Visitors to Jim Perez’s office are apt to notice the three Post-it notes on his closet door. Each bears a handwritten word: Stop, Caution, Go.
Jim explains. He pulls out his dog-eared copy of 40 Days in the Word, the booklet of daily readings which enriched the spiritual lives of St. Paul people during Lent 2007. Day 4: Feb. 24. Jim took to heart a question: “If you were a traffic signal, which one would you be — stop, caution, or go?”
“Every morning when I walk into my office, the Post-it notes remind me: ‘Okay, how do I want to live my life today?’” he says. As he skirts through the Genesis Medical Center hallways, he considers: “What signal does God want me to be today?”
Jim chats, his Blackberry vibrating constantly with incoming messages. Complex business-system flowcharts shape his days. As Genesis director of shared business services, Jim oversees payment of accounts for acute care patients throughout the medical system. His world is patient insurance, state and federal programs, unpaid hospital bills. It is, quite simply, high-stress work. “I need to find ways to exhale,” he muses.
But hospital finance is a calling for Jim. As he connects with employees across the Genesis campus, he cultivates an understanding “that patients are not account numbers but human beings with needs, people who have gifts and talents and skills that God has given them.”
On a farm in Parsons, Kansas, Jim learned about cultivation. The oldest of seven in a strong Catholic family, as a sixth-grader he considered becoming a priest. In the Latin he learned as an altar boy, he cultivated “an appreciation for the beauty of language.” And Jim’s farm chores took him to the big family garden. “It was frustrating tilling the soil, dirtying my hands. But ultimately, I began to see the beauty of it.”
Kansas soil taught Jim to cultivate “the development of the total person — mentally, spiritually, and physically. I’ve always stressed that with my kids. I see that in the church community, how in cultivating the spirit, mind, and body, we’re strengthened to give of ourselves to others. That’s how I was raised, living out in the country.”
Even in a demanding work environment, Jim manages to laugh often and smile easily. People notice his cheerfulness, he says. Through an earlier divorce, corporate reorganizations, and computer conversions, Jim has learned that “something is always better on the horizon.” After a 2006 move from Las Vegas, that “something better” for the Perez family (including wife Carla and three-year-old Audra) was St. Paul. Jim had been “lost, empty, unfulfilled.” Now worship invigorates him; the Stewardship Team has opened new avenues for serving.
“One of the biggest challenges is growing in this idea of giving,” Jim says. Stewardship conversations have heightened his awareness of the biblical principles for giving generously, intentionally, regularly — and cheerfully. “We live in this ‘lottery’ environment, hoping to receive something,” reflects Jim. But as people of faith, we’re called to “learn the art of giving. I see myself as the church — cultivating and nourishing body, mind, and spirit — so that I can give to others.”
Back to the Post-it notes: Stop, Caution, Go. Daily, Jim Perez tries to renew his commitment to living a life that signals his faith. With good cheer.
"To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard." ~Søren Kierkegaard