Founded in 1993, Christian Care Ministry (CCM) is the 501(c)(3) parent organization of Medi-Share, the nation’s leading health care sharing ministry. Headquartered in Melbourne, Florida and operating a second site in Colorado Springs, CO, CCM employs more than 700 people across both campuses and in remote locations. For the more than 400k individuals and families it serves, Medi-Share is a health care bill payment solution that offers an affordable alternative to health insurance. The Medi-Share program facilitates $50M in health care bill sharing between members each month. This empowers members with an affordable health care option that matches their biblical beliefs.
We sat down with CCM’s Board Chairman, Joe Turner, to get his thoughts on the search.
What circumstances led to your search for a new CEO?
With the departure of our previous CEO, we felt that there was a wonderful opportunity to position a new leader to help catapult us into a future of continued growth as well as operational excellence for our ministry. Our purposeful mission has remained strong and our growth significant, but a lack of cultural cohesion and business sophistication had challenged our effectiveness in fulfilling and expanding on that mission. We felt that a nation-wide search would give us the broadest opportunity to find the person best suited to lead Christian Care Ministry into the future with pure excellence.
What characteristics in a CEO were you looking for when you initiated your search?
Our industry has idiosyncrasies that require very specific health care knowledge. We needed to select a leader who understood the overall financial services industry, had a heart for ministry, and could set a vision for growth and expansion within a ministry workspace. Interestingly, while our entire country is in a dialogue about how to pay for health care, we believe that the Bible is a repository of wisdom on the topic and so we needed to find a leader who also had technical healthcare experience and would also embrace our Biblical model of health care cost-sharing. In short, we were searching for a CEO who had deep experience in financial services and someone who already typified the values that are consistent with our missional purpose as we serve hundreds of thousands of members throughout the country.
What factors did you consider in whether or not you should use a search firm?
There were some of us who felt that that the best candidate would likely come from the circle of people who we knew and who knew us…that teaching an outsider would be harder than adapting an insider. Others felt that we needed the very best leader that could be found, eventually compelling us to choose CarterBaldwin to partner with us in leading a truly national search with a firm who had extensive experience in both the for-profit and non-profit arenas.
We then reflected with CCM’s new CEO, Scott Reddig.
What did you understand and discover to be your mission-critical goals when you joined CCM as CEO?
The board was clear with me that they believed our future needed to be centered around a renewed focus on culture and a commitment to excellence. It was also clear that health care policy, insurance industry, and various federal reimbursement systems would require us to be very creative in serving our members with products that were both superior and less costly. Finally, the board made sure that I understood how important it is for us to expand our services and products so that we can bring greater value to those who depend on our partnership for the management of their health care costs.
What progress has been made toward the accomplishment of those goals?
Our employee surveys have indicated significant improvement in our culture and we have recently been recognized as a Great Place to Work. We are also seeing progress on the expansion of our reach. We have introduced group membership options that allow us to serve ministries, churches as well as many faith-based schools and businesses, with the same cost-savings and peace of mind that we have been offering to individuals.
What truly excites you about the future of CCM?
I can envision our ministry becoming a single point of connection for Christians, faith-based organizations, and faith-friendly companies as they seek to best serve their own employees. There is a long list of financial and other services that we hope to introduce in such a way as to really bring spiritual, emotional, and financial value to as many areas as possible for our members, our member organizations, and their teams which aligns with our new organizational mission at CCM “Connecting people to a Christ-centered community wellness experience based on faith, prayer, and personal responsibility.”
Looking to the future with Joe Turner
As you envision the coming years under Scott’s leadership, what are you hoping that CCM will accomplish?
Our new vision “Transforming society through the Biblical model of sharing” is compelling and challenges our ministry to embrace God’s call to reshape healthcare options for Christians and lean into the great commission to have greater impact for the kingdom. I would love to see us expand our array of healthcare, financial management, and financial planning resources for our members. I expect that our non-profit status, in alignment with our Christian purpose and mission, allows us to serve our members’ greatest needs without the additional burden of producing a return for shareholders. We serve Jesus Christ and His church and believe that our Biblical model for “care” is our passion and our mission. I like to tell people that “our middle name is Care!”
It is our great privilege to partner with organizations such as CCM.
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