John Rogers: Performance Pulsation is a manufacturer of pulsation control products, which primarily are used in the oil and gas, high-pressure pumping market. When I started the company, it was mainly work as hard as you can and try to survive and become successful. And then as we became successful and added people and moved into facilities, the drive and the relentlessness continued, which in hindsight was not a really good situation at all. So actually, I joined a secular peer group called Vistage. I think God was distinctively keeping me restless in that group and not letting me settle in, not giving me the ultimate thing that I needed, which really was a spiritual perspective toward work. So, I left Vistage and joined C12, which is a Christian peer group. And that began my journey of both a personal spiritual transformation and a work culture spiritual transformation as well.
And so the first thing I had to do was I had to apologize. I had to apologize to the company for my actions, my attitudes. And so I wrote apology to everybody. I basically said, why God was convicting me to do these things and to change, and I wanted to bring faith into work and to set up a ministry program. And that began the journey actually of the real transformation within me and PPC. I think it was sometime in the second year of C12 that we were shown about chaplains. I really never thought about chaplaincy. The chaplains made a difference in both the psychological and spiritual side of life, and they ministered to people in a way that, like you mentioned, that HR cannot do, the company cannot do. It also, I think became apparent to me is probably the best benefit that we offer our employees,
Stephen Harold: The marketplace chaplains that we use. Tony comes in and does a Bible study in Spanish for the guys here, and they use that and they love it. So it's great.
John Rogers: And we set up a caring committee and then we had a budget allotted to that, and the caring committee was announced and the whole program was announced to the company, and everybody then knew what we were doing and how it would work.
Oh, it's made a difference. I mean, we're a better company because of the caring program and because of chaplaincy and because of frankly me changing who I am and God working in my life.
Well, one thing that I realized in the C12 journey is part of what we need to do is to look at employees as eternal beings. And so thinking about it like that, it made me realize that a chaplain service not only has this care aspect to it, but it has an eternal aspect to it. It meets employees and ministers to them and then uses those opportunities as the chaplain sees the opportunity take place to share spiritual things about eternity and about salvation. We have, I'm sure a lot of people that never go to church, maybe never have crossed the door of a church, but they can have church here in an appropriate way, in a setting that is conducive for that in a work atmosphere.
Stephen Harold: Every meeting that we take place inside the plant, we either begin it with prayer or we end it with prayer. It is a big strength to who we are, not the work necessarily that we do.
John Rogers: The best thing to realize is that it does make a difference. You don't need to delay it because it's not that much of a time requirement to make fundamental changes. Bringing in a chaplain service is really very inexpensive. Setting up a caring program is very inexpensive, really. So from an economic standpoint, it doesn't cost that much to make a difference.
Just do one thing at a time, start with one thing and then add another thing. If I was to recommend anything to start with, I would say a chaplain service is probably the best thing to start with. And then second, I would recommend setting up a caring program. You have to be internally focused before you're externally focused. Each employee we have, each friend we have is an eternal soul. And the thing that I guess I'm proudest of is that through the chaplaincy and through I think the overall cultural changes that we've made, we've made a difference to eternity. We've had a number of salvations over the years, and in fact, one year we had eight salvations, which was just so joyful and amazing to see that type of impact into the employee population.
Stephen Harold: It's definitely worth it. Just biggest investment is your people. You've got to take care of 'em.
John Rogers: It's kind of hokey to say every journey starts with the first step, but that's really the case. You have to, first of all decide you want to start the journey, and then second, pick something. The caring program and adding in the chaplaincy and adding in the volunteering to the external community that enriches the experience of each employee and leads to the opportunity to, I think, the chaplains, to minister to them, and to bring those that are lost to salvation.
