Publish date: 22 October 2024
When Wayne Belcher started at Churches of Christ Homes Inc as CEO in December 1993, the aged care group had just shy of 1,000 resident beds. By the time he left 17 years later, the organisation had a new name – Bethanie – and was well on its way to the 2,500 resident beds of today.
While every leader likes healthy-looking statistics, Wayne was all about ensuring that the business grew in a way that never lost sight of its purpose: To demonstrate the love of God by positively changing the way Australians experience ageing – every customer, every family, every community, every day.
“You’ve got to know your mission and you’ve always got to be watching for mission drift,” Wayne says. “The first questions when an opportunity arises should be ‘why us and why now’. And it starts at the top. The Board has to own their responsibilities; they have as much a duty of care to the client as the person who is working at the care facility or retirement village.”
This means staying in touch with the people at the coalface. “As a CEO, I have no grounds for not knowing the role they are performing, understanding the struggles they have,” he says. “You need to implement mechanisms that enable visibility of those things."
Wayne was working for Silver Chain helping develop concepts of community care and looking after people in their homes. “When I got the CEO role I had some views about how the Churches of Christ Homes Inc could move into that area,” he says.
When the management and Board were looking at a name change for the group in the early 2000s, they looked to significant past connections and settled on a slightly different spelling for several reasons.
The Churches of Christ movement was founded in the US in the early 19th century by Scottish father and son Thomas and Alexander Campbell, and friend Barton Stone. Alexander eventually built a property in Bethany, West Virginia, where he was then able to establish a post office.
“This was key to his work because he was able to write letters and engage in quite vigorous debate with politicians, sometimes with Presidents,” says Wayne, who has visited Bethany. “He was an advocate for women’s education and is accredited with being involved in the development of some 250 educational institutions.”
“Bethany is also an interesting place in the New Testament; it’s a few hours walk from Bethlehem and it’s where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead,” Wayne says. “And Bethany is Hebrew for ‘house of’, so house of healing or house of service - it just made sense.
Wayne also shares the story of the fig tree that Jesus curses because it was not bearing fruit, despite not being in season. “For me, the importance of that is that being in aged care we have to be producing good fruit every day,” he says, a reminder that is embedded in the Bethanie logo’s fig leaf. “We have to be in season every day.”
And that means ensuring staff are well supported. “One of the things I will take to my grave is that organisations need to look after their people – they need to train their people, they need to develop their people,” he says. “I used to say to managers ‘when you leave and take all those skills we invested in you, one day when you’ve broadened your horizons you might come back to bless us’.”
And if they didn’t, Wayne was equally philosophical. “We’re here to serve, whether that’s the people in the nursing home beds, or in the independent living unit, or in the community care program,” he says. “And that applies to the staff we lead, too. We need to lead by example - the way I treat people and regard people speaks volumes more than belting someone around the ears with a copy of the New Testament.”
After leaving Bethanie in 2010, Wayne spent a few years working as a pastor in his local church and then moved back into the aged care sector in 2016. While ill-health forced him to retire three years later, it wasn’t long before he was drawn back into the community, where he now serves on several Boards.
Wayne looks back fondly at his time with Bethanie. “In spite of the challenges of working in sometimes financially constrained arrangements, and often just plain difficult windows of change, I will forever remember the invaluable opportunity of working for purpose at Bethanie,” he says.
It’s this purpose that continues to drive him. “I’m committed to serving others and being involved in the service industry – it's too important to let go. And it’s not entirely altruistic. I’m mindful I’ll be there one day.”
The sites bear a legacy to Wayne, too, with the fig tree he gave to each site to commemorate Bethanie’s name change continuing to bear fruit.
