St. Clair & Massey Orthodontics

[00:00:00] My name is James St. Clair. I joined this practice in 1999. Uh, it was my uncle’s practice and he started this practice back in 1978. My name is Cece Massey and I’ve been with St. Clair Massey Orthodontics for 10 years. I’m Kathleen Bowman. Oh man, I started in this practice, um, over 36 years ago. So I’ve been the financial coordinator here for pretty long.

This practice has always been Christian based. I mean, from the, from the point I started working, um, Dr. John instilled Christian values into the practice. He started this practice by saying, That has always been the mantra of our office. But when John retired, we went from Three doctors to two doctors. And, uh, we maintain the [00:01:00] integrity of the practice and the numbers of the practice, but there were two of us.

So we were working a lot harder and as you’re growing, it’s putting more pressure on your people. The practice mindset was, okay, we’re growing. The Lord is adding to our practice. So let’s just. Enjoy the ride. And we kept seeing more and more patients. Decisions became harder and harder because there were more, uh, chiefs.

Seemed like everyone wanted to grab the steering wheel at times we were trying to find out who we are. Because we knew who we were with John, but not so much who we were without John. We’d always had a very, um, unified, um, direction. And as we were looking to the future, it was looking like that direction wasn’t unified, and that’s terrifying.

We still really worked on relationships with patients, but nowhere in there was the relationships with our team. That was really hard on me, because I always pictured my practice life to be one that was more focused on the [00:02:00] relationship part. We even had a verbal, communicated policy that as they came in the door, they were supposed to set their problems at the door and pick them back up when they left.

I had sort of a passive spiritual responsibility in this practice. And at the same time, devastating loss in my own family, um,

really drove me to, um, need to reach out. All that’s in this. pressure cooker all at the same time happening the practice in my home life and just I need to bring

God here every single day. The kingdom conference came at such a beautiful time in our practice because it clarified. Uh, so many things for us.

We started loving our people better. We started praying for our team, um, by name. We started meeting together and, and praying and seeking the Lord together. And it [00:03:00] just changed every bit about what this practice was about. We realized that we needed to know who our core is, how we’re going to manage in the future, and we couldn’t do it alone.

We needed a team with the same kingdom values. Amen. One of the greatest things God was revealing was how, um, just like Moses had the rod and, uh, God instructed him to put the rod down, um, that God was asking us to relinquish our practice. to throw it down at his feet. I started seeing that really, for me, my whole life, both as a believer and as a leader in the practice, was more about commitment than it was about surrender.

And the Lord opened my eyes to that and humbled me and said, You know, this isn’t about you being committed to this and making it work. It’s about you opening your hands to me and letting me fill your hands with what I want to. So at that time we, uh, identified our leaders [00:04:00] and we started leaning on them, putting them together, having meetings with them, uh, really trying to know our people and grow our people.

As the Lord started revealing these things for me personally, um, It gave me a new dream. It gave me something that I could look forward to. I think that the team. was given permission to not live fragmented lives. If we’re asking them to leave their personal life at home to do that, we’re asking them to be fragmented people.

In the position I’m at, people come to me with different things in life, and, and a lot of times it’s the rough stuff. So I’ve had a couple opportunities to really delve into how someone was broken and hurting, but I would not have done that in the past. We’ve got a team member that was working on her degree and at the same time she was growing spiritually.

Um, and she. Came to faith during, um, her time with us. And so we were able to watch her, um, come to faith and her and her daughter got baptized together. I did leave the house at an early age and just, um, I kind of [00:05:00] raised myself and a child and um, whenever I came here, it was just so different for me. I remember whenever I got baptized, you know, as they brought me up, I was walking down the aisle and the first person that I saw was Dr.

Massey and I looked over and saw Dr. Sinclair and then I saw Allison and her sister and I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s a huge blessing to be able to come to work and just have people who genuinely care about you. The focus of our practice is still, we’ve got to do good orthodontics and we want to submit and do excellent work.

But at the same time, we want to make plenty of space and time to love our people. We have a greater impact on our team members sometimes than they’re spending with their, their loved ones. We’re with them way more time. And so God has given us a great responsibility to steward His people and His practice for Him.

My conviction is. We’re not going backwards. We’re only [00:06:00] going forwards, and that’s the forward is the kingdom.