Who’s helping who? Interview with Jan Soběslavský on Diaconia’s plans for the upcoming three years

This general direction is formulated in the new Strategic Plan. This time, the plan cannot be summarised into simple, achievable goals; an extensive, exciting discussion is anticipated. All the more reason to make the plans as accessible to the public as possible.  

The last Strategic Plan was formulated in a very practical manner, focusing, for example, on improving the staffing at Diaconia. The current Plan, however, includes some sheer philosophical topics. 

How did such topics become part of the Plan? 

Of course, we have not fully abandoned the practical topics. We have agreed, for example, that we need to learn to take better care of the buildings owned by Diaconia. There are places where this is working very well and there are places where there is definitely some room for improvement. I would also like to point out that the last Strategic Plan, which we have already fulfilled, was not only practical. It has always also included the values we consider fundamental at Diaconia. These are: mercifulness, dexterity, community, and hope. The aim was for every worker at Diaconia to be familiar with these values, which we have managed to achieve. Since these values are intentionally formulated in an unconventional manner, they raise questions, which is good. Basically, this means we now know we are to treat others in a merciful way. And we are beginning to ask ourselves what this mercifulness actually means. In the upcoming period, we would like to support this process of asking questions and give it a certain framework by stirring up discussion over one specific question which, I believe, stands above all else and binds all the questions together.

And the questions is…? 

The question is, who is a person? I know this will appear as a very abstract topic, as opposed to, for example, a balanced budget. But in my view, this is, in fact, the focus of all of Diaconia’s work. At Diaconia, people are helping people. And we need to be able to provide a more specific idea of who is helping who and what they are trying to achieve.  

Shouldn’t Diaconia have answered all these questions a long time ago?

You could of course look at it this way, but I would consider that a rather misleading point of view. I am convinced that people have to keep asking themselves the same question over and over again. Just take how science has changed our perception of who people are over the past few centuries. Let me give you an example. Diaconia runs several elderly people’s homes. We invite people to come and use our services and tell them we’ll help them to spend this chapter of their lives in a dignified and pleasant manner. But what exactly does this mean? Does this mean they will receive excellent service, a sterile environment and food containing precisely the right amount of calories, calculated based on the human genome? Or is it more important to make the people feel at home, where a little bit of mess and improvisation is quite normal? That is just a small example of the discussions I think should be taking place. And they are bound to be quite exciting because they concern topics from the field of philosophy, biology, theology, and psychology. The point of these discussions is that helping people also involves a dimension that is often forgotten – the spiritual aspect. 

Has Diaconia sometimes forgotten about this aspect as well? That would be a little surprising since it is a church-founded organisation. A number of pastors cooperated in the renewal of its activities thirty years ago.

I wouldn’t say this aspect has been forgotten. But perhaps we’ve had to wait for the right time to be able to discuss it in a truly focused manner.

How come? 

I don’t know how things worked before my arrival, but when I started working for Diaconia in 2000, I noticed that this topic was causing people to feel a bit awkward. Perhaps this was also due to the fact that Diaconia was made up of various groups of people with varying views on spirituality, and it was hard for them to find a common approach. On the one hand, the organisation included people with a strongly-manifested sense of personal spirituality. On the other hand, there were the “liberal” ministers, who are hard to put a label on. Then there were the pastors that did not belong to our church, the ECCB. There were also the managers, some of them Protestants, to whom spirituality meant pious talk, and they were allergic to that. The organisation also included people who had nothing to do with any church whatsoever, and often did not know much about Christianity. So I suppose it took some time for all these groups of people to get to know each other, get used to each other. Getting some work done together also helped, of course. And it was necessary to formulate Diaconia’s values and make them known to everybody, to agree on a basic idea of what modern spiritual care should look like. For example, that people must be respected the way they are and they should never be forced into (believing) anything. Spiritual care still remains a difficult topic, given all the various groups of people that work for our organisation. I do believe, however, that we have managed to come to a place where we will not be overcome by these difficulties. We have our first chaplains, whose task is to introduce the service of chaplains at Diaconia. We would like to have seve chaplains three years from now.

What will be their main task? 

Diaconia helps people who have found themselves in a situation of distress. This may result from old age: when a person’s body starts failing them, they become more and more dependent on other people’s assistance and they are naturally preoccupied with the issue of dignity. We also work with people with various disabilities that are stigmatized for a number of reasons. Then we also have clients who simply made some bad choices in life and fell into bad ways. In all of the above cases, questions about the meaning of life tend to be quite pressing. That is where our chaplains should be able to step in and offer support. Not only for the clients themselves, but also for their family members and for Diaconia’s workers.   

This may sound a little inappropriate, but let’s conclude the interview with something quite practical and down to earth. At the beginning, you mentioned that the new Strategic Plan intends to place more emphasis on taking care of Diaconia’s buildings. Why?

When I go to the apartment building where I grew up nowadays, the house has a new plastering, a new elevator, most of the apartments have new bathrooms at least. The building is as good as new. Diaconia, on the other hand, owns some buildings that basically haven’t been touched for thirty years. That, I think, is one of the things that Diaconia has in common with the ECCB: there is a larger number of people there who don’t really consider property very important. However, we are inviting people to spend a part of their lives living in our buildings. And if we have the self-confidence to do that, then the places we invite people to should meet certain standards. We don’t need to have golden doorknobs, but people need to feel good, they need to feel at home.

Adam Šůra