2022

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

James 1:2-4

Joy in new beginnings

It’s with great joy and humility that I write my first State of the Ministry article for this newsletter.

Almost three years ago, God began calling me and my wife, Kathy, to Samaritan Ministries out of the secular business world. We felt so blessed and grateful. Any role serving God, the Body of Christ, and Samaritan’s amazing staff would have been a dream come true. I spent 18 months at Samaritan happily serving in a strategy and planning role, but God decided He wanted more from me and I was named the new Chief Executive Officer of the ministry on September 6, 2021.

This was not in our plan, but clearly it was in God’s plan and we know Who is sovereign!

I’ve now been in this role for four months, and one thing is crystal clear: Jesus is still the true leader of Samaritan Ministries! My role is to lean into Him every day for His love and wisdom, lean into the gifts and talents of our loving staff, and have faith that He is our firm foundation and will guide our future path.

Joy in transitions

When the author of the State of the Ministry for the past 25 years, Founder Ted Pittenger, transitioned from being CEO, he maintained his Chairman of the Board role. Ted has been a wonderful role model for me and the entire ministry. His humility, love for Jesus, and relentless belief that God will provide all that the ministry needs if we keep Him as the center of the foundations of our ministry culture.

Ted and I have spent the last four months of transition in deference to each other (as it should be when transitioning with the founder), but the transition is now complete. Kathy and I can’t thank Ted and his wife, Shari, enough for their love and support since joining the ministry and through the transition.

Joy in our purpose and mission

When a ministry founder transitions, it is imperative they leave the ministry with their clear purpose and mission to guide the future. Ted, his long-time associate Ray King, and the Board of Directors did just that in 2021.

Our ministry Purpose was solidified:

To glorify God by growing and equipping disciples of Jesus Christ to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love and care for their neighbor as themselves.

Our ministry Mission was also solidified:

To redeem health care by helping the Body of Christ love one another through sharing each other’s health care burdens while experiencing authentic Biblical community.

To ensure we are pursuing our Purpose and Mission with passion going forward, I named Anthony Hopp our new Chief Purpose Officer. Anthony has been a part of the ministry for more than 24 years, and I can think of no one who exemplifies loving God and loving and caring for one’s neighbor more than Anthony! Please be praying for Anthony as he strengthens the pursuit of our Purpose and Mission and helps protect us from drift.

Joy in sharing burdens

At our core, we are a community of like-minded Christians sharing each other’s health care burdens financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually as God called us to do throughout the Bible. In 2021, you loved, cared, and prayed for each other through the sharing of over $332 million of health care needs. This, coupled with the cards and notes you include with your sharing on a regular basis, is a testament to the work God is doing through you and our member-to-member sharing ministry.

Our staff also gets great joy out of serving you when you have questions about anything related to your membership. Listening to them pray with and for you and your families gives me joy every Monday afternoon as I spend time with our Member Services team as they field your calls or process your bills. Their Christ-compassionate service is something I have never seen in my 30 years of secular business, and I can’t thank them enough for their heart for serving you like Jesus would.

As we go forward, we are committed to improving the tools and technology we use so we can help you more efficiently and minister to you even more abundantly. To ensure we are pursuing excellence in our service, programs, and technology, I recently named Will Cooper as our Chief Operating Officer, which is a new role. Will is not only a pastor and wonderful Christian leader, but he also brings a wealth of experience and knowledge in technology, programs, service, member experience, project management, process improvement, and marketing. He is the perfect fit to guide our member-focused operations as we seek to serve you and minister to you with the heart and excellence of Jesus.

Joy in difficulty

The Lord has also blessed the ministry with a season of many challenges. As Jesus said in John 16:33: “I have said these things to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

We continue to pray for God’s provision as we seek to find and implement solutions to these many challenges including:

COVID-19

Many member families have been affected by COVID-19 over the past two years. As a ministry and staff, we continue to pray for God’s complete healing for those who have contracted the virus and for Jesus to wrap His loving arms and peace around those who have lost loved ones or friends.

COVID-19 has also affected the ministry in numerous other ways. One long-term positive includes many staff members finding that working remote is better for them and their families. Over 40 percent of our staff now work remotely on a regular basis, by choice, and we continue to learn new ways to support and care for them as they serve at a distance from their teammates.

Another short-term positive from COVID-19 was the significant reduction in health care bills submitted during the second half of 2020. Prior to that, the volume of members’ bills submitted for sharing made a Share increase in Samaritan™ Classic seem inevitable, so we proposed a Share increase in Classic. Members did not approve the Share increase, which meant that members’ Needs would continue to be prorated until a Share increase passed.

Amazingly, God’s provision of reduced health care needs during the following months protected members with Needs from being prorated and even allowed a sharing surplus to be built. Needs began increasing again in January 2021, followed by a major surge beginning in the summer. As a result, we have used all accumulated surpluses and will be proposing a Share increase in Classic soon.

Classic sharing deficits

Overall, our Classic sharing ministry has been experiencing sharing deficits (i.e., more Needs than Shares) for the past three years. The recent surge in Needs has us again battling deficits in Classic. The primary factors behind the Classic deficits include:

• continuing increases in health care costs.
• sharing levels that have not kept pace with those costs.
• having to pay higher-than-fair prices for health care even after large cash discounts.
• the desire for sometimes excessive profits that drives many secular health care companies.

We will seek to faithfully navigate these financial challenges through disciplined stewardship of administrative funds and driving program innovation that will help keep Samaritan Ministries a great value for all members over the long term.

We are thankful that the changes we made to Classic’s Initial Unshareable Amount (IUA) and the $250 fair price reward incentive are saving members more than $2 million every month! Also, the Lord has granted our Provider Relations Team success in obtaining additional discounts, which are now surpassing $3 million every month beyond member-negotiated discounts.

As these cost-saving efforts and rising bill totals came together, we saw Classic bills that were shared in December prorated by 4 percent. We recognize and understand that the timing of proration is never “good,” especially during the Christmas holiday season, and we are praying for the Lord’s provision and wisdom as we do everything possible to minimize both proration and Share increases.

Samaritan™ Given™ sharing deficits

Beginning in the summer of 2021, we have also seen a surge in Given health care bills. Over the past few months, Given bills have totaled significantly more than Share deposits. While Given was designed with more medical cost controls than Classic, especially in the area of getting fair prices, Given is not immune to the effects of rising health care costs. It too will be in need of an annual share deposit increase. As with Classic, please pray for God’s provision and know that we will be doing everything we can to minimize increases for our Given program.

Given bill processing

The Beta version of our Given program continues to be closed to new members. The primary reason it remains closed is that we continue to struggle with processing bills that are directly billed to members. Given is designed for providers to submit bills directly to Samaritan via electronic transfer or, secondarily, via postal mail. However, more providers than we anticipated continue to bypass these two options and directly bill Samaritan members, creating paper-based bill processing for both members and staff.

We recently released a bill-submission portal for Given to help alleviate this challenge. The net result is still an unacceptable experience for many in the Given program who have paper bills and a staff struggling to serve members due to not having the paper-based processes and tools they need. Please know that we are working hard to achieve the vision of how we all want Given to work and that our Member Services staff is doing everything we can to serve you as we work to improve Given.

Unethical practices by some

From its beginning in 1994, Samaritan Ministries, under Ted’s leadership, has been focused on serving the Body of Christ from a Biblical worldview with practices and policies that honor God. Each and every day we strive for one goal: serving as Jesus would serve. Our sole focus is on doing ministry to the glory of God, and we seek only spiritual profit, never material profit.

Unfortunately, health care sharing has attracted other organizations that do not strive for that same standard. Some organizations have been in the news with lawsuits regarding their alleged unethical business practices. While we cannot speak definitively to their particular situations, these allegations suggest harmful impacts to their members and also can arouse questions about all the health care sharing ministries.

Several years ago, we published our own list of Health Care Sharing Ministry Best Practices (see this page), to which we are more committed than ever. We are also working with other ministries to develop overall standards that can help safeguard all health care sharing members from harmful organizational practices.

Government regulation

When I joined Samaritan, I was unaware of the constant efforts by both state and federal regulators to try to limit our ability to do health care sharing. We are currently working to protect our freedom to practice health care sharing in Maryland, California, and our home state of Illinois, just to name a few.

Some of these attacks are driven by problems caused by a few organizations’ harmful practices, with legislators and regulators trying to protect their constituents. Some are driven by those who want to use problems as an excuse to limit our health care options to health insurance. Others are driven by those who wish to eliminate religious organizations and exemptions.

Although we are often defending our ministry from opposition to health care sharing, we remain steadfast in our belief and faith that Jesus Christ, the great Provider and Protector of His people, will prevail and sustain our ministry. We also remind ourselves that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but the darkness of this age (Ephesians 6:12).

Joy in God’s providence

Even though we find ourselves facing a season of many difficulties, we remain joyful knowing that our God promises to turn all our difficulties into something good (Romans 8:28)! We are ever hopeful, knowing that Jesus achieved ultimate victory for us by suffering on the cross. It is in His love, mercy, and grace that we find our peace.

I would like to thank Founder Ted Pittenger, the Board of Directors, and our amazing staff for their love and support as I transition to this new position. My deep desire is to serve you, our members, our staff, and our God to the best of the abilities He has blessed me with.

In closing, at a recent church service Kathy and I attended, we heard lyrics from a worship song called “Promises” by Maverick City Music that beautifully captured our hope in Christ and the foundation of Samaritan Ministries:

I put my faith in Jesus,

My anchor to the ground,

My hope and firm foundation,

You'll never let me down,

You'll never let me down.

Thank you so much for loving and caring for your neighbors through Samaritan Ministries!

For The Kingdom!

Mark Zander