With this inaugural edition, Lutheran Services in America is launching a new Member Spotlight series featuring interviews with members from across our nationwide network. This edition spotlights John Moeller, president and CEO of Inspiritus, who began his journey pastoring churches before moving into the nonprofit ecosystem. Learn how John and the Inspiritus team are increasing scale through their housing and health model in the following interview.
What was your path to becoming CEO at your organization?
“I felt called to ministry during college. I began the ordination process and attended seminary. I grew my leadership skills and capacity while pastoring churches over the next 12 years. At a certain point along my journey, I felt that my gifts for ministry might be better aligned with faith-based human service work. Connecting people of faith to real human needs, meaningful work and profound community impact lit a fire within me. This year, I celebrate 25 years in this space, and I’m just as excited and invigorated as I was at the very beginning.”
Why did you choose to work for a Lutheran social ministry organization specifically?
“Lutheran serving organizations take on some of society’s greatest challenges and they often deliver programs at scale. In addition, where other organizations in the space see each other as “frenemies”, Lutheran serving organizations have a reputation for working together at every level to enhance the potential impact. Having worked in different types of environments, I can tell what a joy it is to work in this Lutheran ecosystem of partners.”
What are your current strategic priorities at the organization?
“Inspiritus is focused on three key pillars: 1) business model and financial sustainability, 2) program innovation and scalability, and 3) impacting the ecosystems in which we operate. The three pillars work together to form a self-reinforcing feedback loop that strengthens the entire organization.”
What’s one solution your organization is working on or has developed recently to address an organizational challenge?
“Within our second pillar of program innovation and scalability, Inspiritus is attempting to build one integrated solution, that harnesses the strengths of all our programs, called the “Inspiritus model,” that will comprehensively address the housing, health and empowerment needs of all the individuals and families Inspiritus accompanies including refugees, immigrants, disaster survivors, children and families caught up in the child welfare system, adults with IDD/DD, and families wrestling with poverty.”
What excites you most about what’s happening within your organization right now?
“It’s exciting to see leaders across Inspiritus, working on unified solutions to common problems facing individuals and families across different target populations.”
What is one challenge and one opportunity you’re currently seeing within the health and human services sector?
“Funding for nonprofit human service nonprofits today is niched and highly fractured. The siloed funding creates fragile programs. Sudden drops or interruptions in funding expose these weaknesses posing an existential threat to the programs and their nonprofit owners. One way to mitigate this risk is to build integrated programs and solutions that cross historic program areas with braided funding sources. “
You’ve been a long-time champion and member of the Lutheran Services in America network…what do you find most valuable?
“I cherish both the emphasis on learning and development that LSA encourages and the friendships and collegiality that LSA fosters between leaders at multiple levels across the network.”
What advice would you give to new CEOs about getting involved in the Lutheran Services in America network?
“Lean in! Be vulnerable. Make friends. You don’t have to go it alone and you don’t have to have all the answers. Treat your colleagues in the network like your team. They would like to help because they remember a time at some point along the way that they also received a helping hand from a friend in the network.”
What is one essential leadership skill you strive to model to your team?
“I’m trying to ground myself in the duality of our mission. It’s a holy one that addresses the earthly human condition. While Inspiritus is a capable organization, our leaders must actively resist the temptation of letting it become a factory that only produces outcomes where individual teammates fall in to the trap of becoming cogs in the wheel. We are first and foremost, an organization of human beings, called by a higher power, to love one another and those entrusted to our care.”
To read more about John’s health through housing work, read Inspiritus’ housing case study here.