The Thankful Exchange

After I concluded a talk a few days ago, a man and woman approached me. "We need to thank you for today," the man said. "We've been deeply touched by your words." My automatic reaction was to take the "aw shucks" route, minimizing what I'd done.

But the woman interrupted my shallow expression of humility: "No. Please listen carefully. It's important that we give and that you receive from us our gratitude, what this hour has meant to us. God has spoken through you into a very bruised part of our lives, and we want to affirm his wonderful gift."

The words morphed into tears and the two clutched each other. "We will never be the same because of what we heard today."

Suddenly I realized that this was not simply two people being courteous. And it was certainly not a moment for me to casually dismiss. The three of us were involved in something significant. I've come to call it the thankful exchange.

When we were children, most of us learned to use the words please and thank you. At first, we weren't entirely sure why the words were so important, but it wasn't difficult to figure out that in most cases good things happened when they were used.

We came to understand that please (as in "Please, may I have a glass of water?") opened doors of generosity. And thank you (as in "Thanks much for the drink") usually led to further door-openings down the line.

Here's a case in which we acquired a positive habit (saying the words) before we knew the full meaning of what we were doing.

It's the second of these two terms that grabs me: Thank you. Its variants? I appreciate. I'm grateful. Much obliged. I'm in your debt.

A message beneath the words

Why are these expressions important? Why were our mothers so insistent that we use them?

The message behind thank you seems to be this: I am acknowledging something—a gift, a word, an action—that you have offered to me. It has added value to my life, and I am compelled to celebrate what you have done.

It may seem strange—in an article for leaders—to focus on the thankful exchange. Wouldn't it be better addressed wherever it is that people comment on etiquette and good manners?

My opinion? The thank you exchange is an indispensible element to all healthy human relationships: friendships, marriage, family, organizations of all sizes and shapes. Neglect it, and, over a period of time, the quality of any of those relationships deteriorates.

Therefore, the thank you exchange is one of a leader's most important actions.

There was a time when I didn't know that. When I was a young pastor, a man who had managed a project in our church to a successful conclusion invited me to lunch.

"I have a thought for you," he said to me after we'd ordered. "Some of us have noticed that you are full of enthusiasm and friendship whenever we agree to do something for you. But the minute the job ends, you seem to forget about us because you're on to something else. So some of us feel a bit used. You're neglecting two little words that we all need to hear."

"And those are …?"

"Thank you."

A tough rebuke, but valuable to receive.

A husband and wife, friends of mine now in their later 70s, are three-day-a-week volunteers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The wife works at the information desk at the main entrance. Her mission? To welcome and provide information for people entering the hospital for the first time.

'Are you telling me you receive more appreciation at the hospital than at church?'

Her husband oversees a reception area for families and friends of cancer patients who are in surgery. His mission? To ensure that they are comfortable and cared for until the surgeon comes to tell them what has happened in the OR.

"Why do you do this?" I asked my friends one day. "You could be snorkeling in Florida."

"Because we are aggressively appreciated," one of them said. "Mass General practices a culture of appreciation. You can hardly go 15 minutes during the day without someone on the MGH staff stopping you (from hospital president to the cleaning staff) and saying thanks and something like 'We couldn't do what we do without you.' We're made to feel like an important part of a world-class medical team. We've never felt so completely valued in any other organization."

That last comment birthed another question, and the answer was unsettling.

"Are you telling me," I asked, "that you receive more appreciation at the hospital than you got when you once poured yourself into work at our church?"

Answer (offered slowly, firmly, maybe even sadly): "There's no comparison."

The first story—me at lunch with a friend—happened almost 40 years ago. The second, three or four years ago. Both, in their time, were severe jolts to me.

Thanks of biblical proportions

St. Paul, writing to the Colossians, employed the phrase abounding-in-thanksgiving as part of his challenge for them to grow into true Christian maturity. "Be rooted … built up … strengthened in the faith," he wrote. Those words I get. But then he added "abounding in thanksgiving." The thankful exchange. Why thanksgiving and not abounding in generosity, or love, or patience, or courage? I can't say, really. Except, maybe, that Paul regarded the power of aggressive gratitude as way up the list when describing the grounded and mature Christ-follower.

Thanksgiving and praise were close to being synonymous in Paul's way of thinking. Writing to Roman Christians, Paul said that people who do not honor or thank God fall into spiritual catastrophe. Maybe Paul was saying that honoring and thanking are at the core of all relationships: beginning with one's connection with God and moving on to family, friends, community, and whatever organization we serve or lead.

One day the Lord healed ten lepers. While nine of the ten immediately headed out to rejoin their friends and family, one returned to the scene of the healing to say thank you to Jesus.

And that one, the story-teller adds, "was a Samaritan." Call it a backhanded way of saying that the other nine ingrates were probably Jews who, it is implied, should have known better.

"Where are the other nine?" Jesus asked. Did he ask because he really didn't know where they had gone? I don't think so.

Perhaps Jesus asked because he wished to etch on the soul of his disciples the notion that no human transaction where value of some kind has been offered—in this case a healing—is ever complete without the thank you exchange.

Is thanksgiving an endangered species?

We took our grandson (age 3 at the time) to Chuck E. Cheese's for pizza and noisy rides. When the evening ended, his grandmother buckled him into his car seat and said, "Now be sure you say thank you to your Papa."

Silence. No reaction. She said again, "Did you hear me? Be sure you say thank you to Papa."

Again, silence.

At first I ignored this backseat conversation. But then I changed my mind and said this. "You know, Papa enjoys doing nice things for grandchildren, especially when they say thank you."

More silence.

"Did you hear Papa?" I asked, now a tad irritated.

"Uh huh."

But there was still no thank you. And now I was uber-peeved.

"Are you ignoring me?" The volume of my voice amped up.

Then this response: "I'm thankful, Papa; I just don't want to say it."

From the mouth of a child came what many adults feel. There is something in many of us that finds saying thank you difficult, or humbling, or just plain unnecessary. The truth? Thanksgiving unexpressed is no thanksgiving at all.

Know what bothers me? Maybe our grandson (then 3, now 20) inherited his resistance to the thankful exchange through my family line.

Being thankful was not a part of my character-core when I was young. Sometimes I look back and wonder if I didn't assume that I was entitled to other people's generosity. After all, I was the preacher's kid. People did nice things for my parents. Why not do the same for me? And why say thanks if people owed me?

As I began writing this piece, I listed in my journal the many people who made amazing contributions to my life before I reached the age of 23. The list of givers is long; the list of thankful exchanges is short.

Among these contributors? The nanny who read constantly to me when I was small. The teacher at boarding school who was unusually attentive to me because he knew that I came from a family that was in the process of breaking up. The older couple who funded a year of my college education when they learned that I was broke and on the verge of dropping out. Add to the list a couple of seminary professors who saw some raw leadership ability in me and determined to refine it.

I am haunted by the memory of a day in my 11th year when I had to deliver 300 wet newspapers to suburban homes in Cleveland Heights. The rain and sleet were pelting down. I was not adequately dressed for the weather. At one point, my hands frozen, my clothes soaked, I simply sank to my knees on the sidewalk and began to cry.

A woman passing by stopped … sort of like the Good Samaritan once did.

"Let's deliver these papers together," she said when she realized my problem. And for the next hour, as the weather worsened, we dropped newspapers together at every door.

When we finished, she simply declared, "We did it," and she disappeared. What was her name? Why did she do it? Could she have been an angel?

I never said thank you to her and those many other people. They're all gone now. It's too late.

It wasn't until I merged lives with Gail, my wife of 53 years, that I saw the thankful exchange in heavy duty action. Having learned the discipline of aggressive thanksgiving from her mother, there was rarely a week in my young wife's life when she did not write or connect with at least 20 people to express her gratitude about something. I came to see that this exercise was part of her daily spiritual disciplines. It was as if she awakened each morning and asked, "Who can I elevate today by spotlighting something generous they've done?"

From her I learned the significance of written thank you notes. I do not exaggerate when I tell you that, more than once, I have seen people approach Gail and pull from their wallet a thank you note she wrote them ten years ago.

They say things like, "Gail, I've been carrying this note around with me all these years. Whenever I need to feel better, I take it out and read it."

I don't think we have ever gone any place to visit or to eat without taking with us a carefully thought-out hostess gift: flowers, hand towels, gifts for the children, a book (one of mine perhaps). Admittedly, I sometimes question these efforts because I usually do the carrying. And then I end up getting the credit for what we have done.

Often, I am among the recipients of these thankful exchanges. Sometimes I find thank you notes that Gail had slipped under the windshield wiper of my car. Sometimes there are words of love and appreciation in my luggage when I travel. A text message may read, "Just wanting to say thanks, that I love you, and that I'm appreciative that you took the garbage to the dump this morning." Years ago, in much the same fashion, our children found such notes from their mom in their lunch bags.

"Dear Bob," begins a note to our head usher in church. "Sunday, I watched you escort Mrs. Scott [a frail, slow-moving woman] to her seat in the sanctuary. Thank you for being such a gentle and attentive man. Appreciatively, Gail."

To a school teacher: "Dear Mrs. Barbour. At dinner last night our son told us about your unique way of teaching the multiplication tables. Here's one family that feels very fortunate that you are building in the lives of our children. You're a great teacher."

We are on a plane, and its descent into the airport causes a small girl three rows ahead no little pain in the ears. Her mother is helpless and can only keep on hugging the child hoping the ordeal of screaming will soon end. The people for 90 rows around are seething.

When the plane lands and the seatbelt sign is turned off, it's Gail who rushes to where the mother and child are seated. "I know how difficult that must have been for you when your baby was hurting so badly," she says. "But you did a fine job. You're a great mother. I just wanted to let you know someone noticed how hard you were trying."

At the local Subaru dealership, there is a bulletin board inviting customer comments regarding the quality of service. Because Gail's notes of appreciation for the service people far outnumber the notes of other customers, they command their own extra space on this comment board. And this has led the entire service department to jump to attention when she brings our Outback in for a visit. You can see their clear look of disappointment if I'm the one who stops by. "Oh, it's just Gail's husband."

What happens when we initiate a thankful exchange? Let's be a bit imaginative.

The first thing that occurs is that we are placing a value on an effort, a thing, or words

"This is my appraisal of what you have done," we are saying.

I'm reminded of the guy on Public TV who appraises a chair and says to the anxious owner, "This chair from your attic once graced the bedroom of Louis XIV. It's worth $300,000 dollars."

And we accept his judgment! He is qualified to declare how valuable it is.

So also the one who gives thanks. In setting the thankful exchange in motion he is saying this is what your gift means to me. I am aware of your thoughtfulness and generosity.

You may think me crazy, but I think that this was what God was doing at the end of each creation period. "And God saw that it was good." Could it be that God was thanking himself as he assessed his own effort?

Second, when we say thanks, we are revealing a kind of humility. We are declaring to the giver that this exchange is something we could not have done for ourselves. Implication: we need the giver and what the giver has given. We are saying in our thanksgiving that we are by no means independent. We need one another, and the expression of thanks is the affirmation of that need.

Young people call for genuine community experience. The language of the community begins with the thankful exchange.

While living at the desert cave of Adullam, King David expressed a wish for water from his hometown well, Bethlehem. Three of his men overheard his wish and, at great risk of life, obtained the water David dreamed about. Powerfully moved by their generosity, David could not drink the water, and he poured it out as if it were a sacrificial offering. In a strange way he was saying, "I am not worthy of this water. It required you to risk your lives to obtain it. To have received it is to have been loved."

Thanksgiving spotlights (in an appropriate way) a sacrificial action on the part of the giver. In giving thanks we declare that the giver has acted generously, sacrificially, nobly, and that we have observed it.

When Moses and the Hebrew people made their way—by God's miraculous intervention—through the Red Sea, what was Moses' instinctive reaction? The thankful exchange.

"I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation."

Instructive, I think, that this exercise of appreciation was the first thing that Moses led his people to do when they reached the other side of the Red Sea.

Note Paul being aggressively thankful.

To the Romans: I thank my God … for all of you.

To the Corinthians: I always give thanks for you.

To the Ephesians: I have not stopped giving thanks for you.

To the Philippians: I thank my God every time I think of you.

To the Colossians: We always thank God … when we pray for you.

To the Thessalonians: We also thank God for all of you.

To Timothy: I thank God … as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers.

To Philemon: I always thank God as I remember you in my prayers.

This man understands the thankful exchange.

As I described at the very beginning, I have been the recipient of aggressive thanks. A man points me toward a place in the sanctuary and says, "13 years ago, you kneeled with me and helped me to give my life to Jesus. I have never forgotten that day, and I want to say thank you again."

Thank you for coming to my side when I lost my job.

Thank you for spending time with our son.

A couple stops Gail and me on the street. "You don't know us, but we came to a marriage weekend that you guys spoke at. We watched you talk with each other and came to realize how much we wanted that same kind of openness and affection in our relationship. We're different people today because God sent you into our lives."

All of us know that, as men and women in one form of Christian leadership or another, we thrive on such examples of aggressive thankfulness as these. Most of us did not enter our way of life because the money was good. We did it because we wanted to bless people. And their acknowledgement that God's grace has been poured out through us validates our choice.

Now here is why this essay on thankfulness comes in this edition of Leadership Journal. No one needs to be more thankful than a leader. We often lead by thanking. If we are wise, filled with the presence of God's power and sight, we move about our "worlds" looking for things to be thankful for. And when we find them, we swing into action.

And what might that look like?

Giving thanks to the people who make the coffee … who help park the cars … who spend an hour with the babies … who pray fervently and believingly … who count the offering … who lead people to their seats in the place of worship.

Visiting the men and women who carry out the weekday mission of our churches by going to the places where they work, learning what they do, praying for them on the spot, telling them how much we value their participation in the community of believers.

Sending notes, making phone calls, giving gifts, speaking in appreciative tones to the congregation about people whose contributions are rarely recognized, telling appreciative stories of faithful men and women in the course of our sermons. Looking for the people most often ignored because they do not play in the band or appear in our videos. Making sure that light of appreciation is shined upon them.

And this is why—when my talk is ended and this couple approaches to say thank you—I take their words seriously.

"We need to thank you for today …" they say. At this moment in time, they are correct. They do need to say thank you. Just as on another occasion it will be my turn to say thank you to someone whom God has used to add value to my life. Nothing warms relationships between people and between us and God than this simple but powerful thankful exchange.

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership Journal and chancellor of Denver Seminary.