Experiencing Faith
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Whether he's answering questions about the Business Character Values class at Lutheran High School Northor buying you lunch afterward, Detroit area dentist Ray McKinley focuses everything he has on whatever he decides to do.
Though his parents believed in him, he said others doubted he could succeed in college. If anything, those doubts motivated him to work harder. He was so determined that some called him "the human bulldozer." When doctors diagnosed his son, Bryan, with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, McKinley and his wife, Lynn, took their son all over the country, trying to find relief. Bryan had to use a wheel chair until his senior year in high school, and his parents remember Bryan lying in bed at night and crying. At one family reunion when Bryan had to stay in the motor home instead of joining his cousins' fun, he said, "Dad, tell me about Jesus." "I was pretty inept about the Jesus thing," McKinley said, "and that really hit me hard-that my son was asking for something that I couldn't provide." McKinley said he came to faith through the back door. "I could wrap my head around being more grateful, being more attentive, being more compassionate, being meeker, being truthful, being virtuous..., and as I learned about those words, I saw the value of having better character-what I thought was likely the character of Christ," McKinley said. Then when Bryan was 11, McKinley came to a decision he needed to trust God with Bryan's illness.A Personal Journey
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So he sat down beside Bryan on the bed and said, "'Son, I have tried everything I know; I've decided that I can't fix this on my own; I need to turn this over to God; and this really needs to be between God and you, and I need to get out of the way.'"
"And you know what he said to me?" McKinley's voice fills with emotion. "He said, 'Thank you, Daddy.'" Bryan became the catalyst that led McKinley to examine his "faith feelings" and deal with anger he felt from other experiences. Now McKinley said he can experience forgiveness and seek it. And now he has a passion to talk about character at home, in his dental practice, and with students in the Business Character Values class. McKinley uses Character First! to provide a lexicon and introduces students to other tools, such as DISC personality profiles, the Johari Window, and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, so that the students will have the ability to "teach character in their worlds." The course takes a slightly different direction every year, depending on the students. Each student has a Friday morning discussion with a volunteer mentor, going over the week's challenges. McKinley designs projects so that students must think critically rather than just digest information. And the students compile a portfolio documenting their experience. He wants students to adopt "beliefs, values, and principles" of their own rather than conform to external "shoulds, oughts, and musts"-or as 2009 graduate Taylor Vohs said, it comes down to a decision "whether you want to live a life of virtue instead of doing everything that you're 'supposed' to be doing."Touching Others
Helping Others Help Others
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Every Thursday, McKinley and his entire staff hold a character lunch at Logan's Roadhouse, where the group has become such a fixture that one dining area is called "The McKinley Room."
Dental hygienist Kathi Piech has mentored in the Business Character Values class all five years, and several of McKinley's other staff members have also volunteered. "I see these kids having so much of the pain that I had when I was that age, and feeling like I have to go and do something about it-like I'm called to go into the school and teach concepts to them that...will lead to a transition in their life, and that's the whole theme of the class-to transition from their current state to a new state of character." McKinley said. On June 26, 2009, Bryan McKinley graduated from Full Sail University with a bachelor's degree in Film Production. By Loren Paulsson Useful Links: