Blameless.

In many places in the bible Christians are urged to be 'blameless'. For example - 1 Thessalonians 5:23 "May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

I have worked in some places where there is a blame-culture. If anything goes wrong, the finger pointing begins...no-one takes responsibility, someone else is to blame. Being blameless is making sure you don't get blamed when it all goes wrong. The result is an atmosphere of fear, mistrust and dishonesty.

Contrast that with a story I heard to do with the NASA Mission Control Centre for the Apollo 11 moon landings. Unfortunately I can't remember the names or exact words but the gist of it makes a good point.

The Mission Control room was full of highly intelligent, young individuals who had a tremendous responsibility to the men on the mission. There was no experience in the room - they were all pioneers. Each had thousands of tasks to do : - monitoring systems, watching over the health of the astronauts, measuring oxygen levels, etc etc. The mission was high risk, high profile, high cost. Just before the mission blasted off, the Flight Controller (who I believe was Gene Krantz) turned off their communication links to the outside and addressed these comments solely to those in that Mission Room:

"You all know what to do. I have every faith in all of that you that you will do your best and get it right. But know this – if there is a mistake and a tragedy occurs I will take full responsibility. It will be down to me!"

In these few words he created a team who were motivated, trusting, honest and secure in the job at hand.

"May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."