The Risk of Staying the Same: Healthcare Innovation for Christian Organizations
Staying the same is often treated as the safe option, but it's a choice with its own risks. When we're willing to view risk differently, innovative solutions emerge that can offer new levels of care and wiser stewardship of ministry resources.
There is risk in changing your organization’s healthcare model.
There is also risk in staying exactly where you are.
That second risk is sometimes harder to see.
Staying with the same carrier, renewing the same plan, absorbing another increase, and continuing with a familiar approach can feel like the safe decision. Everyone knows how it works. Employees understand it. Leadership knows what to expect. And when something is familiar, it is easy to assume it carries less risk.
But familiar and safe are not always the same thing. That is an important leadership principle, and it applies directly to healthcare.
“The risk of staying the same is that you will continue down the path
you are already on, and that is itself a risk.”
Pastor Josh Hayden
Every Path Has Risk
For many Christian organizations, healthcare has become one of the largest and most difficult expenses to manage. Leaders are trying to provide excellent care for their people while navigating rising costs, increasingly complex plan designs, and questions about whether the dollars they spend are aligned with the values of their organization.
That pressure isn't imagined. Mercer's 2026 National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans projects health benefit costs will rise 6.5%, the steepest increase in 15 years, pushing the average cost per employee above $18,500. Roughly half of employers say they plan to respond by shifting more of that cost onto employees, through higher deductibles, premiums, or narrower plan designs.
The easiest response can be to simply renew.
But renewal is still a decision.
If costs have been increasing year after year, staying the same carries financial risk. If employees struggle to access or understand their benefits, staying the same carries a people risk. If healthcare dollars are being spent in ways that conflict with your organization's convictions, staying the same may carry a values risk as well.
Innovation does not mean ignoring those risks.
Healthy innovation means understanding them and then asking a better question:
Which risk gives our organization the best opportunity to care for our people, steward our resources, and advance our mission?
What If There Is Another Path?
Since 2016, a group of large Christian organizations has used an innovative hybrid approach to healthcare, blending traditional group coverage with elements more common in self-funded and level-funded plans.
Facing the kind of cost pressure outlined above, more employers, including a growing number of nonprofits and ministries, are looking at self-funded and level-funded arrangements as a way to gain more visibility into where healthcare dollars actually go, rather than simply absorbing whatever the next renewal brings.
These organizations did not eliminate risk. They chose to understand it differently.
They were willing to question whether the healthcare model they inherited was necessarily the one they needed for the future.
Models like this aren't simple to evaluate on your own. Moving from a fully insured plan to a hybrid or self-funded structure involves real underwriting, compliance, and cash-flow considerations, which is one reason organizations exploring this shift typically do it with an advisor or consultant who has already walked that path with others.
Measure More Than the Budget
One of the first steps toward healthy innovation is understanding what you already have. Most organizations evaluate healthcare primarily through the lens of cost:
What did we spend last year?
What is our renewal increase?
What will we spend next year?
Those are important questions, but they are not enough.
A healthy healthcare strategy should also ask:
Does our plan provide employees with access to high-quality care?
Does it care well for employees and their families when they actually need help?
Are our healthcare dollars aligned with our biblical convictions?
Is the model understandable and sustainable?
Are we stewarding organizational resources wisely?
And ultimately, does our healthcare strategy support the mission we are trying to accomplish? That is why we believe organizations should periodically audit their healthcare benefits, not simply renew them.
Key Takeaways
Staying with your current healthcare plan feels safe, but it can carry real financial, people, and values risk of its own.
Health benefit costs are projected to rise 6.5% in 2026, the steepest increase in 15 years, pushing the average cost per employee above $18,500 (Mercer).
Healthy innovation isn’t about avoiding risk. It’s about asking which risk best serves your people and your mission.
A sound healthcare strategy measures more than budget. It also weighs care quality, values alignment, and long-term sustainability.
Is It Time to Explore?
A hybrid healthcare model is not right for every organization. Sometimes the best leadership decision really is to stay with your current approach. But that decision should come from evaluation rather than familiarity.
Leadership requires the courage to periodically examine the path we are on and ask whether it is still taking us where we want to go. Sometimes the greater risk is changing direction. Sometimes the greater risk is continuing down the same road.
Take the first step: complete Sonvio's Values-Based Benefits™ Assessment, and we'll walk through the results with you.
