Did you know that there is now an organization known as the National Institute of Business and Industrial Chaplains?
I didn’t either. Not until I read it on the front Religion page of a recent Dallas Morning News.
Regular readers of my column may remember that I gaffed the Morning News several months ago for publishing a religion section that contained 6 pages of news about atheists and Muslims and Hindus and Hebrews about every religion and non-religion except Christianity (which I pointed out, to the dismay of a few of my own readers, happens to be numerically the dominant faith of the Metroplex).
In fairness I must tell you that my next experience with a Morning News religion section was far better. It’s feature article was a well-written piece by Diana Kunde about chaplains in the workplace.
According to Kunde, an estimated 4,000 industrial chaplains
offer pastoral care today in
Typical of organizations providing such services is Dallas-based Marketplace Ministries. Founded by retired Army chaplain and former Billy Graham associate Gil A. Stricklin, they contract with 140 businesses to provide pastoral care to employees.
If Stricklin is right, such care is needed. He says that “50
percent of the workforce in
That’s a black-eye for the church. It says we’re doing a sorry job of calling this generation to spiritual commitment. We get an “F” in Evangelism.
Kunde says employees give virtually unanimous approval of chaplains on the job. What does this say about the spiritual hunger of our age? When a chaplain shows up at 5 a.m. to sit with a employee during her father’s heart surgery, or when the chaplain spends the night with a family whose 80-year-old father with Alzheimer’s has vanished, workers are grateful. They feel loved and supported.
Just as they would, of course, if they became a part of any church and allowed its pastors to offer them similar ministry in times of crisis.
Maybe this way they’ll at least find out what the church has to offer.