Pastor turns calling into a business
Corporations turn to chaplains to help employees
ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Nate Schroder was a pastor for most of the last 30 years, but he always considered himself an entrepreneur at heart.
Now, he’s found a way to combine his spiritual calling with a chance to be in business for himself — as a corporate chaplain. Last year, he launched Corporate Care Services in St. Cloud, Minn.
“A lot of people, when they hear the term chaplain, they think it’s specifically religious,” Schroder said. “In the corporate world, you’re really like three people rolled into one. You’re a counselor and a life coach in addition to being a pastor.”
Corporate chaplains have been around for decades, but in recent years, as businesses have looked at ways to reduce costs, a growing number have turned to corporate chaplains as an alternative to more traditional employee-assistance programs. General Motors, Ford Motor, Coca-Cola and Tyson Foods are among the major companies that have chaplains.
Companies are finding that having a chaplain on site helps them retain employees and reduce absenteeism, said Mindy Albright, a master instructor and board member of the International Fellowship of Chaplains, which provides training and certification to about 2,000 chaplains.
“We’re seeing that many corporations are understanding that they need to deal with the whole person, not just the workplace issues,” Albright said.
-North Carolina-based Corporate Chaplains of America employs 140 full-time chaplains at 670 businesses and grew by 20% last year, said founder Mark Cress.
He said more companies are recognizing the importance — and good business sense — of caring for their employees.
-Marketplace Chaplains, based in Dallas, operates in seven countries and 44 U.S. states. Now in its 29th year, the company is seeing steady growth, adding 46 new companies and hiring 104 new chaplains so far this year, said founder Gil Stricklin, a former U.S. Army chaplain.
-Corporate Care of Edmond, Okla., was started in 1987 by Boe Parrish, a former executive at Sprint Communications. It’s grown since then and now cares for about 5,000 employees and their families.
Steve Trice, CEO of Jasco Products in Oklahoma City, has used Parrish’s services for 15 years. The company also has an employee-assistance program, but Trice said the corporate chaplain provides services that the program can’t.
“He’s done funerals and weddings right in our plant for those people who don’t have a church but wanted that sort of thing,” Trice said.
Schroder said many of the issues he deals with as a corporate chaplain are the same he faced from the pulpit.
“You might have employees dealing with suicidal thinking or marriages blowing up,” Schroder said. “You could have an employee who is missing a lot of work and, when you dig down deep enough, you find that person is having trouble finding suitable day care.”
Although corporate chaplain services are faith-based, they don’t promote specific religions. Besides having nearly 2,700 chaplains on staff, Marketplace Chaplains also contracts with representatives of other faiths, including Buddhist priests and Muslim imams, Stricklin said.
“It’s in the company’s benefit to have someone who’s not involved in production watching out for that molehill before it becomes a mountain,” Schroder said.