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In twist on employee benefits, companies offer up chaplains

Several Tampa Bay area companies are among those making the service available. Some critics question why ministers are exclusively Christian.

TAMPA - Ed Griffiths spent five months in and out of the hospital battling a near-fatal illness last year, his hope and spirit buoyed by a burly chaplain named Ken Moore.

"When I woke up out of those comas I would go into," says Griffiths, 66, "I would look up and see Ken and feel at peace with God."

Moore, who prayed and read Scripture with Griffiths and his wife, Dorothy, almost daily, wasn't sent by the hospital or the family's church.

The ordained Baptist minister came courtesy of Griffiths' employer, Custom Care Pharmacy. It's one of about two dozen companies doing business in the Tampa Bay area that now offer chaplain services to employees.

Moore and his colleagues will help workers fight a drug problem, visit them in jail, perform a family funeral, discuss a marital problem or simply offer an encouraging word, at no cost to the worker. They're on call 24 hours a day.

Secular agencies, called employee assistance plans, have long provided businesses such services. But the chaplain services also offer prayer and, they say, an opportunity for salvation.

Moore's employer, the nonprofit Corporate Chaplains of America in Wake Forest, N.C., pledges to serve workers of all religions and creeds, but it hires only evangelical Christians.

And although Corporate Chaplains' employee brochure promises "not to beat you over the head with the Bible but to be there when you need a friend," it sends client companies monthly progress reports that include a running total of "salvations" - the number of employees who have accepted Jesus as their savior.

"People need the Lord," Moore says. "Our hope is, in a nonthreatening manner, to share the good news of Jesus Christ. But only with their permission."

So far this year, Corporate Chaplains' 50 full-time chaplains have reported at least 1,003 salvations, president Mark Cress says.

Its top competitor, Marketplace Ministries, a Dallas nonprofit with several bay area clients, had this to say in its 2001 tax return: "The Gospel was presented 27,339 times with 3,663 new professions of faith being made and over 3,420 persons rejoining the church."

Both groups say they've never had complaints from Catholic, Jewish, Muslim or atheist workers about their proselytizing chaplains or the lack of clergy representing different denominations.

But not everybody applauds the idea.

"It speaks to the employer's attitude," says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J. "It's a message from the employer that the only faith that matters is his faith. That's not illegal, but it's not right."

When Jake Beckel, chief executive of Custom Care, floated the idea of hiring a chaplain service a few years ago, not all his top staff approved.

"I had some push-back from a couple (of people) on the executive team who said this would be intrusive, that we were pushing our Christianity on people who aren't Christian," he says.

Back then, company controller Ed Griffiths was among the naysayers.

"I just didn't know if it went with the business place, because I was an advocate of separation of church and state," he recalls. "Boy, don't I think differently now, though."

Beckel, an ex-Marine with a warm smile, went ahead with the program anyway. It costs the company $10 a month per employee.

Raised Catholic, the Minnesota native attends Seminole Presbyterian Church in Tampa with his wife, Mary. He says he has experienced religion from all angles: as a nonbelieving youth, a spiritless churchgoer and, today, an engaged Christian.

A glance around his office suggests a wide range of interests. There is a framed diploma of his pharmacology doctorate, a New International Version Bible on his desk and a "What would Jesus do?" note pad nearby. Volumes on his bookshelf include Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, a history of World War II, leadership primers, The Complete Jesus and, two volumes away, The Complete Kama Sutra.

He is passionate about his 6-year-old company, a $12-million, 70-person operation located in a 46,000-square-foot warehouse near Tampa International Airport. "Clean room" staff don sterile booties and hairnets to fill prescriptions for specialty medicines, such as radioactive seeds used to treat prostate cancer. A 2001 survey by the University of Florida ranked Custom Care the state's fifth-fastest growing company. Beckel says it has the potential to earn revenues well beyond $100-million a year.

He says hiring the best job candidates and treating them well is part of his winning formula. The company provides its workers medical and life insurance, a 401(k) retirement plan, tuition refunds and cheap prescription drug refills.

For the spirit, it provides chaplain Moore, who has tallied five salvations at Custom Care in the past 12 months.

"A lot of bad things happen to good people," Beckel says. "The commitment that Ken has, and his organization has, is to be there at those times."

Moore, 56, knows what it's like to be a worker bee.

For years he worked at companies like Westinghouse, Western Electric and IBM as a technical engineer, "a nice term for a repair person," he jokes.

In 1994, he felt the call to do something bigger. For four hard years he worked days at IBM while studying for the ministry at night. After ordination, he took a part-time job as pastor at an east Tampa church. He also put the word out through the Tampa Bay Baptist Association that he was looking for full-time work.

In 2000, Moore was approached by Corporate Chaplains. He had all the required credentials: at least 10 years experience in a secular workplace; a seminary degree; ordination by a local church, which entitled him to perform weddings and roam hospitals and prisons; and a fervent desire to spread the Gospel.

Shadowing another chaplain for a day opened Moore's eyes. He could see the pain some workers lugged to their jobs each day from home. He saw the workplace as a unique opportunity to reach the unchurched.

"When God is directing your steps and you find your niche, then you realize: This is where I belong," he says.

Nearly three years later, he ministers to hundreds of local workers at several companies as one of three Corporate Chaplains representatives serving the bay area. Their annual salaries range from $39,000 to $55,000.

Moore visits each company once a week. He recounts his routine for Friday mornings, when he drives to Kforce, a $513-million, publicly traded staffing company with 450 workers at its Tampa headquarters.

Dressed in Lands' End casual clothing embroidered with the "CCA" logo, he spends half an hour greeting workers in the lobby. Then he roams the building from cubicle to cubicle, catching up with friends and making new contacts. Workers who want to chat confidentially do so during lunch or a coffee break, or meet him off-hours at a restaurant.

Nothing a worker tells Moore will ever end up in a company file, he says.

Moore's boss at Corporate Chaplains of America, founder Cress, owned a thriving video production company until he was inspired in 1993 to begin a new life and a new organization.

"I felt God speak to me about caring for employees this way," he says. "I went to seminary, and wrote the business plan. At that time, the only person I could get to listen to me about this was the owner of a junkyard."

Since then, the organization has grown to a budget of $3-million, with 50 full-time chaplains across 13 states. One of its largest clients is Estes Express Lines, a 9,000-person trucking company in Richmond, Va., with a terminal in Tampa. Seven of its customers are publicly traded. The junkyard, Price's Auto Parts of Knightdale, N.C., remains a client.

Cress was not the first person to envision a workplace ministry.

Marketplace Ministries of Dallas, for example, started placing chaplains in 1984. Spokesman Art Stricklin says its 1,200 part-time chaplains serve more than 250 secular companies. Among clients with bay area operations are David Weekley Homes of Houston, food distributor McLane Co. of Temple, Texas, and McKibbon Hotel Management of Gainesville, Ga.

Some companies, including Tyson Foods of Springdale, Ark., employ their own chaplains. Tyson, the world's largest meat producer, has 62 part-time chaplains for its 47 plants.

Moore has a policy for dealing with non-Christian workers.

If a Muslim or Jewish person asks for help, he explains his faith to them. "If they allow you to open that door, then we'll share the Gospel, tell them about Jesus Christ, or what it means to be a Christian."

If the employee is persistent about talking to someone of his own religion, Moore adds, he refers them to the Yellow Pages. Workers rarely ask.

"I'm going to pray as I always pray," he says. "I will not pray to their - and I don't mean to be disparaging when I say this - when you're a Christian, you're a Christian, and when you're not, you're not."

That attitude concerns Ahmed Bedier of Tampa, spokesman for the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"If the service is offered, that's great. But it's unfair if it's for only one religious path," he says. "What happens to the other people of faith? People who go to see (the chaplain) may be having troubles and may not be able to make the right decisions at the time. They may be facing tragedy in their life, and it's not fair to take advantage of their vulnerability."

Rabbi Jacob Luski of Congregation B'nai Israel in St. Petersburg says any corporate chaplaincy should be nondenominational.

"I do not believe we should be promoting one faith over another in the business world," he says. "Each individual has to practice his or her faith. And we do so in our own homes and with our own families and with our own religious institutions."

Jan Loeb Eisler, chairwoman of the secular humanist Center for Inquiry/Florida in St. Petersburg, would prefer no chaplains in the workplace, except perhaps in high-stress jobs such as firefighting or the military.

If CEOs sincerely want to help their workers tackle personal demons, Eisler says, they should hire a staff psychologist.

"Whatever happened to going privately into your own space, closet, whatever it is, and having a silent chat with your deity?"

So far, the Christian chaplains movement has largely avoided confrontation and charges of discrimination. Cress says one of his clients, a Durham, N.C., company he declined to name, has 400 Jewish employees at its South Florida location but has not heard a single complaint.

One reason may be the workplace ministry's cautious approach toward non-Christians. Cress says Corporate Chaplains focuses on helping Christians achieve salvation, not converting others. To aggressively pursue conversions would disrupt the workplace, Cress adds, and get Corporate Chaplains fired.

"Regardless of their faith, it resonates that we care for them," he says of the workers his chaplains serve. "If they get put in jail, we'll be the first person at the jail. If they're going to be in court on a domestic violence charge, we will be there to support, if they want us to. I can tell you: When you're in the hospital and about to get quadruple bypass surgery, you do not mind the chaplain coming by."

- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or 727 893-8751.

Two of the largest chaplain-placement services in the U.S. are Corporate Chaplains of America and Marketplace Ministries, both nonprofit organizations that have clients in the Tampa Bay area.

Headquarters: Wake Forest, N.C.

Annual budget: $3-million

Founded: 1996

President/Founder: Mark Cress

Client companies: 321

Examples: Kforce Inc., Custom Care Pharmacy, and Tampa Bay Steel Corp. (all based in Tampa)

Chaplains: 50 (full time)

Religion: Christian

Mission: "To build relationships with employees, with the hope of gaining permission to share the life-changing Good News of Jesus Christ, in a non-threatening manner."

Headquarters: Dallas

Annual budget: $6-million

Founded: 1984

President/Founder: Gil Stricklin

Client companies: 250

Examples: David Weekley Homes, McLane Co. and McKibbon Hotel Management Inc. (out-of-state companies with operations in the Tampa Bay area)

Chaplains: 1,200 (part time)

Religion: Christian

Mission: "To share God's love through chaplains in the workplace by an on-site Employee Care Program for client companies."

- Sources: Corporate Chaplains of America; Marketplace Ministries Inc.