Wichita ? Jean McFarland didn’t have to burden her co-workers the day her late sister was hospitalized three years ago.

Nor when her niece went into the hospital last year for brain surgery.

Chaplains hired by her employer, Reddi Root’r prayed with her, sent cards and stood by her in the hospital.

Like health insurance, this spiritual comfort is part of McFarland’s employee benefits.

“They put (my sister) on a prayer list, and visited with me, and let me spill out to them,” McFarland said.

Her chaplains are among a growing number who are contracted by companies from local hotels and manufacturers to national Fortune 500 firms for these special services.

Dallas-based Marketplace Ministries, with six workplace chaplains in Wichita, is thought to be the largest contract chaplain provider nationwide. A predominantly Christian company, it started with one chaplain at one company in 1984 and now has 1,149 chaplains at 238 companies.

“The very fact that 9-11 struck when everyone was at work, I think that increased the anxiety level for the entire corporate world,” said Art Stricklin, spokesman for the agency.

A spiritual component

Companies pay for the service based on how many employees they have. Three Wichita-area companies Reddi Root’r, Candlewood Suites Hotel and Central Kansas Truss have contracts with Marketplace Ministries.

Business owners say the service adds a spiritual component to employee assistance programs, which typically provide purely secular services such as toll-free crisis hot lines or free psychological counseling.

“I just personally wanted to bring this service without pushing it on anyone,” said Tom Steven, Reddi Root’r owner and a Christian. “It introduces religion to people who don’t have it in a very relaxed way.”

Diana Dale, executive director of the National Institute of Business and Industrial Chaplains, said about 4,000 traditional chaplains worked in the United States, a number that has stayed fairly constant.

Nontraditional chaplains

But in recent years, a new type of nontraditional chaplain has emerged. Mostly lay members or part-time evangelical pastors, these new chaplains have less formal training, spend more time proselytizing and spend less time on historic chaplain duties such as labor/management issues and counseling, Dale said.

It’s hard to estimate how many of these nontraditional chaplains are working, she said. While some are part of Marketplace Ministries, others contract for their services individually.

“It’s a real brand-new thing to call someone a chaplain if they don’t have an advanced education,” Dale said. “Are we really looking out for the well-being of the employees and not playing church?”

But Stricklin said his chaplains were highly trained and diverse. They include, when employees ask, rabbis, Roman Catholic priests and in one case a Buddhist monk.

“Our chaplains are prohibited from going up to you and saying, ‘Hey, Joe. You’re going to hell and do you want to talk about it,”‘ he said.

Changing functions

Workplace chaplains a category apart from the historic military or hospital chaplaincy date back to industrial England at the turn of the 20th century and came to America after World War II, Dale said.

They grew to fill a fairly prominent role at many corporations, advocating for social justice reforms, among other duties.

With corporate restructuring in the mid-1980s, chaplains were trimmed from budgets and replaced with clinical counseling services.

Marketplace Ministries stays clear of professional counseling, instead focusing on being a caring presence in the workplace, said the Rev. Chuck Wilson, the local agency coordinator.

“I have no connection with any of the business end of the companies we work with,” he said. “I just know they’re in business.”