Marketplace Ministries provides workplace chaplains to businesses across the country
Like most CEOs, Gil Stricklin keeps close tabs on the numbers, but the figures he cares about don’t have dollar signs.
He cares about numbers that involve the nurturing of people’s inner well-being.
The 80-year-old founder of Marketplace Ministries Inc. says 70 percent of U.S. workers don’t belong to a church, so that’s where Marketplace Ministries steps in.
The 30-year-old nonprofit provides workplace chaplains to companies so their employees and families will have access to voluntary, nondenominational, confidential pastoral services – anytime and just about anywhere.
Think of it as an employee assistance program with a subtle godly bent.
“We’re a really humanitarian service,” Stricklin says. “Some of it has to do with spirituality, but only at the request of the employee. A lot of people in the workplace don’t care that we’re religious. They come to us because we can help them with their life’s issues.”
The 24/7/365 service is available for emergencies but also for happy occasions like weddings.
Stricklin spent 22 years as a U.S. Army chaplain and patterned the nonprofit after the military chaplaincy.
Every Monday, Stricklin studies a spreadsheet. Last week, it showed that Marketplace added five chaplains and two companies, bringing the totals to 2,755 chaplains dispatched to 635 companies in 1,041 cities, 46 states and six international countries.
Marketplace ministers represent 93 denominations.
For non-Christians, the service has a resource pool of Muslims, Buddhists, rabbis and other religious advisers. “When employees of other faiths don’t have a mosque or a temple, we get them in contact with one,” Stricklin says.
In 1983, at 49, Stricklin, who had two sons in college, gave up his job at the Baptist General Convention.
His first donor was W.A. Criswell, the legendary First Baptist Church of Dallas pastor, who gave him $5,000. “That was more than I made in three months at the Baptist job,” says Stricklin, who is still a member of the downtown church.
Stricklin approached 10 members of First Baptist who owned businesses, thinking they’d hop at the chance to hire him to help their employees.
“Every one of them turned me down,” Stricklin says.
His first client was Ed Bonneau, a sunglasses distributor in Farmers Branch. Bonneau, a member of the Church of Christ, hired Stricklin as company chaplain, paying him $1,500 a month.
It was supposed to be a twice-weekly gig, but Stricklin showed up every day because he had nowhere else to go.
When employees mostly ignored Stricklin’s pastoral presence, he asked Bonneau to put him to work packing sunglasses in the warehouse. He’d go on breaks, chat with folks about life and hope someone would need his calling.
“Finally a lady came to me and said, ‘Are you that preacher man?’ ” Stricklin says.
Her mother had had a stroke the previous night, and she wanted Stricklin to check up on her at Baylor Hospital.
“I went back every day for six weeks and finally did this lady’s funeral,” he says. “That was the beginning. In 1984, our total income was $85,000. We ended the first year with five companies.”
Today the nonprofit has an annual operating budget of $14 million and serves 153,697 employees and 467,300 family members.
On average, U.S. companies pay Stricklin’s organization $9.75 per employee per month. But that varies with size. The largest company, JBS USA Co., parent of Pilgrim’s Pride, pays $4.10 a month for each of its 38,000 employees. The smallest pays $50 a month for each of its five employees.
Marketplace hired and trained 283 new chaplains this year.
The majority signed on to augment their income, Stricklin says.
While it’s not a requirement, 99 percent of the chaplains have been to seminary, Stricklin says. Those who haven’t have an average of 20 years of experience in a religious environment.
“We don’t teach them how to marry people or bury people or do all the things that pastors do,” Stricklin says. “We teach them how to operate in a secular workplace, where there’s cussing, dirty jokes and other kinds of filth.”
Most are part-timers paid $12 to $14 an hour. They make $21 to $25 an hour in places like Chicago and Los Angeles, where parking can eat you alive.
Eight chaplains assigned to Encore Wire Co. in McKinney have free rein to walk through the complex and commune with workers.
“If employees are having personal issues in their lives that they don’t want us to know about, they’re free to talk with the chaplains,” says Scott Warren, a plant manager.
Tammy Rushing, 46, was in the insurance business before becoming a chaplain a year ago.
“I wanted to do something more meaningful,” says Rushing, who serves employees at Encore Wire and Independent Bank in McKinney. “People lose loved ones, and they struggle during that time. I get to let people know that they’re never alone.”