Workplace Chaplaincy

Workplace chaplains like other chaplaincy services are available to the whole community they are chaplain to. Chaplaincy is not just about issues of faith or spirituality or faith or just helping Christians. Often it is just about being available and having time for coffee and to listen to a person who is independent of their work environment, impartial and confidential about either personal matters, or work-related issue.

Examples of such conversations include:

• A senior manager in one of the banks whose teenage daughter had died several years ago, said, ‘if he had known a Chaplain existed it would have made his transition back to work easier after his compassionate leave’
• Another banker facing major surgery met with a chaplain to share how scared she was feeling by the prospect
• A Chaplain has met with several employees of a bank who are still struggling 18-months on after an employee committed suicide in their building
• A young Muslim banker asked if she could chat to a female chaplain as she saw them as a spiritual person and she needed to talk to someone spiritual about her difficulties
• A lawyer who had been attacked and raped was supported by the chaplain for several months
• Regularly meetings over coffee with a retail manager whose wife has been ill with cancer for several years and whose family lives from one day to the next.
• A managing director of a small company wanting to discuss a very tricky staffing issue, which involved dismissing an employee, but he also wanted to find some kind of support for the employee
• Arranging and performing a blessing of a civil wedding at very short notice, which had come about following a pastoral issue.

Examples of the meeting with groups:

• I meet monthly with a group of senior executives and recently when we were exploring how as Christians we deal with change in the workplace, most members of the group were in the process of making posts redundant and therefore employees where losing their jobs. The group was able discuss in a confidential environment sharing what was happening in the organisations they work for, giving each other support, which they were not getting in their local churches.
• Another conversation with another group has been around the issues of who you give bonuses to and how much and how you manage those whom you do not give bonuses to, it became clear during the group discussion just how difficult is and a painful a process for senior managers.

There are numerous chaplains around the London diocese engaged in chaplaincy to workplaces. These include:

• Town Centre Chaplaincy in Uxbridge
• Chaplaincy to the City Law firms
• Docklands Chaplaincy in Canary Wharf
• Chaplaincy to Heathrow Airport
• Chaplaincy to Oxford Street Stores
• Chaplaincy to St Pancras International Station.

There are also chaplains to the West End Theatres, to Prisons, Hospitals, and to al the Universities. Many parish clergy are involved in chaplaincy to local businesses in their parishes.

Many people spend much of their time in the workplace or commuting and so inhabit overlapping communities, that of the parish where they live and the community in which they work. Workplace chaplaincies do not take the place of the role of the parish clergy and the home church, but work in partnership with them to enable Christians to be supported and nurtured at both ends of the commuter line. Chaplains can enable forums to facilitate engagement with critical spiritual, social and ethical questions which arise in the many complex working environments in which members of congregations, are involved to help people to think about integrating their working lives and their faith.

Chaplains have a wealth of experience of working with people of many faiths, and understand the cultural expectations as well as the every day realities of the workplace. They can also advise on issues of diversity, related particularly to faiths. The Chaplaincy also provides links with the local community through Community Social Responsibility.

The Revd Dr Fiona Stewart-Darling
The Bishop of London’s Chaplain in Docklands
June 2008

Links

Docklands Chaplaincy
Chaplain to City Law firms
Uxbridge Town Centre Ministry
Mission in London's Economy