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Utility chaplaincy happens where the lights come from: in service centers before dawn, beside bucket trucks staged for a storm rotation, at substations and gas crew job sites, and in the homes of families who plan their lives around outage season. The chaplain who serves this field steps into a trad...
Railroad chaplaincy happens where the workday runs by the call board: in yard offices and crew rooms, aboard the head end at the away-from-home terminal, at the derailment site in the middle of the night, and in the towns where a railroader's family plans around a phone call that can come at any hou...
Mining chaplaincy happens where the workday begins with a cage ride away from the sun: in underground coal and hardrock mines, at surface pits and prep plants, in bathhouses where crews change before the shift, and in the small towns where mining is not just a job but an inheritance. The chaplain wh...
Oilfield chaplaincy happens where the schedule never stops: on drilling rigs, at frac sites, in crew vans, and in the man camps where workers sleep between shifts. The chaplain who serves this field steps into a culture built around the hitch, two weeks on and days off far from home, where fatigue i...
Veterans chaplaincy is not military chaplaincy in civilian clothes. The chaplain who serves veterans meets people after the uniform comes off, when the structure, mission, and brotherhood of service are gone and the questions those things held at bay come forward. If you are a learner preparing for ...
A Parish on the Production Line
Most learners picture chaplaincy in a quiet room: a bedside, an office, a sanctuary. Manufacturing chaplaincy happens on a floor that never fully quiets, among people wearing hearing protection who measure their day in units and takt times. Your parish is a plant that...
A Parish Behind a Chain-Link Fence
Most learners picture chaplaincy in a hallway: a hospital wing, a firehouse, a school. Construction chaplaincy happens behind a chain-link fence, on ground that changes every month. Your parish is a jobsite that did not exist last year and will be handed over next ...
A Parish Measured in Acres
Most chaplaincy settings give the learner a hallway to walk: a hospital wing, a firehouse kitchen, a locker room. Agricultural chaplaincy gives you a county. Your parish is scattered across farmsteads, sale barns, co-op counters, and machine sheds, and the people in it are...
The Parish Has No Address
Most chaplaincy settings hand the learner a building: a hospital, a firehouse, a ship, a locker room. Street chaplaincy hands you a sidewalk. Your parish is a stretch of blocks, an underpass, a shelter doorway, a bench outside the library. The people you serve carry everyth...
The Parish Wears a Jersey
From the stands, an athletic program looks like the healthiest congregation a chaplain could ask for: young, strong, disciplined, surrounded by cheering support. Inside the locker room the picture changes. A starter is playing through an injury he has told no one about. A r...
Most ministry settings hold still long enough to learn the names. A travel center does not. A driver fuels, showers, sleeps a federally mandated ten hours, and is gone by dawn, three states away before you finish your next shift. The parish of a trucking chaplain arrives seventy feet at a time: the ...
The Parish Arrives by Sea
Most chaplaincy settings let you build trust over months. A ship gives you hours. A vessel ties up, a crew of twenty steps ashore after weeks at sea, and by tomorrow night the berth is empty again. The engineer who has not seen his daughter in nine months, the deck cadet on...
