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(c) 2026 Marsh Institute for Chaplains. Chaplain Resource Network is an initiative of the Marsh Institute for Chaplains. All rights reserved.
Corporate chaplaincy looks different from a hospital floor or a military installation, and that difference trips up a lot of new chaplains. There is no crisis pager, no chapel, and often no obvious signal that a chaplain belongs in the building at all. Learning to enter workplace chaplaincy well mea...
The steel door closes behind you with a sound you feel more than hear. A corrections officer checks your badge again, even though he checked it thirty seconds ago at the sally port. Somewhere down the hall, a man you have never met is waiting to talk about his mother's funeral, which he cannot atten...
A chaplain scope-of-role agreement is the quietest document in your agency and one of the most important. It tells staff, volunteers, and the people you serve exactly what a chaplain does and does not do. Without it, a chaplain drifts into roles they were never trained for, and trust erodes on all s...
The hardest door a new chaplain opens is the one no one asked them to knock on. A cold visit, walking into a room where the person did not request you, tests every instinct a learner has. You feel like an intruder. You are not. You are an offer the person is free to decline, and learning to make tha...
Chaplain self-care is not a reward for finishing the hard work. It is part of the work. A caregiver who never recovers will eventually have nothing left to give, and the people who depend on that presence will feel the loss first.
As a learner, you are forming habits you will keep for years. If you...
Volunteer chaplain onboarding should begin with boundaries, not enthusiasm alone. Commitment matters, but goodwill cannot substitute for role clarity, supervision, and a reliable referral path.
Agency leaders and chaplain directors protect both the volunteer and the people they serve when expectation...
