Spiritual Chicken???
04.17.06 (10:52 am) [edit]
When a tornado swept through Monett, Missouri, Lynn Freeman's home was wrecked. "It was a disaster, and it seemed like everything I worked so hard for was gone," said Freeman, 47, who had worked at the local Tyson Foods plant for 23 years. The damage would take six months to repair and she was having a difficult time dealing with her insurance company. Freeman, a Catholic, said she started losing faith. Her pain became clear to her coworkers, and soon to the Reverend Christopher H. Carver, one of the many chaplains that Tyson employs at its branches.
One day at work, Carver, who's not only a Tyson chaplain but also a pastor at the nearby Church of the Nazarene, asked Freeman about her troubles. Freeman unburdened herself, and Carver offered to help deal with the insurance companies and contractors. His aid eventually paved the way for Freeman to get her house -- and her faith -- back. "He gave me a spiritual makeover," she says, with gratitude in her voice. "He helped me see that everything would turn out all right -- and he helped me become a believer once again."
Such a scenario may be a surprise to many of us who are, on the contrary, discouraged from even breathing the word religion in workplace conversations. And yet, a whole other faith-based work movement is afoot in cubicles across the country. Tyson chief executive officer John Tyson is one of the pioneers. He started transforming his Springdale, Arkansas-based firm, the world's largest meat company, into a faith-friendly corporate giant five years ago. It now has 112 chaplains representing several religions and provides prayer rooms for all of its 114,000 employees; many locations also offer prayer groups or Bible studies. But it's up to the employees to determine what services they want. There's no proselytizing by chaplains or other workers. "Having faith in the workplace is fantastic," Freeman says. "It makes me feel good about my job."
No longer content to relegate their faith to the weekends, more Americans are trying to express their religious beliefs from Monday to Friday as well. "For many people, the office has become their community, their family, and they want their faith to be part of it," says David W. Miller, PhD, MDiv, who runs the Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School, in New Haven, Connecticut, a think tank that helps people incorporate faith into their work. Says Miller, a former IBM executive, "People no longer want to leave their soul in the parking lot."