“Quite simply, the workplace is the final frontier in the mission world today!” says Fr. Greg McBrayer.
An Anglican priest (Diocese of Fort Worth) and chaplain for American Airlines at their Fort Worth, TX headquarters, Fr. Greg will be one of three frontline chaplains featured at the 2nd Annual Faith@Work ERG Conference, Feb. 9-11, 2021. Held virtually this year, Fr. Greg highly encourages anyone interested in faith in the workplace to attend the conference. Registration is just $40.
Fr. Greg McBrayer ministering during COVID at American Airlines.
“Today as never before, corporations are seeing the fruitfulness of Chaplaincy and Bivocational ministry being done by essential, front-line, spiritual first responders who are actively serving in the workplace through a worldwide crisis,” says Fr. Greg.
As Chief Flight Controller for American Airlines and Senior Chaplain, Fr. Greg has been in a unique position to continue ministering to essential workers during the pandemic, while unfortunately many clergy have been regarded as non-essential and barred from ministering in certain capacities.
“As an essential spiritual first responder, it has most compared with end-of-life grief ministry day in and day out. Airline colleagues and co-workers are grieving the loss of jobs, loss of loved ones, co-workers, and certainly the loss of human connection and civility,” Fr. Greg told the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, the organizer of the Faith@Work Conference.
While the military has known the value of chaplaincy for decades, Fr. Greg says it’s only been since 9/11 that the corporate world has slowly begun to embrace faith in the workplace through ERGs or EBRGs – Employee Business Resource Groups. ERGs represent numerous employee interests, and their growing acceptance has allowed clergy to minister where people spend the most hours of their day.
“People may drift from the Church, but they don’t drift from their workplaces where we spend most of our lives,” says Fr. Greg. “As that trend continues to increase in a fast-paced world, God is actively deploying willing servants or maybe those who are struggling to hold church jobs to the places they are needed today.”
Fr. Greg’s passion for chaplaincy in the workplace is evident on his website – Our Faith at Work – where his incredible photos tell the story of serving at Dallas/Fort Worth International, the world’s third busiest airport. He performs plane-side memorial services, leads midday prayer, prays with employees and travelers, walks alongside co-workers, celebrates the Eucharist, and much more.
“Large corporations are seeing a new holistic care service that HR can’t and doesn’t know how to provide,” he says. “I have been involved in this movement for more than 20 years and I can truthfully say, the workplace is a rich, ripe mission field where ‘the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.’”
In the consideration of work and ministry, Fr. Greg shares a quote “from one much wiser than I.”
“Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.” – A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Find out more:
Read more here about the Faith@Work ERG Conference, registration, and topics.
Read more here about the featured frontline chaplains, including Fr. Greg McBrayer; Rear Adm. Margaret Grun Kibben, Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives; and Karen Diefendorf, Director of Chaplain Services at Tyson Foods.
Click here to read an excellent article on Fr. Greg published by the ACNA’s The Apostle magazine, republished by Anglican Compass.
by Rachel Moorman
ADOTS Communications Associate
news@adots.org