Reimer Express Lines chaplain provides a different kind of EAP
For three months at a time, twice a year, Ken Heppner and wife Holly are on the road, tending to the corporate flock, so to speak, coast to coast.
He’s a Mennonite pastor, on the payroll with his wife, at Reimer Express Lines to run the company’s chaplaincy program. They look after the needs of the staff — psychological, emotional and spiritual if need be.
“We do some counselling, we do encouragement. But mostly we just listen to people’s joys in life, their excitement in life, their struggles in life.”
Every year in the spring, the Heppners set out from their Winnipeg home in their 36-foot fifth-wheel trailer which they pull behind their one-tonne pickup truck. They head westward first, then double back and through to eastern Canada. At 15 locations across the country they’ll pull into a Reimer terminal where trucks are being loaded or unloaded at all hours of the day. Sometimes they stay for a day, sometimes for two weeks. Sometimes there’ll be people waiting to speak to them about something. Other times, they’ll just see the trailer in the parking lot and know that the Heppners are around.
In the fall, they set out again, this time eastward first.
Sometimes, when the Heppners are on the road between waypoints, there’ll be a call on their cell phone, and it’s an employee who has just lost a parent, calling the chaplain for consolation. The Heppners are asked to do funerals, weddings, hospital visits. If a Reimer worker ends up in the hospital, Ken might pick up the phone to the worker’s home and speak to a family member. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he’ll ask. Sometimes, workers seek out Holly because they’re more comfortable speaking with a woman.
“It’s kind of like being a servant to the employees because we do a lot of things that are just part of daily life,” Heppner said.
The job of the chaplain has been around for 26 years at Reimer Express Lines. The family that first owned the company was Christian and felt that in addition to giving employees a paycheque they also wanted to make available “someone to minister, to tend to the total person,” said Heppner. When the company went public and was bought by Roadway in 1997, the company just kept the service, said director of information and human resource Miles McPherson.
Despite 18 years’ of experience as a minister, Heppner’s approach at Reimer is deliberately secular and low-key. “I make it a policy to deal with whatever issue that’s at hand,” he said. Only after Heppner senses a need and an opening might he say, “Do you mind if I say a prayer for you?” There have been “very few” people who said No, “but I always give them that option,” said Heppner.
McPherson likens the chaplaincy to an employee assistance program. On the downside, workers can be reticent in approaching someone who’s on the payroll. From time to time, a problem arises that involves a conflict at the workplace, and Heppner can’t always take the employee’s side.
“We’ve learned to listen to the employee, but we also have to listen to the employer. Sometimes we play a mediating role, but whatever the company policy, I support it. If an employee comes to me with something that goes against company policy, it’s not my prerogative to change the policy. And generally, I’ve found company policy to be reasonable. But we try to be delicate about this.”
But the upside is Heppner provides a service that’s personal and hands-on, which can allow for more intimacy and sharing than the impersonal telephone service offered by many employee assistance programs. What’s more, Heppner himself worked as a long-distance truck driver for seven years. He understands the loneliness of the road, the minute heartbreaks that take place each time a trucker says goodbye to his family, the sense of being disconnected from the world because you’re not around long enough or often enough to build ties.
“You don’t have friends, you don’t have families or you’re away from them all the time. Your life is not your own, you’re bought with a truck,” said Heppner, riffing on a verse in the Corinthians.
“And there is stress. Traffic is much more uncourteous these days. Then there’s the weather, the time changes.”
Workplace chaplaincy growing in the U.S.
Reimer’s chaplaincy service is a rarity in Canada; Heppner knows of only one other company that used to offer a similar service, but no longer. In the United States, however, workplace chaplaincy programs are growing in numbers. Gil Stricklin, who founded Dallas-based Marketplace Ministries 20 years ago, said he signed up 53 new businesses last year, bringing the total of employer-clients to 252. Of the 1,500 chaplains he employs, 277 were hired just last year. And Marketplace Ministries is just one of a handful of workplace pastoral care services in the U.S., he said.
The growing demand for such a service, he said, has at its roots in the deterioration of community ties.
“One of our clients had a man who died, a vice-president of a bank, and out of eight houses around that man’s house, only two families came to the home to express their condolences. As a society, we go too fast, come home too late, we don’t even know our neighbours.”
Thus, pastoral care is moving into the workplace, said Stricklin. And there’s a demand for it because existing employee programs just aren’t set up to fully address the vicissitudes of life.
“When an employee calls a chaplain at 11:30 at night because his house was on fire, and his little 22-month-old daughter burned to death in that home, the chaplain took the baby’s mother to the hospital. The next morning, the chaplain took the man and his wife to the funeral home, and then our three chaplains in that county did the funeral. Not only that, they were a poor family; we helped pay for that funeral. I don’t know any EAP or human resources department that does that. We do what nobody else is doing in the area of employee care.”
Religion in a secular workplace
McPherson said there’s little indication to suggest that this trend may hit Canada. If it does, employers can avoid allegations of discrimination by making sure the service provided is secular, said Toronto-based labour and employment lawyer John Mastoras, partner at Ogilvy Renault.
If an individual worker still resists using the chaplaincy service out of discomfort with Heppner’s religious beliefs, said Mastoras, then that worker would be equally guilty of prejudging the chaplain’s competency as an individual.
Heppner said there are times when he has to voice his beliefs, such as during pre-marital counselling when he lets engaged couples know that he doesn’t believe people should live together before marriage. “I tell them that, and I can’t force them to change, but I’ll still relate to them and administer to them and still do their wedding if they choose. But if I don’t tell them where I’m at, that’s not fair to them or to me either.”
What’s important, he added, is to maintain an approach that clearly says to people “that I still see them as having worth and dignity.”
And other times, Heppner’s beliefs are welcome. That’s when he might be speaking with someone who has been diagnosed with cancer, for example.
“And sometimes in the middle of a conversation, they’ll know that life may not go on for them, and that’s when they have to ask the question, ‘What happens to me in the next life?’”
He’s a Mennonite pastor, on the payroll with his wife, at Reimer Express Lines to run the company’s chaplaincy program. They look after the needs of the staff — psychological, emotional and spiritual if need be.
“We do some counselling, we do encouragement. But mostly we just listen to people’s joys in life, their excitement in life, their struggles in life.”
Every year in the spring, the Heppners set out from their Winnipeg home in their 36-foot fifth-wheel trailer which they pull behind their one-tonne pickup truck. They head westward first, then double back and through to eastern Canada. At 15 locations across the country they’ll pull into a Reimer terminal where trucks are being loaded or unloaded at all hours of the day. Sometimes they stay for a day, sometimes for two weeks. Sometimes there’ll be people waiting to speak to them about something. Other times, they’ll just see the trailer in the parking lot and know that the Heppners are around.
In the fall, they set out again, this time eastward first.
Sometimes, when the Heppners are on the road between waypoints, there’ll be a call on their cell phone, and it’s an employee who has just lost a parent, calling the chaplain for consolation. The Heppners are asked to do funerals, weddings, hospital visits. If a Reimer worker ends up in the hospital, Ken might pick up the phone to the worker’s home and speak to a family member. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he’ll ask. Sometimes, workers seek out Holly because they’re more comfortable speaking with a woman.
“It’s kind of like being a servant to the employees because we do a lot of things that are just part of daily life,” Heppner said.
The job of the chaplain has been around for 26 years at Reimer Express Lines. The family that first owned the company was Christian and felt that in addition to giving employees a paycheque they also wanted to make available “someone to minister, to tend to the total person,” said Heppner. When the company went public and was bought by Roadway in 1997, the company just kept the service, said director of information and human resource Miles McPherson.
Despite 18 years’ of experience as a minister, Heppner’s approach at Reimer is deliberately secular and low-key. “I make it a policy to deal with whatever issue that’s at hand,” he said. Only after Heppner senses a need and an opening might he say, “Do you mind if I say a prayer for you?” There have been “very few” people who said No, “but I always give them that option,” said Heppner.
McPherson likens the chaplaincy to an employee assistance program. On the downside, workers can be reticent in approaching someone who’s on the payroll. From time to time, a problem arises that involves a conflict at the workplace, and Heppner can’t always take the employee’s side.
“We’ve learned to listen to the employee, but we also have to listen to the employer. Sometimes we play a mediating role, but whatever the company policy, I support it. If an employee comes to me with something that goes against company policy, it’s not my prerogative to change the policy. And generally, I’ve found company policy to be reasonable. But we try to be delicate about this.”
But the upside is Heppner provides a service that’s personal and hands-on, which can allow for more intimacy and sharing than the impersonal telephone service offered by many employee assistance programs. What’s more, Heppner himself worked as a long-distance truck driver for seven years. He understands the loneliness of the road, the minute heartbreaks that take place each time a trucker says goodbye to his family, the sense of being disconnected from the world because you’re not around long enough or often enough to build ties.
“You don’t have friends, you don’t have families or you’re away from them all the time. Your life is not your own, you’re bought with a truck,” said Heppner, riffing on a verse in the Corinthians.
“And there is stress. Traffic is much more uncourteous these days. Then there’s the weather, the time changes.”
Workplace chaplaincy growing in the U.S.
Reimer’s chaplaincy service is a rarity in Canada; Heppner knows of only one other company that used to offer a similar service, but no longer. In the United States, however, workplace chaplaincy programs are growing in numbers. Gil Stricklin, who founded Dallas-based Marketplace Ministries 20 years ago, said he signed up 53 new businesses last year, bringing the total of employer-clients to 252. Of the 1,500 chaplains he employs, 277 were hired just last year. And Marketplace Ministries is just one of a handful of workplace pastoral care services in the U.S., he said.
The growing demand for such a service, he said, has at its roots in the deterioration of community ties.
“One of our clients had a man who died, a vice-president of a bank, and out of eight houses around that man’s house, only two families came to the home to express their condolences. As a society, we go too fast, come home too late, we don’t even know our neighbours.”
Thus, pastoral care is moving into the workplace, said Stricklin. And there’s a demand for it because existing employee programs just aren’t set up to fully address the vicissitudes of life.
“When an employee calls a chaplain at 11:30 at night because his house was on fire, and his little 22-month-old daughter burned to death in that home, the chaplain took the baby’s mother to the hospital. The next morning, the chaplain took the man and his wife to the funeral home, and then our three chaplains in that county did the funeral. Not only that, they were a poor family; we helped pay for that funeral. I don’t know any EAP or human resources department that does that. We do what nobody else is doing in the area of employee care.”
Religion in a secular workplace
McPherson said there’s little indication to suggest that this trend may hit Canada. If it does, employers can avoid allegations of discrimination by making sure the service provided is secular, said Toronto-based labour and employment lawyer John Mastoras, partner at Ogilvy Renault.
If an individual worker still resists using the chaplaincy service out of discomfort with Heppner’s religious beliefs, said Mastoras, then that worker would be equally guilty of prejudging the chaplain’s competency as an individual.
Heppner said there are times when he has to voice his beliefs, such as during pre-marital counselling when he lets engaged couples know that he doesn’t believe people should live together before marriage. “I tell them that, and I can’t force them to change, but I’ll still relate to them and administer to them and still do their wedding if they choose. But if I don’t tell them where I’m at, that’s not fair to them or to me either.”
What’s important, he added, is to maintain an approach that clearly says to people “that I still see them as having worth and dignity.”
And other times, Heppner’s beliefs are welcome. That’s when he might be speaking with someone who has been diagnosed with cancer, for example.
“And sometimes in the middle of a conversation, they’ll know that life may not go on for them, and that’s when they have to ask the question, ‘What happens to me in the next life?’”
