“Knowing Christ is the best thing that has ever happened to me, although winning the US Open was a pretty good second.”
A Very modern ministry
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Ben Ryan, London, Theos, 2015 ISBN 978-0-9574743-9-0
To be fair to this excellent report on chaplaincy in the UK, I need to say that my interests are almost exclusively in sports chaplaincy, rather than chaplaincy in general. While sport is referred to in places, sports chaplaincy is not central to the report.
The report asserts that the “proverbial man in the street seems as – perhaps more – likely to meet a chaplain in his daily life today as he is to meet any other formal religious figure”. The report also suggests that chaplaincy increasingly represents the face of faith and belief in the UK.
The report is based on quantitative research on the scale of chaplaincy within a
particular location (Luton) - there are 169 chaplains – and interviews with chaplains in a range of fields including sport.
The research suggests that chaplaincy is predominantly Christian and even Anglican. My experience of sports chaplaincy would confirm that it is much more developed among Christians than other religions.
The report encountered a range of perceptions of the chaplain’s role - from the spiritual or pastoral – even evangelistic – to the more ethical or prophetic. The latter spoke of providing “a critical voice within the organization” – whether speaking out against, for example, low pay, challenging the proposal to accept sponsorship from a payday loan company etc.
There is a real debate to be had here whether a prophetic role damages the potential for a pastoral and explicitly spiritual one and how a chaplain navigates the role of being a voice of conscience to management while being chaplain and a listening ear to management. If a chaplain is effectively answerable to management, even on the payroll of the organization, is their independence compromised? There are no easy answers here.
The report discusses evaluation of the effectiveness of chaplains. This again is a difficult area. If the evaluation of the chaplain is conducted by the organization – and if they pay the chaplain they will probably want to – their criteria and expectations may be very different from those of the chaplain, who feels primary accountability to God.
This report represents a helpful contribution to the ongoing debate about chaplaincy in the UK.