Interview with Marketplace Chaplain       
By: Jenny Li

It was an early afternoon on New Year’s Day, sunny but a little chilly in San Diego, CA. Mr. C. G. Maclin, the President of International Services of Marketplace Ministry USA and Mr. Kelvin Wong, the Director of Marketplace Asia Pacific Limited (MAPL), joined CEA’s interview. We discussed the services ministry of Marketplace Chaplains and the fresh market in China and amazingly, we saw God’s hand leading us in this great marketplace. MAPL continued the business model of doing mission in a subtle and humble way in China. Sowing seeds by building deeper relationship with people, they are connecting Gospel to the real life of Chinese.  “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.” 1 Corinthians 3:7-9

With a mission to share God’s love through corporate chaplains in the workplace by an Employee Care Service for corporate client companies, Marketplace Chaplains started in the USA in 1984, and operates both in the US and abroad. Marketplace Chaplains USA serves 650 companies with around 175,000 employees in 46 states in the US, 4 provinces in Canada, also in Mexico, England, and Scotland. In May 2014 Marketplace Chaplains started in Soul, Korea. The first Chinese client opened in Langfang, (near Beijing) on Nov. 1st 2014. The second Chinese client, a manufacturing company in Guangzhou, will begin service in April 2015.

Mr. Maclin explained the business model of Marketplace Chaplains. As a non-profit organization in US, Market Chaplains provides pastoral care, grief processing, and marital counseling etc. It is a safe and confidential way for an employee to talk about their personal struggles. People bring problems to work everyday, and it sometimes interferes with their work. Our service allows them to focus on work, thus making it a better workplace. Our service has shown it can improve quality of work, productivity, and reduce absenteeism and turnover. Mr. Maclin told us the practice is to match ethnicity and gender of the care giver with the employee. He said if we can match culture and education, we have a better chance of building closer, trusting relationships. Our ministry goal is to build relationships with employees, in order to share the faith. We don’t initiate spiritual conversation, but the employee can do it. We are trained not to bring up religion or faith until an employee asks a spiritual question, which opens the doors to share. Thousands of employees have come to Christ through this ministry model over years. As a business, we are able to serve companies by providing an employee assistance/care service.

New Market Entry—Mr. Maclin shared

It took about two years for us to be ready to enter the Chinese market, including around 9 months to obtain our business license. We run as a for-profit organization in China, so we are a wholly owned foreign entity (WOFE) as Marketplace Asia Pacific Limited. It is not difficult to have partnership with companies in China. Rather, it is difficult to find qualified staffs who will serve as Caregivers. In order to implement our mission, we need genuine, called to ministry, Christians. The Chinese Christians are sometimes young in their faith and somewhat difficult to engage. We put everything in God’s hands. We cannot do anything unless the Holy Spirit identifies them. God let it happen in the past years. We see Miracles.

As for now, partnership with each other and sharing resources seem the best way to accomplish our goal. We look at opportunity as the leading of Holy Spirit. When we first started in Langfang, we were asked what was the purpose of doing business there? The answer is, no idea but to follow God’s leading. We know we are equipped to any business by His guidance. We have a service at a law firm in Korea, and it was our very first Asia Pacific client. We only have one law firm in all of the US. We know Koreans follow tradition and hierarchy, and they tend to hide their feeling. Usually it takes six months to build relationship with employees in US, so we thought in Korea it will take at least one and half year. But within one month we had a great ministry, with our four counselors (caregivers) —two men and two women serving this office. God used the hierarchy to help. One top leader in the firm told the employees they can trust us, and they believed it. We instantly had employee utilization of the service.

As a Sower –Mr. Wong shared

Our ministry is not targeting on the employer, rather the employee. In Guangzhou area, it’s easy to many companies with large number of employees; therefore we need many gifted people to be sent to serve them in a very mature way—building relationships, care for their daily emotional and spiritual needs, and not “preach” at the employee. We don’t seek to see people repeatedly raising their hands emotionally in a sermon, but we want to see lives genuinely being helped and changed eventually. We work like sowers in the field. If we keep on sowing, somebody will come to harvest. “Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.” John 4:36. We forward with subtle and humility. We put it in actual action. We earn the employee’s trust by serving real personal needs by go into, relate with, care for, and ultimately, able to share the real eternal value of life.

The No. one requirement to be our Caregiver is to have a Call to serve in the market place. They may not realize what they are called into, yet God prepared them to be ready. Caregivers don’t always need to be seminary students, since they can be trained. They just have to have this genuine Call to this specific ministry. Once they are called, they will be ready. The second requirement is to have a servant’s heart; this is essential to be successful in our model. Even when it’s hard to find these Caregivers in China, we still can connect workers that God already prepared for this ministry. In fact, Caregivers can maintain with their own professional job by serving part-time in the ministry to cultivate, participate, and taste the greatness of this ministry. Eventually, with God’s affirmation, they can be full-time Caregivers for the employees.

Inner-Cultural Mission

In the past, within China, God sent His people for cross-cultural ministry and He still is sending. Many Chinese missionaries are being Called to serve in the Asia-minor area too. However as now, inner-cultural mission is also vitally important and very effective within China too. The main reason is that; for Cross-cultural ministry, foreign missionaries get trained in language for 3-4 years, but you still cannot grasp the deeper meaning of words and culture. Mr. Hudson Tayler and his decedents are of good examples. Meanwhile, for inner-cultural ministry, it’s easy to have locals serving locals. It’s a logical and understandable concept, as in the past decades so many Chinese went to foreign counties, like US and pursued higher education. When returned back as a Christian, they realize their responsibility towards their fellow citizens. God prepared those people to be ambassador in His Culture. A Christian culture overwrites and acquiesced in Eastern and Western civilization. This is very powerful.

Thence, in the initial stage of our Service/Ministry expansion in China, the Chinese nationals who went abroad for advanced education and became Christians may be the ideal Caregivers when they returned back China. As they learned a lot about Christianity, faith and ministry, with advance degrees in foreign countries, they might have better understanding and deeper spiritual walks, and therefore, are better prepared to implement our inner-cultural of “Business in Mission” model.

Nevertheless, for long-term, because of its business-ministry in nature, we would like to recruit colleagues in China, even though it may take longer time to train Chinese nationals and enable them to assist other employees with problems of life, like parenting, marriage, and loss of a loved one, or even conflicts with co-workers etc. In the US, many of our Caregivers (call chaplains in the US) are pastors, church ministers, missionaries. They have already learned the service and skills from seminary. But Chinese Potential Caregivers are not. Hence, training is critical for Caregivers in China. Since we are implementing relational-evangelism through care for the people’s physical and emotional needs, the caregivers relate to understand employee’s personal feelings and through their daily crisis, re-direct them to encounter the Creator of the Universe whom is ultimately the One, and only One that can resolve their issues. This is a personal relationship approach, which requires techniques, experience, and training. Meanwhile, our ministry setting provides our Caregivers good, sincere opportunities to exercise and live out our “Christ-like” life in daily encountering with all the assigned employees.

There are three dimensions of Word of God, as Kelvin quoted in related to their ministry: “The Word of God is Christ; the written Word is Bible; the third part of it is the Christ-like Act of Word notified by others.” Jesus acted it out and we imitate Christ, so that people see Christ in us, and through Christ they can see God. We go to the marketplace to relate and care for people, showing our inherited godly loving-kindness as we walk among the needy. Our work is caring and God makes it work daily.

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