AGI’s stated purpose is “To honor God by excelling in what we do, how we do it and by treating our workers, prospects, distributors, and group as we’d deal with ourselves.”
The branding and architectural design firm isn’t a Christian firm. However AGI, which brings in about $400 million in income and has 1,100 workers and 5,000 contractors, operates below Christian management and has developed a ministry and chaplaincy program for workers throughout its 9 areas.
Craig Rohde, AGI’s president and CEO, is a ruling elder at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Virginia Seaside, Virginia. He stated that if you consider a retail model like a quick meals institution or a automobile dealership, the corporate communicates the model with its signage, but it surely’s greater than that.
“Their model is bodily represented of their signage on and across the constructing, distinctive architectural parts like fascia and entrance parts, normal and model distinctive lighting, and inside parts like graphics, millwork and digital shows,” Rohde stated.
AGI is likely one of the few corporations that designs, builds, installs, maintains, and updates all of these branding parts. Their shoppers are main manufacturers all through North America.
Chaplaincy as Neighbor Care
Rohde, who took over AGI within the early 2000s, started AGI’s chaplaincy program within the 2010s together with his son-in-law Bryan Fowler, now the senior chaplain and director of ministries at AGI. After faculty, Fowler needed to pursue work in ministry, however Rohde inspired Fowler to contemplate working at AGI in Virginia Seaside.
Fowler defined that he had a “second of disaster” earlier than he felt a name towards Virginia Seaside to develop into concerned with beginning a ministry at AGI. He started in a human sources position, however over the following decade, he attended seminary and started transitioning from HR into full-time chaplaincy. In the meantime, AGI grew from 400 to 1,100 workers and expanded to areas throughout the Southeast and Midwest.
As AGI grew below Rohde’s management, Rohde wrestled with how he might glorify God at AGI. He got here again to Jesus’ rationalization of the best commandments – to like God and neighbor – in Matthew 22.
Rohde continued, “That’s what constructed the ministry into what it’s at present. There isn’t any extra apparent neighbor than the individuals you’re employed with 40 to 50 hours per week, whether or not they’re with you for a short while or their profession.”
Rohde needed workers at AGI to have entry at work to day by day devotions and Bible examine alternatives. He had a imaginative and prescient for supporting his workers throughout a monetary, emotional, or bodily disaster, and he needed that assist to increase to their households..
“We determined essentially the most impactful method we might try this for over 1,000 workers and their households was to create a proper chaplains ministry staffed with skilled pastors who felt known as to the enterprise group as their place of ministry,” Rohde stated.
Chaplains throughout AGI’s areas facilitate AGI’s ministry. Fowler describes chaplaincy as a “ministry of presence,” which entails “being there for individuals in tough life conditions, praying for them, serving to to simply be a light-weight to them in any method.”
About 150 of AGI’s workers are concerned in chaplain-led Bible research. AGI chaplains present counseling for workers who want it and infrequently lead group outreach occasions. Fowler sends workers common devotional emails that embrace a mirrored image on Scripture.
As AGI has expanded, the corporate has additionally expanded its workforce of chaplains throughout the nation. “We’re a ministry workforce that’s working inside AGI. We’re totally ingrained inside the firm; we’re workers of the corporate,” Fowler defined. Fowler directs the workforce of chaplains and oversees Bible research in any respect areas.
AGI was based 50 years in the past by Christians who needed their secular firm to function with Christian values. “Once they based the group, they needed the group to be an extension of their religion,” Fowler maintained.
From the start, workers at AGI have facilitated prayer conferences with their co-workers. Fowler administers an AGI mortgage program that provides interest-free loans to workers scuffling with funds.
“We’ve had a protracted historical past of being very charitable, very loving, and actually desirous to dwell out the mission of loving our neighbors as a part of the way in which we take into consideration our workers,” Fowler defined.
The ministry and chaplaincy program has streamlined and expanded these efforts throughout the rising group.
“[The chaplaincy] has taken lots of efforts that we did as a small group like serving to workers, being concerned locally, loving our neighbors, instructing the Phrase… and it actually organized them to satisfy and interact with all our workers,” Fowler stated. “As an organization that’s actually rising into a company… we now have the flexibility to essentially interact with all our workers, not by the use of the CEO or the CEO’s need, however by the ministry we’ve got with our workers.”
Bringing Ministry Into the Office
Michael Stewart, affiliate endorser of civilian chaplains for the Presbyterian and Reformed Fee on Chaplains and Army Personnel, believes “company chaplains carry the gospel message into the office and infrequently are capable of minister to people who an area pastor might by no means be capable of attain.”
Stewart’s feedback actually ring true at AGI. As Jody Stancil, a part-time chaplain with AGI in Cartersville, Georgia, and pastor at Riverside Group Church (PCA), shared, “I’ve seen a pair individuals who weren’t going to church repeatedly, who weren’t interacting with the Scriptures very a lot, who at the moment are within the Scriptures.”
Stancil is grateful that he has been capable of reply their questions on God, church, and Scripture.
Stancil works with AGI’s Cartersville manufacturing department each Wednesday and has been – aside from a break throughout the COVID-19 pandemic – since 2019. Through the workers’ lunch break, Stancil leads a Bible examine, whereas AGI offers lunch to those that attend the examine. Stancil teaches a lesson from Scripture for about half-hour after which talks with the staff.
Stancil stated he tries to reach early to meet up with as many individuals as he can. He tries to find out how they’re doing, asks about their households, and inquires how he may be praying for them. By way of these efforts, Stancil can “pastor them proper the place they’re,” he stated.
Stancil’s insights spotlight a novel energy of chaplaincy. Everybody who attends church on Sunday will spend at the least 40 hours every week at work. Chaplaincy offers ministers entry to staff no matter whether or not these staff would ever present up at church.
“Chaplaincy is that this distinctive position to minister in all these different locations, and so we’ve got a ton of entry to individuals,” Fowler stated.
He recounted a narrative of a person in his 60s who attended a Bible examine on Jesus’ parables. When Fowler introduced that he can be instructing on the parable of the prodigal son, the person approached Fowler to inform him how keen he was to listen to in regards to the prodigal son.
“You stated that’s one of the well-known parables within the Bible, and I’ve by no means heard that story in my complete life,” the person stated.
Fowler was surprised to discover a man in his 60s residing in Virginia Seaside who was so unfamiliar with Jesus’ life and instructing. AGI’s chaplains have since determined to spend two years going via the entire Bible of their research.
“They don’t know the story of the Bible, and we’ve got a possibility to show them,” Fowler stated.
Whereas a few of those who AGI’s chaplains work together with have a church background, few attend church. Rohde estimated that solely 15% of all AGI’s workers are common churchgoers. Fowler estimated that 80% of these concerned in Bible research don’t repeatedly attend church. Each Fowler and Stancil instructed of workers who’ve come to their church buildings after attending Bible research at work.
Fowler believes God was working at AGI. He’s concerned with an area church plant and stays dedicated to the church as the middle for ministry. Nonetheless, he can’t deny the distinctive alternative the Lord has offered him.
“I noticed [10 years ago] that God had put me in a spot the place I used to be surrounded by each believers and unbelievers… these individuals have been proper in entrance of me. These are the people who find themselves filling my firm and corporations all throughout the nation,” he stated.
Rohde likewise maintained that God has known as him to serve his workers as his neighbors: “We’re all, as believers, scattered someplace on this world in some unspecified time in the future in time. And God’s put us at that place in time to honor and glorify him wherever we’re and to like our neighbors as ourselves…I’ve been blessed with the chance to run this firm and have the possession controls such that we will check out our worker base and our households as neighbors.”
Ministering to workers via company chaplaincy may be difficult. Fowler considers loneliness to be one among his largest challenges, although he’s grateful to now work with a workforce of different ministers. “It’s lonely within the sense that you simply’re not the one Christian particular person inside the office, however you’re a Christian minister in an surroundings that’s not geared round ministry,” Fowler defined.
He stated the PCA appears to have hassle categorizing his work, and laypeople typically misunderstand it. Although PCA members usually perceive the work of conventional pastors, RUF ministers, and youth ministers, they typically don’t perceive or worth the work of company chaplains. Stancil likewise mirrored that company chaplaincy is “one thing that lots of people don’t know lots about.”
Rohde has begun working with a religion and work program at Reformed Theological Seminary – the place a number of of AGI’s chaplains accomplished their seminary research – to assist pastors higher perceive the way to work together with individuals within the office. Moreover, Fowler is engaged on a doctorate in sensible theology having to do with religion and neurodivergence, which has and can permit him to contribute to establishments and initiatives that need to do with religion and work.
“My hope is that different Christian businessmen and particularly Christian employers will see the necessity for this and need to do one thing about it,” Stancil stated. “To possibly be inventive with a few of the sources God has given them and steward their sources to affect extra individuals for the dominion.”
