At 6:00 a.m. Wednesday, Chaplain Mike Pawletki ’03 MA ’05 hops onto the sideboard of one of the concrete mixer trucks lined up in Ozinga’s concrete production yards. As he hangs on the door talking with a driver, another employee in a lime green safety jacket spots Mike as he walks by.

“That’s my guy right there!” he says. “What’s up, Chap? Yeah, that’s a great guy right there.”

After several minutes, Mike offers to pray with the truck driver, then heads to another truck for a confidential weekly check-in. By the end of the morning, he has visited nearly 100 employees in his role as a chaplain for Corporate Chaplains of America (CCA) working with employees at one of Ozinga’s Chicagoland locations.

“You’d be surprised how the Lord works on the side of a truck,” says Mike, who besides serving the staff of the family-owned business for the last seven-plus years is also the key account manager over Ozinga’s 12 chaplains who minister to more than 3,000 employees nationwide.

“They unload everything on me in the morning. When they have an issue or a problem, they just dump on me, and it’s great. I love it!

“We pray for them and talk to them and seek permission to guide them closer in their relationship in the Lord—or if they don’t have a relationship, we guide them in that direction.”

One of the many employees he’s connected with is Ed Wajda, an Army West Point grad and fellow veteran who works as a supply chain manager at Ozinga. A self-described “full-blown atheist” when they met, Ed asked Mike a lot of questions about the Bible and Christianity. “He picked up right away that I was a pretty logical person looking for facts and shared the book More Than a Carpenter with me,” Ed says.  

For the next year and a half, Mike answered Ed’s questions based on his training at Moody and personal study. “His answers made sense to me,” Ed says. “Then one day, he sat me down and shared the gospel with me. That was it. I was 38 years old. It really changed my life in so many ways.”

That same Wednesday in Naperville, Illinois, another corporate chaplain, Santiago Valentin ’02, is making the rounds on the factory floor of C.H. Hanson Company. A longtime friend of Mike, Santiago is hugging and talking to employees in English and Spanish and stepping aside when a worker wants a private conversation.

Santiago walks with employees through challenges like sickness and death, marriage problems, children addicted to drugs, financial matters—“all the problems of humanity,” he says. The main question he gets asked regularly is: If God is so good, why do bad things happen?

Santiago is grateful for his Moody training. “It gave me a biblical foundation as I studied the Word around people who lived and loved the Word of God.”

Skilled in apologetics, evangelism, and counseling, Santiago builds relationships with each employee, stepping into the challenges of their lives and earning their trust over time.

Chaplain Santiago Valentin (right) talks with a longtime employee at C.H. Hanson Company in Naperville, Illinois.

Santiago’s first late-night phone call was 10 years ago from Jose Luis, an employee. He responded to a huge family emergency where people were hurt at the hands of other family members. The police were there, and Santiago was the bilingual go-between.

The parents were filled with guilt and anger, blaming each other for not preventing the emergency. “During a situation like that, what do you do? Who do you turn to?” Jose says in Spanish. Santiago was there to find long-term counseling for the family and help them process the crisis over time.

Jose began attending Santiago’s group Bible study on the landing dock at C.H. Hanson Company and soon accepted Christ as Savior. Then he led his family to Christ. Their marriage healed. And one of his daughters is now a junior in college studying criminal justice.

“We love it when he comes by,” Jose says of Santiago. “We talk to him about stuff that’s private, it’s intimate. There’s confidence that I can trust him.”

Santiago’s life experience as a Moody-trained, married man and father of five has served him well as he counsels and cares for more than 900 employees from eight companies that he visits each week.

Santiago works hard to learn names and spouse’s names and speak—or at least greet—workers in several languages.

“It’s overwhelming sometimes, but it’s a wonderful ministry,” says Santiago, who regularly leads employees to trust Christ for salvation. "It’s not because I’m a great evangelist, but I learned to engage people. I call corporate chaplaincy the best-kept secret in ministry.”

“This is the coolest job. It’s the purest ministry in many ways,” he adds, comparing it to a congregation. “I preach to 900 people a week—one at a time, though.”

The ratio of full-time chaplains for Corporate Chaplains of America is one chaplain to 800 employees at one or multiple locations within a 40-mile radius. Currently CCA employs 364 chaplains in nearly 2,600 workplace locations that are impacting one million employees and their families in 42 states across the US. About 99 percent of the companies that partner with CCA are Christian-owned.

The companies that hire corporate chaplains notice a positive influence on company culture: higher retention, increased job satisfaction, improved workplace morale, higher employee productivity, and reduced turnover.

Mike and Santiago have been friends for 31 years. They joke about how they met—first as friends, then enemies, then brothers.

“Our connection was kind of bad in the beginning,” Mike says. “Different Chicago high schools and we were friends with gangs that hated each other. Santiago was at Kelvyn Park [Northwest Side], and I was at Lane Tech [West Side]. I was on the street every night doing graffiti and other crimes.”

Mike and Santiago and their girlfriends were in ROTC and met at a military ball held at Lane Tech at the end of their senior year. “Good time!” says Mike, who showed pictures to his West Side neighborhood buddies.

“We know this guy!” they yelled, convinced Santiago was from a rival gang. He wasn’t, but Mike and his friends tried to go after him. Thankfully the school year was over, and Santiago joined the US Marines, while Mike enrolled in the US Army.

The next time they would meet was four years later in 1995—at a church of all places. Along the way, both had committed their lives to Christ. “We just started hugging each other. All the animosity was gone!” Mike says. “Since then we’ve been right beside one another. We are best friends and accountability partners in ministry and in life.”

Santiago smiles. “Mike is very smart and brilliant but street savvy,” he says. “He could speak to a CEO as well as to gangbangers on the corner.”

Santiago and Mike, both Moody alumni and chaplains, enjoy a Cubs game at Wrigley Field.

Mike endured a difficult upbringing and seemed destined for a life of crime—or in prison. On the streets since age 14, he sold marijuana to gangs and spent nights spray painting graffiti on buses, walls, bridges, and trains. “If I didn’t commit a felony a week, it was a slow week,” he says. “I only got busted once but a felony and multiple misdemeanors for sure.”

Though he married young, he says, “I was a terrible husband, and then my wife, Jeanette, started going to church.” She pestered him to join her, and one day alone in the car he remembers the Lord telling him, “You need to get your life right.”

He finally went to church with his wife in 1995 at age 25. “I heard the gospel for the first time and gave my life to the Lord,” he says. “When I got saved, I just started devouring the Bible and theology and the Word of God. It made sense to me and stuck with me.”

When another man at church saw Mike reading Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, he said, “I’m reading this in seminary right now, and you’re reading it for fun?”

SIDE STORY | The Graffiti Chaplain

Within a year and a half, the church asked him to teach a new believers' class. Meanwhile, Santiago got accepted at Moody Bible Institute and said, “You should really think about going there.”

Mike was 29 with a wife and two kids to support. He worked at O’Hare throwing luggage for American Airlines, but with his wife’s consent and willingness to work, he switched to a part-time position and applied to Moody despite not knowing how to type or use a computer.

Mike had been a poor student in high school, but at Moody he was motivated and excelled, earning straight As. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Bible Theology, and in three more years (and two more kids for a total of four), he earned a master’s in Spiritual Formation and Discipleship from Moody Theological Seminary.

“In the undergrad, the biblical and theological base that they gave me is just invaluable,” he says. “It contributes to everything I do because it’s the centerpiece of all I do, of all the ministry that I perform, of the way I live.

“Moody is an outstanding school. I could not think of a better place to prepare. They give you all that you need.”

For his Practical Christian Ministries (PCM) involvement, Mike preached at Cook County Jail, Teen Challenge, and on the streets. Early in the morning he would offer free cups of hot chocolate and free prayer outside of unemployment lines in the city.

“I had 12 salvations,” says Mike, who continued the free prayer after graduation, often with his wife or a church member. 

“Grad school was very practical,” he adds. “I rely on what Dr. Bill Thrasher taught about prayer—that it is the center of everything.”

After seminary, Mike quit his airline job and worked as an associate pastor at Grace and Peace Church, where Santiago was youth pastor. He got paid $400 a month to teach, preach, and disciple people but says, “I would do it for free, I just thought it was amazing!” Needing to supplement his income, he also performed counseling and taught at Midwest Christian Academy.

When Santiago got hired by Corporate Chaplains of America in 2014, he told Mike how much he loved it. Later, when CCA was looking for a chaplain to service Ozinga’s south suburban locations, Santiago suggested Mike. He was hired and began seeing lives transformed and morale improved.

SIDE STORY | Saving Lives One at a Time

As the program expanded, Mike’s role also expanded to overseeing Ozinga’s chaplains in the Chicago region. “I work with the chaplains out in the field, and I’m out there every day with the guys and the truck drivers, and then I go to the main office. And it’s really an awesome time, really rewarding.”

Mike and Jeanette Pawletki and family.

Santiago was saved at 14 when his mom took him to church and he placed his faith in Christ. But lacking discipleship, he returned to worldly pursuits. After serving in the Marines, Santiago became a security officer for Chicago Public Schools and took secondary education classes at a community college with plans to be a high school history teacher.

But when a Spanish couple who were believers introduced him to the “Prodigal Son” parable for the first time, he thought, This is me! I’m eating garbage! When they invited him to church in August 1992, he went forward to surrender his life to Christ. This time it stuck, and Santiago transferred to Moody for night classes, still working as a security guard during the day.

Earning the trust of teachers and students, he began kids’ clubs on 10 high school campuses on Chicago’s North and South Sides. “Kids were leading their friends to Christ. It was great!” he says.

When he turned 29, he quit his security guard job and attended Moody full time, majoring in Pastoral Studies. Besides joining the Marines, “attending Moody was the best decision I ever made,” he says.

Before Santiago graduated in 2002 he was offered a job as campus missionary for Metro Chicago Youth for Christ. He also became a substitute teacher and built relationships with the kids. “I kept growing the ministry, sharing the gospel.”

Then he transitioned to senior pastor of Brickyard Bible Church in Chicago, where he recruited and trained leaders and implemented core values and a clear mission and vision to develop strategies for growth and impact. He also completed a master’s in Leadership and an MDiv from Liberty Theology Seminary.

“All of that was preparation for Corporate Chaplains,” he says.

When Phil Hanson, president of C.H. Hanson Company, reached out to Corporate Chaplains of America, he told them he needed a bilingual chaplain to reach Spanish-speaking employees at his business, which serves the construction, metalworking, and plumbing tool markets. Santiago fit in immediately.

“This guy is great—he’s a Marine, a Moody grad. This guy’s perfect,” Phil says. “I love his heart for how he sees our business as a place of ministry. It’s his flock to care for, and he’s very, very good at reading people and knowing when to lean in and knowing when to just kind of hang back and wait for the Holy Spirit to give him the opportunity to open up that conversation. In 10 years I’ve never had anybody say anything other than great things about Santiago.”

Miguel, the company’s warehouse manager, says having a chaplain is helpful. “Santiago’s taught me about patience and perseverance and how to handle people too. He’s an amazing individual. Especially in my role; I manage people so I have to be empathetic, and he taught me about that. He’s empathetic with everyone.”

Phil says Santiago also helps him run his business more effectively. “His skills aren’t just in ministry. He’s got great business skills too. He’s helped us work on our strategy.”

Santiago helped define the company’s vision and values, adding “to God’s glory” on the company’s mission statement. It hangs on the company wall in English and Spanish: “Tools for Generations to God’s Glory.”

Santiago also has a great reputation at Camcraft, a manufacturer of precision machined components in Hanover Park, Illinois, where his name rose to the top of the other chaplain applicants because the company wanted a Moody graduate.

Greg Carrico, who heads Human Resources at Camcraft, says Santiago contributed to their high retention rate. “Our turnover rate is under 10 percent, much lower than industry average, which is closer to 20 percent,” Greg says.

“Having Santiago there just welcoming, being helpful to people, keeping a positive, cheery environment there, I think that’s all part of it. And he’s a Spanish speaker, so he’s really impacted the lives of a lot of our Spanish-speaking folks.”

Like Mike, Santiago keeps a record of all employees under his care who have made professions of faith in Jesus—350 in the last six years. “I’m following up and praying with them and discipling them,” says Santiago, who also tries to plug the new believers into Christ-centered local churches.

Phil Hanson, president of C.H. Hanson Company, with corporate chaplain Santiago Valentin.

Santiago and Mike look to Moody Theological Seminary, with its MDiv and Clinical Mental Health Counseling degree programs, to provide a pipeline of students preparing for chaplaincy work.

Moody’s undergraduate Pastoral Studies program is a good place to start, according to Dr. John Mabus, a Navy chaplain and assistant professor and program head of Pastoral Studies. “The program introduces students to key chaplaincy skills like leadership, pastoral care and counseling, soul care, spiritual formation, and preaching.”

Because most chaplaincy vocations require a master’s degree of 70-plus hours, “Moody Theological Seminary provides a wonderful place to continue to refine the competencies needed for chaplaincy in one of the MDiv program’s emphases,” he adds. “With MTS’s strong emphasis on spiritual formation, counseling, and ministry leadership, this is a fantastic place for future chaplains to attend.”

Mike agrees. “At MTS, they taught me to have a strategy or process to use to disciple and grow people, not just going into something willy-nilly and with no plan. I learned various methodologies I can do to make this happen, and I thought that was unbelievably practical.”

Both Mike and Santiago say the need for chaplains is great; the fields are ripe for harvest in corporate America.

“What happens when the majority of people are not going to church? We’ve got to go where they’re at!” Santiago says. “And that takes planning and time and commitment, sacrifices, and skill.

“And love has to be the motivation that moves you into people’s worlds,” he adds. “You have to love everyone.”