Betting on Faith
A Church of God Chaplain is featured in a local newspaper for his unique chaplaincy niche: Oaklawn Park Racetrack in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
By Heather Hahn
Workers at Oaklawn Park Racetrack
HOT SPRINGS — Rick Mann is a chaplain with horse sense. Every day, he ministers to people who make their living and often their home on the backstretch of Oaklawn Park racetrack.
As the racing season begins, Mann’s one of the few people at the track not praying that he picked a winner. Instead he’s busy making sure the grooms, exercise riders and other track employees have a warm place to sleep, a Bible to read and whatever other support they need.
“This ministry requires a lot of social work,” Mann said. “With a track, you go and minister to people by helping supply their physical needs. And when they have a spiritual need, then they turn to you because you already have a connection.”
When Mann first came to Oaklawn in early December, one of his first tasks was to find 100 mattresses for people who had come to the track without bedding. He found the needed supplies at a Best Western that was undergoing renovations.
Most of the roughly 1,200 people who work in the stables along the backstretch are Hispanic migrant workers. They typically come to the United States on work visas, sleep in heated dormitories near the barns and send much of their paychecks to family members back home.
Their labor is tough and dirty. By 4:30 a.m. each day, most of the track employees are already up exercising the horses or cleaning the stalls. At the end of Oaklawn’s racing season in April, these horsemen move on to Churchill Downs in Kentucky or other tracks where another racing season is just starting.
The chaplaincy program helps provide some needed stability, said Reuben Rosas, a longtime groom and now an assistant chaplain at Oaklawn.
“When people need to talk about problems athome or they feel lonely, we try to provide a little place where they can feel comfortable,” Rosas said. “The chapel feels like our home.”
Mann, 60, is an ordained chaplain in the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.), who has served on racetracks across the country for about 18 years.
The chaplain, who served as a missionary in Mexico as a young man, knows some Spanish. But he is studying to become more proficient, and for now he relies on Rosas for much of his translating.
Mann sees his role mainly as helping his flock integrate into American life. He helps workers fill out their tax forms and set up a personal budget. A certified addiction counselor, Mann also leads sessions for those dealing with drug and alcohol problems. He also gives out an emergency phone number to track employees so they can call him any time.
“I had to make a change when I came to the backstretch,” said Mann, who began his career planting congregations.
“You can’t run it like a church. You can’t judge anybody. You have people come in with all types of problems and needs and situations.”
Volunteer soloists or Scripture readers are welcomed, even those who are struggling to get their lives together.
“I might have someone sing a song in worship who has a problem,” he said. “But in church, you wouldn’t do that because someone in the congregation would think you were giving them your stamp of approval.”
Flexibility is also important.
Mann oversees a chapel that doubles as the recreation center on the Oaklawn grounds. Inside is a kitchen, a room where people can play pool or watch television, a lending library, bathrooms and classrooms for English classes. There is also a clothing closet with garments for the workers donated by area churches. At the back of the center is a worship area adorned not only with a cross but also with illustrations of racehorses.
Mann usually arrives at the track around 8:15 a.m. each day, reads a thought for the day over the track’s public address system and then walks around the barns talking to the workers. He is available for counseling sessions and Bible studies throughout the day.
He leads worship at the backstretch chapel each Tuesday night – the one day when no races are scheduled. Typically between 80 and 100 people attend. He also leads a service each Sunday morning for track employees such as clerks and parking attendants who work on the “front side” of the park.
Mann is among 88 chaplains who serve on 121 racetracks nationwide, according to the Race Track Chaplaincy of America.
The racetrack chaplain movement began in 1971 under the leadership of a veteran racetrack employee named Salty Roberts, a born-again Christian who believed chaplains would help many of his colleagues deal with the rigors of the profession.
Some of the first racetrack chaplains were Southern Baptist ministers, although their denomination opposes gambling.
Edward Smith, the national chaplaincy association’s director of missions, is the son of a Southern Baptist pastor and an ordained Baptist pastor himself.
“I actually voted against the racetrack that came into Lone Star Park [in Grand Prairie, Texas],” Smith said. “God has a great sense of humor, and I got involved with the council [that supports] the chaplain of the racetrack I voted against.”
Because of the gambling issue, many in the Southern Baptist Convention were initially leery of supporting racetrack chaplains, Smith said. But that’s beginning to change.
“If I’m a minister involved in drug and alcohol programs, people don’t accuse me of pushing drugs and alcohol,” he said. “We as ministers don’t make any judgments on any of the workers or the people who are involved in horse racing. We’re simply there to provide the Good News and care for people.”
Mann is the only Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) representative in the Race Track Chaplaincy of America. His denomination also forbids gambling. Still, he sees his role much as Smith does.
It’s not just employees who seek Mann’s guidance. He has even ministered to regulars at the tracks where he’s worked. In Charles Town, W.Va., his most recent track, he said there was one frequent gambler who often made fun of him every time he walked through the betting parlor.
“He’d say, ‘Here comes the chaplain. Put away your billfold,’” Mann recalled.
But when the gambler lay dying, he asked to see the “track chaplain.”
“So I went out there, and he said he wanted to be baptized,” Mann said. “I couldn’t take him to the river. But as a chaplain, I had to make it work. I put some water in a salt shaker and baptized him days before he died.”
Altogether, Mann said, he ministered to 20 Charles Town track people right before they died.
Pat Day, a Hall of Fame jockey, often testifies to the difference racetrack chaplains have made in his life. One of the nation’s leading riders in the early 1980s, he partied hard and abused alcohol and drugs. A turning point came in 1983 after he won the National Riding Crown.
“When I came out of my drug- and alcohol-induced stupor and took a personal inventory, I realized that although it was a great accomplishment, it did not equate to long-term joy and contentment,” Day said. “That sent me searching.”
Watching Jimmy Swaggart on television led to Day’s Christian conversion. But he still wasn’t sure what God wanted him to do with his life, and he gave serious consideration to leaving the track to enter the ministry.
The chaplain at Oaklawn Park at the time, Mike Spencer, guided Day as he weighed his future.
“He became my spiritual mentor,” Day said. “We talked the Scriptures and through that process, the Lord revealed to me that He saved me to work within the racing industry, not to leave it. He gave me newfound purpose to pursue my love of Jesus Christ on the track.”
Day, now retired from racing, is ministry spokesman for the Race Track Chaplaincy of America.
Like the horsemen he serves, Mann has often had to struggle to do what he loves. His first chaplaincy jobs were at parttime tracks that needed him only a few months of the year. During the off-season, he cleaned carpets, drove a UPS truck and did various other jobs to make ends meet. At one point, he and his wife and two youngest children lived in a 26-foot recreational vehicle while he was a chaplain in El Paso, Texas.
Oaklawn, though, plans to employ him all year long. During the off-season, he will continue to serve workers on the track’s front side and also minister to horse trainers and other horse people at training tracks across the state.
Despite the hard work and long days, Mann said he enjoys ministering at racetracks.
“I would have a hard time going back to pastoring a church,” Mann said. “We have more action in one day than I saw at church in months.”
To learn more about the Church of God Chaplains Commission chaplaincy programs, visit the Chaplains Commission website at: www.cogchaplains.com.
