Stephen Montoya
Father Greg McBrayer, executive director and senior chaplain at DFW International Airport.
There’s a place at DFW Airport where time seems to pause. It’s not a bar, or a lounge, or even the airline club with those tiny cubes of cheese. It’s a chapel. Quiet. Open. Waiting.
It sits near the end of Terminal D, unassuming and undramatic, except in the way a heartbeat is. You don’t really notice it until you need it.
Inside, the air is still. The light is kind. Two ablution stations gleam for Muslim travelers before you enter. A row of chairs — 20 or so — sit in the glow of a faux stained-glass window. There’s even a pulpit. For 50 years, the DFW Chaplaincy has offered this kind of sanctuary. It isn’t a secret, exactly. But in an airport with its own zip code and more gates than some small countries, it’s not the first thing you expect to find.
But when the urge to pray hits — or when something in you just needs to be still — this is where you want to land.
Hidden in plain sight, the chapel and the chaplaincy behind it might be DFW’s best-kept secret, says Father Greg McBrayer, executive director and senior chaplain.
“I’ve been in this all my life,” he says, the cadence of a man whose story could fill a movie reel.
And it almost has.
Back in 2001, Greg wasn’t wearing a collar. Instead, he was in the control tower at US Airways in Pittsburgh, the morning of September 11.
“It was a beautiful day. I’d launched the fleet. Everything was moving... and then it all changed.”
He remembers the radar screens going dark. He remembers the call from Cleveland Center — one of the hijacked planes was flying low, in line with their tower.
Stephen Montoya
“The Pittsburgh Tower evacuated. The United plane flew right over our heads.”
It didn’t hit Pittsburgh. It went down in Shanksville. And when Greg went home that night and turned on the television, he saw what the rest of the world saw. Only for him, it wasn’t just a tragedy — it was a calling.
“I remember thinking, ‘Dear God, we need you in this place.’ And in the silence, I heard, ‘That’s why I placed you there.’”
That moment changed the course of his life. Seminary followed. Ordination. Airline mergers. A move. And eventually, a walk into DFW with a Bible and a purpose.
Now, eleven years into his tenure at DFW, Greg leads a team of 25 chaplains representing multiple faiths and denominations. There’s a rabbi. A Muslim cleric. Evangelicals. Mainliners. A whole mosaic of belief systems — focused on one thing: presence.
“This isn’t a mission field,” he says. “It’s a care field.”
Because at DFW, one of the busiest airports on the planet, people aren’t just flying. They’re living. Some are rushing to bury loved ones. Others are chasing new lives, new jobs, old ghosts. They’re grieving. Hoping. Holding on. And sometimes, just barely.
“When you walk into this airport, it doesn’t matter if you came from the penthouse or the poorhouse — you’ve surrendered control.”
And that surrender, Greg believes, creates room for something sacred. He calls it “the ministry of presence.”
No sermons. No pressure. Just people who stay.
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“We’re like WD-40 and duct tape,” he laughs. “We hold people together when they’re falling apart. We reduce friction before it becomes combustion.”
Sometimes, that presence looks like a quiet conversation at Gate C20. Other times, it’s more urgent — a panic attack, a death notification, a lost child. The chaplains walk the terminals seven days a week, five hours at a time, each shift another page in the airport’s untold story.
Thanks to a partnership with Chaplain Care, the DFW chaplaincy has its own app, passengers and employees can now scan a QR code to locate the nearest chaplain, chat in real-time, or request an in-person visit. DFW is the first airport in the country to implement it.
“It won’t get you through security faster, but it might just help you arrive in one piece — soul and all,” McBrayer says with a grin.
There are chapels in every terminal now. Terminal F, slated to open in 2027, will have one too — designed by McBrayer and his team.
The DFW Airport Chaplaincy wasn’t born from some big glossy ad campaign — but from a pilot’s quiet conviction.
Back in the 1970s, as Dallas and Fort Worth leaders tried to hash out the future of air travel in the middle of the prairie, a Braniff captain named Fred Griswold had an idea. He’d served in the military. He understood the power of chaplains in moments of uncertainty. And this, he thought, was exactly that.
So the chaplaincy was formed — originally as a way to bring a little spiritual glue to board meetings that probably needed it. But over time, it grew. It changed. It listened.
Today, the DFW Airport Chaplaincy is the largest in the world — recognized globally among civil aviation chaplaincies and often looked to as the benchmark. Chaplains are now on duty at most major airports globally — Atlanta, Heathrow, Frankfurt, you name it.
And they’re not slowing down.
A new chapel will open in Terminal F when it launches in 2027 — designed by McBrayer and his team.
Greg’s favorite line — he says it at the start of every Mass: “Who knew they were going to a Mass today?”
The answer, always, is no one. But they’re there. In the chapel. Holding whatever brought them in.
“You may not remember my message,” Greg tells them. “But you’ll remember this: there’s no greater illustration in your life than what brought you to this room.”
And that’s the magic of it all.
Because buried inside the machine of one of the world’s busiest airports — amid the wheels up and wheels down — is this tiny, beating heart. A reminder that travel is more than logistics. It’s life. Moving. Pausing. Colliding. Breaking. Healing.
And at DFW, tucked just off the main drag of Terminal D, someone is always there to bear witness.
Not because they’re trying to save you.
But because they already see you.
“To be a part of that and be here at our main chapel, being on the international terminal, is a great joy,” McBrayer says. “We're right in the heart of it all, and it is a great ministry.”
