As flight delays worsen, security lines bulge and nerves fray, chaplains at airports across the country cruise up and down concourses, casting a trained eye on the swirl of humanity in search of anybody who appears in need.

The range of tasks is becoming as limitless as the blue sky, including playing mediator at a ticket counter, buying a hot meal for the hungry, arranging hotel rooms for the stranded and bus rides for the broke. They still offer religious services, and even conduct the occasional wedding, but God’s work in the airport concourse is increasingly about solving pressing earthly problems.

“The very essence of what we do has shifted,” said the Rev. Chris Piasta, a Catholic priest who oversees Our Lady of the Skies Chapel at Kennedy Airport and spends time at La Guardia Airport, which does not have a chapel. Being an airport chaplain, he said, is no longer about sitting idly in the chapel waiting for the afflicted to arrive.

Many American airports have clerics of some kind, but none more comprehensively than Atlanta’s, where the chaplaincy is under the auspices of a nonprofit sustained by grants and donations. Only Mr. Cook draws a salary from the chaplaincy; the two other regulars are assigned and paid by their denomination.

Ms. Mote, the Episcopal pastor, was newly arrived last November, still in training, when, on a hunch, she checked the departures board for lengthy delays. Noticing one, she proceeded to the gate area and found a traveler agitated by the realization that she would miss her aunt’s funeral. “I’m on the edge of a panic attack,” the woman confided.