Frequently I am asked to share my experience of the call to the chaplain ministry. In my case, I have served and continue to serve as a US Army Reserve chaplain, not an active duty chaplain. Yet the call to give one’s life to the work of the Lord in this specialized mission field called the military is, I believe, the same, whether active or reserve. So I offer a recent letter I wrote to a young man. His identity is not shared, but my words to him are, with a prayer that this will be of help to another. May Christ Jesus raise up a new generation of godly, cross-clinging, Christ-centered, Bible-loving, and soul-winning chaplain-shepherds to serve God and Country.
My Dearest Friend in the Gospel Ministry of Jesus:
What a blessing to hear from you! I remember well how the Lord led you to go to seminary—through earnest struggle about an inward and outward calling of the Lord—; and now you are in the pastorate of a great congregation! Oh how good the Lord is. We, back at your seminary, are rightfully proud of you in the Lord, as I am sure your wife and parents are as well. I also remember speaking at your graduation from seminary! I recall with great joy the sight of you crossing that chancel platform to receive your degree from me! Even though those were great times, along with your years of ministry preparation and study here at Reformed Theological Seminary, which will remain and even grow as cherished memories, yet the best is yet to come!
Well, now. You have written me about another possible “call within a call” brewing in your heart: “Am I being called to the military chaplaincy?” It is always good in inquire into the ways of God but especially necessary to inquire into His ways in one’s own heart! How well I recall my own thinking through that very question. I would say, first of all, that you are, my dear friend, thinking towards a good thing. I am truly honored that you have written to me about this for I consider this particular call one of the greatest acts of Christ-like service in all of the ministry. You have asked me to give some of my thoughts on discerning the call to the chaplaincy ministry and so I shall.
My beloved friend, I have always found that there are two great divinely placed motivators or sources of inspiration present in a minister who has been called to military chaplaincy:
I. The one who is called to military chaplaincy has a sense of, what I have come to call, the “heroic.”
This can be an internal calling that comes from love of country born out of one’s uniquely patriotic values learned in one’s own family. Perhaps the dinner table was a place where one’s mother or father or both placed the love of country deep in the child’s heart. This sense of the heroic—this deeply ingrained gallantry or chivalry—may emerge in the soul from even the presence of a venerable photograph of a father or grandfather in uniform from World War Two. As a child you would pass this black and white image each day as you bounded down the stairs for school and it always caused you to pause and look at it. Such images can be most powerful and even used of the Lord to arrest the attention of one He is calling to serve. This sense of patriotic valor and love of the military could, also, be the happy result of one’s positive experience in The Boy Scouts or in Junior ROTC or ROTC at university. Such a commitment in the soul could come from readings in the Pilgrims, or the Founders, or even reading a modern patriot like William F. Buckley, Jr. or reading the speeches of a great American statesman-hero like President Ronald Reagan or Theodore Roosevelt. However this chivalrous instinct is cultivated by the Lord, it at length emerges and then it comes upon a man, like Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven. This sense of the heroic won’t let you go. It grabs him in his heart; it grabs him and presses him to confess, “I love this nation with my life. I love her so much that I would give my years, my life, my all to this ‘City on a Hill’ shine for a generation yet born.” In the case of a man called to preach this undeniable sense of the heroic is then injected into that call and shapes the call that becomes a holy burden on the soul to declare, “I must preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to my own nation and for my own nation. I must declare the faith of our fathers, the guiding light of our Pilgrim founders, and the Good News that has shaped generations of Americans—not just to a congregation of those who will come through the doors of the church—but to soldiers, Marines, sailors, airmen, or guardsmen who cannot pass through the doors of the Church. I want to be where they are. I want to bring Christ to them. I want to pass through the doors of their experiences—the gates of their military posts, the hatches of their ship’s compartments—and speak Jesus Christ into their lives and into the lives of their families.”
That, dear friend, is the growing conviction of one who is called to be a chaplain: one who takes the Gospel to those who cannot come to a civilian ministry. You take the Church to them. In that regard, you are a missionary, but because of your love of this country, your love of the military institution, and your love of service to men and women and their families, you choose to be a missionary to the military.
I chose to answer that call through the United States Army Reserve. I have loved my ministry so much with the military, and I love soldiers and military personnel, as individuals and as a group, that I would not only do the balancing act of civilian ministry and “drills” and “AT” all over again (I still have a few years left and look forward to serving as long as they will let me), but would ask that God would have given me a better medical profile (I had a debilitating physical condition that prevented me from going into “the box” to serve), so that I could have shepherded soldiers or Marines or guardsmen or airmen or sailors on the battle field or the air strip or the destroyer. Yet I bless God for my humble role in the Army Reserves, whether in the continental United States or in Europe (where I was privileged to serve on several occasions), to support the Army and Army families (and other services as well) so that better and more able soldiers could serve in the harder places. They are heroes to me and my gift of service cannot compare to theirs.
For me, I am certain that the sense of the heroic came from my Naval officer father, who died when I was just a little boy, leaving me an orphan. Though I did not get to know him, of course, yet I grew up looking at a photograph of this young pre World War Two Merchant Marine officer who was brought into the U.S. Navy when the war with Germany commenced. His sisters, my aunts who reared me, told me the stories of his experiences with German U Boats around Greenland, his adventurous and yet compassionate wires back home to them, and how he served with not only distinction but with joy. To command troop carriers through the North Atlantic, through a thicket of enemies who sunk many of our Merchant Marine ships, was heroic indeed. I am proud of my father. He made many of these voyages from America to Great Britain during the War, and who stayed and made the sea services a career. Through that picture and those stories, I always knew that I wanted to serve this nation in uniform in some way if God would allow me. That is my own story of how God planted a love of this nation, and a love of the military who defends her, deep into my heart.
Son, the other great thing I see in one who is called to military chaplaincy is this:
II. The one who is called to military chaplaincy has been given a burden for souls to be saved and lives transformed by the Gospel in the military.
There are many people who have the sense of the heroic. They join the military and serve with distinction and honor. The question before us is not just that we might posses acsense of the heroic, though I believe that must be present, but how that fits with a calling as a minister of Christ Jesusl. I would say, without hesitation, that the one who is serving as a chaplain successfully and with great vocational satisfaction is the one who wants to minister Christ in the military environment. In a similar way that Amy Carmichael had a love for India or David Livingstone had a passion for Africa, the man called to the chaplaincy should have a desire for the armed forces of our nation. The missionary to Kenya loves Kenya and the missionary to the military loves soldiers or Marines or or airmen or guardsmen. It is that simple. It is that profound. Thus, just like any other missionary, there is a compelling charge from God Himself that burns like a undying fire inside of the chaplain’s bones—Jeremiah-like—to lead lost souls in that mission field to Jesus Christ and to shepherd His flock there. The sense of the heroic and the burden for souls in the military is a powerful combination and together it equals an undeniable call to the military chaplaincy. This blessed burden to share Christ with members of the Armed Services can be addressed from the pulpit of an Air Force base chapel in Germany, or on the dangerous flight deck of an air craft carrier out to the China sea, or with a Marine unit about to go on midnight patrol in Kandahar, or with an Army battalion on exercises in the desert. This hallowed open door to speak forth the Word of the Lord often happens when the chaplain is exercising what we call “a ministry of presence;” just being there where the troops are. In the military, chaplains not only go to soldiers, but also soldiers (and sailors, Marines, and guardsmen) come to the chaplain. It is, in many ways, more refreshing and satisfying than civilian ministry (to me) in that they have no built in social networks or inward (false) expectations that would hinder them from coming to their own minister (e.g., “If I go to the pastor with this problem, I may not become deacon or he may think ill of me from here on out”). The military as an institution advocates for the serviceman or woman—enlisted or officer— to come to their chaplain. “Take it to the chaplain, son!” says the crusty old Navy chief to the young seaman. And they do! I was once the “Chaplain of the Day” while on annual training, at an active duty Army installation. When I relieved the previous chaplain I learned that I had inherited a full day’s worth (and more) of soldiers and family members who wanted to see me about their needs. And then there the emergencies on top of those! I shared Jesus Christ to everyone of those divine appointments and God allowed me to lead many of those who came that day to the Lord. That was an unforgettable annual training! I will always remember how I called home to Mae to say, “Honey, you know how we prayed that I would get to share the Gospel while on duty? Well, I have never been ‘tired’ of sharing the Gospel, but I must say, I feel tied right now!” Indeed, my first day on that particular duty time ended with reuniting a military couple in counseling by having them recommit to their marriage vows, right there in the chaplain’s office. They stood next to each other, in their work day Army uniforms, and looked into each other’s eyes. I pronounced them “Man and wife—STILL!” and even said, “You may kiss the bride!” He did. Even more wonderful, though, is that they invited me to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them . Thus, as the Holy Spirit moved in them to repent and believe, I prayed with them to follow the Lord. I could not sleep that night! To do what God has called you to do is an awesome thing: whether it is stepping into the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church to unburden my soul of the message God had given me for that week, or preaching today to a congregation to encourage them in the Word of the Lord as a servant of Reformed Theological Seminary, or, always for me, sharing Christ with a soldier or a family member in need.
Dear friend, I will let you in on a little secret: I am a chaplain in the U.S. Army Reserves to reach a seventeen-year-old sailor boy who was lost and had joined the Navy to “find his way.” The Navy gave him his start in education and did indeed help to give him direction. And I am here as a chaplain for an aging Naval officer, who had sailed the seven seas from the time he left home as a boy, and who could navigate his way across the earth by the stars, but who had lost his way with God. You see, I am that young man who joined the Navy. And that alcoholic Naval officer? He was my father. Both were claimed by Christ, thank God. Since I was saved and called to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, I have always wanted to give my life to finding them, for they are always out there, lost and in need, and leading them to the Savior.
So to answer your question about a calling to the military chaplaincy, I have always seen a sense of the heroic, and a burden for souls present in the finest chaplains I have known. I can honestly say that the finest professional men and women I have ever known have been those who wore, and who wear today, the uniforms of our nation’s military. I can also say that some of the finest and most dedicated ministers of the Gospel that I have ever known were and are chaplains in the Armed Services. I am humbled and moved each time I get to put that uniform on myself. It has been and is today my honor to serve with them as a minister of the Gospel.
The founding president of Reformed Theological Seminary, The Reverend Sam Patterson, was a Navy chaplain in the Second World War. The first president of Covenant College and Seminary, Robert Rayburn, was a Chaplain in the Army in that same war. Since then there have been many to follow them as chaplains in our Presbyterian and Reformed faith. We need many more. But I would guess that if you read my words about the sense of the heroic, and the burden to reach the lost and shephe rd the flock of Jesus who are serving in the millitary, and your heart began beating faster and you said, “I am that man!” then you will soon be pinning on the cross. If not, then remember that God gave you an insight into the calling of a military chaplain; and therefore pray for them.
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