Called to Serve—A Navy Chaplain’s Perspective on Ministry
On November 28, 1775, the Navy Chaplain Corps was established when the Second Continental Congress declared that there should be religious services performed twice per day aboard the Continental Navy’s warships. Today, the Navy Chaplain Corps defines our mission by four core competencies: to provide, facilitate, care, and advise. We provide from our own faith background, sharing what we believe and why. We also provide for the religious needs of others who do not believe as we do, ensuring that their First Amendment rights are respected. We care for all through counseling, conversation, presence, and the ministry of listening. Finally, chaplains advise the command in matters of ethics, morality, morale, and religion.
I have been blessed to participate as a Navy Reserve Chaplain for the past seven years, serving with Marines and Sailors (as well as all the other branches) as I care for all of those service members and families who have been brought into my care. Through it all, I have felt God’s hand at work, guiding me and leading me to this point. I wanted to join the military out of high school, but looking back, I can see where God still needed to work on my heart and in my life to prepare me for such a ministry. I needed hardship, grief, loss, and depression before I was ready to join the Navy as a chaplain, because these taught me how to find joy, hope, purpose, and connection with God and with others. I was forced to learn resilience and true empathy through the beautiful messiness of life’s circumstances before God could utilize me effectively in the Armed Forces.
Serving as a Chaplain is part of the mission of God. It isn’t traditional evangelism as many would see it. I rarely get to sit down and do in-depth Bible studies with my flock. I learn to speak in their language (although hopefully not in the fouler aspects of it!) as I communicate in the context of the military, and seek to connect life lessons to what they encounter day to day. So much of my ministry is about non-anxious listening without a rush to judgment, which can be incredibly difficult! And I often compare it to the ministry of pulling rocks out of soil rather than reaping the harvest, because so many come with a troubled history with Christianity and “organized religion.”
Yet I find it to be a beautiful and meaningful connection with an untapped population of young adults, since approximately 70% of the military is ages 18 to 24. This is the age in which many are hungering and thirsting for something more as they seek to discover who they are going to be, and it is a poignant opportunity to point them to the God whose love and grace is our true identity. I have been blessed to watch people give their lives to Jesus while wearing their PT uniform on deployment; I’ve had a Marine tell me he is going back to church because of the small Bible studies we had in the field between training; another Marine called to tell me that Jesus saved his marriage. God is doing incredible things in the hearts and lives of service members!
Paul writes to the believers in Thessalonica to give them hope during anxious times, including the following words towards the beginning of his first letter: "Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well” (1 Thess. 2:7b-8). Chaplaincy is a ministry of showing up and sharing: sharing our lives, sharing our stories as others share theirs, sharing in hardships and “embracing the suck,” and sharing in laughter. We grow close to those we serve with because we live so much life together. And that gives us the opportunity to share the Good News when God provides the opening. Sharing our lives so that we might share the Gospel is an incarnational form of ministry, putting on a uniform so that others might find hope. It requires hardship, but it is worth the sacrifice, for we are “called to serve”[1] and we are blessed to serve our nation, its service members, and ultimately our God as we share the grace of God.
1. The Latin phrase “Vocati ad Servitium” is the Navy Chaplain Corps motto: “Called to Serve.”
