In 1990 I sat in a recruiting centre of the Canadian Armed Forces and asked how I might become a chaplain. The response was that I needed two degrees and a few years of experience as a pastor. Thirty-three years later I am finally enrolled into the Canadian Armed Forces. Twenty-six years of experience as a pastor should be enough?
Will my work as a military chaplain be different from my work as a pastor? I believe so, in fact I consider this to a career change. In a month’s time I will not be thinking of myself as a Baptist Pastor who happens to serve in the military. I will be thinking of myself as a military chaplain who happened to be a Baptist pastor. Though both roles use many of the same skills, they are different.
Some Baptists serving in the military may look to me as a Baptist pastor, and may even look to me for Baptist rites, like believer’s baptism or baby dedications. But for the most part military members will be looking to me as their padre, neither knowing, nor caring, that I have been a Baptist pastor.
Why is a military chaplain different from a Baptist pastor?
We should consider where my salary will come from. As a pastor it comes from Christian people who are willing to pay me to accomplish Christian goals. A military chaplain is paid by the public through taxes. The average Canadian is generally not interested in the promotion of Christianity, and certainly does not want to have to pay for it!
You might object and ask if I shouldn’t be obeying God rather than people. If a pastor feels truly called to get paid for advancing Christianity, then yes, perhaps they should obey God in that. However, Canadian taxpayers should not be expected to foot the bill. Those who feel they have such a calling should not become chaplains. Some of us feel our calling is much broader than the promotion of Christianity.
How is military chaplaincy different?
As a Baptist pastor I have had as my guiding principle, “helping people walk with Jesus in faith, hope, and love.” Obviously I need a different guiding principle because that is not going to fly with the people paying my paycheque. If I’m not helping people walk with Jesus in faith, hope, and love, what will I be doing?
There is a wonderful word in the Bible, shalom, which often gets translated as “peace.” It can be found, for example, in Jeremiah 29 where the people are encouraged to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (verse 7).
“Peace” does not fully capture the idea behind shalom. When we think of peace, we often think of the absence of war or conflict. Shalom goes further than that to signify the presence of harmony, of things being well, of everything working together, of completeness. My motorcycle is at peace when it is in the garage doing nothing. It is at shalom when it is on the road and all the parts are working together as its creators intended. Since I have joined the navy, let me switch to a sailing ship analogy. Imagine a tall ship, one with many sails. A ship may experience peace at the dock, but it experiences shalom when it is sailing the sea and all the sails are working together. If the sails represent members of the military, and the ship represents the unit they are assigned to, the chaplain helps ensure the sails are trimmed and watches for them getting bent out of shape or torn up.
This means helping people deal with whatever might be getting them bent out of shape. It might be in the area of mental health, like dealing with anxiety, loneliness, or depression. It might be relational health, dealing with things like grief, conflict, or betrayal. It might be financial health. It might be spiritual health, although spirituality touches, and is touched by, everything else. It might be a discussion on how certain religious beliefs help or hinder one’s well being.
In helping a service member move toward health and well-being, a chat might be enough (with the service member doing most of the chatting and the chaplain doing most of the listening). Counselling may be helpful, or a referral to more qualified professionals, or to services that are available.
The chaplain may also be the one who communicates up the chain of command that a sail may need to be sent back for repairs. A sail may be so torn and ripped that it is in the best interest of the sail and the ship alike that this particular sail not be hoisted today. The shalom, not just of the individual, but of the entire unit is to be considered.
The key word in all this is “help.” Where I have considered my calling to be summed up with “helping people walk with Jesus in faith, hope, and love,” now it changes to “helping people walk in shalom.” In helping people, there may be opportunities to help people walk with Jesus. There may even be opportunities of introducing people to Jesus. However, these opportunities need to come from the service member’s curiosity, and not my need to make Jesus known.
Ironically, while it may seem that opportunities for evangelism are stifled in chaplaincy, if more Christians had the idea of helping people experience shalom in their lives, we might see greater curiosity in Jesus. There has been apathy toward Christianity for some time now. In our day this has increasingly been replaced by disgust. Why? When I was young we were taught that we Christians should live in such a way that people will ask, “what do you have that I don’t?”. For many today, the answer to that question is not “Christians have peace and joy,” but rather, “Christians have an agenda.”
A different approach might lead to a different response. If we Christians are a people who help people, rather than a people who try to control people, denigrate people, oppose people, or who have power over people, there might be a different response than apathy or disgust. There might be curiosity. A change in posture might be good for the Christian Church in general.
My greatest fear as I join the military is not how many push-ups I can do or how far I can run, but that I might feel useless. When a ship is sailing fine, and the sails seem to be in good shape, no one is knocking on the chaplain’s door. Chaplains, like pastors, spend considerable time building relationships, because you don’t know you need a chaplain until you do.
A big change for me will be that I won’t be preaching very much. Since this blog has been mostly my sermons, this also means I won’t be blogging very much. I would like to thank all those who have read my posts, whether occasionally or regularly. Thank you!
Thinking Through Scripture 