Ministering to the military and their families
Karen.Herzog@bismarcktribune.com
Posted: Thursday, February 18, 2010
“Being in boots overseas is an awful lonely time,” said Maj. David Johnson, a chaplain with the North Dakota National Guard. And when veterans return from deployments, he said, they are “forever changed.”
Johnson, along with other Guard chaplains, met with local clergy and pastoral ministers Thursday at Lord of Life Lutheran Church for Clergy Day 2010, spending the morning offering guidance as to how ministers can help military men and women and their families.
With North Dakota soldiers and airmen serving in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa, and closer to home during floods, snow emergencies and other natural disasters, clergy and congregations can serve as a source of comfort and support during difficult separations and after returning home, Johnson said.
"For some of our military members, their church is their bedrock and faith plays an instrumental role in their lives. It is essential that area clergy understand some of the unique challenges and stresses placed on today's military members and their families," he said.
In 2009 alone, more than 900 North Dakota soldiers and airmen deployed overseas.
Chaplain Bill Ziegler, the state chaplain for the Guard in the state, said that the Guard wanted to give pastors tools to minister to military families, who often live in “a different world” because of their loved one’s service.
There also is a need for more military chaplains, he said, particularly Catholic priests. Clergy Day 2010 also hopes to find clergy who feel God is calling them to do more in this arena, Ziegler said.
Currently, four chaplains serve about 1,000 members of the Air Guard, with a fifth coming on board soon, he said. The more than 3,000 members of the Army Guard are served by four chaplains, with five candidates coming up, he said. There also are roles for chaplains’ assistants, he said.
“We’re not there to bless bombs and bullets,” he said, “but to be with the soldiers and airmen in all the challenges they face.”
Like hospital chaplains, military chaplains are trained in “psychological and spiritual first aid.”
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Ministering to the military and their families
Reading it is a a mixture of hope and frustration for me. It's wonderful that the military chaplains are calling on communities to get involved in PTSD. What is not so wonderful is there is a resource in the communities that is not being used because they are not the right kind of Chaplains.
I belong to the International Fellowship of Chaplains. We are trained, certified, insured and fully invested in working with people after traumatic events. We are also fully invested in restoring the spiritual relationship between God and man. We live the life of Chaplains 24-7. Some work within police departments and fire departments. Good enough for these service members but not good enough for the military or the veterans needing help to heal from traumas of combat. We work with civilians after traumatic events but not good enough to work with families of veterans or military families. How is this possible given the fact that PTSD is a wound to the soul?
I've worked with veterans since 1982, have taken more training and certification classes than my office wall has room to hold the certificates, yet I'm not good enough. I live with PTSD everyday in my home, yet managed to stay married for over 25 years, but I'm not good enough to work with families so that they can have what they need to not only cope, but thrive.
My videos have been used by military, psychologists, therapists, you name it, but no matter what I do, no matter what I know including tracking PTSD everyday on this blog, I am not good enough.
I'm not the only one being left unused. The IFOC trains Chaplains all over the country and some of us are in rural areas where help for the veterans is hard to get. We are in big cities where the numbers are staggering. Just because we do not have a degree from a seminary we are not welcomed yet when you talk to a Chaplain you can fully understand that when it comes to knowing what is in the Bible, we live it. Not only living it, but walking the walk side by side ready to help others through their own "shadow of the valley of death" just as most of us have. Our faith was not tested by passing a test on paper, but tested by passing day to day life facing more horrors than most people will ever know willingly putting ourselves into dangerous circumstances, hearing stories the best horror writer could never contemplate and then seeing the restoration of hope in their eyes.
We see a family fall apart when they find out someone in their home will not be walking thru the door ever again. We see them after a car accident has taken away someone they love in one single blow. We see them when firefighters and police officers have fallen in the line of duty just as we see them when they are taken to the hospital. Over and over again when tragedy strikes, we are there willingly but over and over again, we are overlooked when the need is greater than the workers.
Matthew 9:37-38
37 Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
38 Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into his harvest.
God has called us for this reason.
Posted to Great Americans by NamGuardianAngel on September 13, 2009
We are not in competition with the "acceptable" Chaplains, but fill in the need when they cannot simply because most of them have not been trained in crisis intervention. Can you imagine anything more in need of crisis intervention than servicemen and women returning from combat after multiple traumatic events? There are few Chaplains to go around as it is and most admit they don't know anything about PTSD.
When you think about Christ picking His disciples, we think about the twelve but not the over seventy He sent out or the many more spreading the Good News around the world willing to die for His sake. What if they were treated as not good enough to spread the messages Christ delivered? Romans were putting them to death but they were still willing to face any threat in order to serve God willingly putting themselves into harms way for nothing more than the glory God would reward them with after their life was over. They expected hardship in order to be of service to others.
The importance of having Chaplains fully involved in healing the troops and veterans cannot be emphasized enough. PTSD is a spiritual wound and needs to be healed with addressing the same kind of understanding as psychologist treat it but again, with those experienced with and specially trained to treat it for what it is instead of mental illness from other causes. PTSD only enters the person after trauma so treating it like any other mental illness will not work and has not worked. It needs to be treated with the soul in mind and not just the mind of the soul.
They need to use all Chaplains trained in crisis and not just the ones with a degree.
This is what an IFOC Chaplain can come up with along with about 30 more.
Posted to Great Americans by NamGuardianAngel on September 11, 2009
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