Lazarus Project helps soldiers' families find support

Lazarus Project helps soldiers' families find support
BY PHILIP GREY • THE LEAF-CHRONICLE • FEBRUARY 27, 2011

At her office in the Wesley Foundation building on College Street, Jodi McCullah sat behind a desk topped with orderly clutter and began to explain the Lazarus Project, starting with its name.


In the New Testament, when Lazarus was brought back to the world of the living, Jesus instructed the community to unbind the tightly wound cloth that constricted him head to foot. Had they not done so, Lazarus could not have lived.

She uses the metaphor to relate her deeply held belief that a society cannot send young men and women to war without taking some responsibility for it. The community needs to help unbind the soldiers and their families so they can re-enter the world and live.

That is the Lazarus Project, an organization that is supported by the United Methodist Church and administered by McCullah, a Methodist pastor whose role is to marry people with support and services.

The project was started two years ago to help Austin Peay State University students with family members deployed overseas. Counseling services on post were limited at the time, McCullah said, because they were overwhelmed just dealing with active-duty members. The campus counselors were good. But there were only two, and neither was familiar with military issues.

"We were dealing with students who were dealing with the war," she said. "Then we started looking at the fact that one in five students were active-duty or veterans on the GI Bill. Another one in five were family members of people who were deployed or who had been deployed.

"We had students with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder," she continued. "And at that time, traumatic brain injury wasn't even on our radar.
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Lazarus Project helps soldiers' families find support