I have said that would not do any more political blogging due to my position as a commissioned officer in the United States Army, but I have to make some observations about the political scene in the last 24 hours.  Sen. John McCain has picked Gov. Sarah Palin from the State of Alaska to be his running mate and the political pundits have gone into overdrive trying to get a grip on this surprise choice for McCain.  One of the issues that I have noticed is that many of the left leaning commentators have, such as Keith Olberman, have started to emphasis that Gov. Palin is a former "beauty queen" with a snide and mocking tone (see this video).   Olberman also proceeded to make fun of her husband's name, Todd and the names of her children and the fact that she wanted to be a sportscaster for ESPN. 

If there is one thing that we can say about women, it is the fact that they are every bit as diverse in their backgrounds, philosophical  viewpoints and political stances as men.   For the past thirty years there has been an underlying theme that if a women is conservative, pro-life,  or dedicated to her family as a mother, that she is some how an anachronistic throw back.  Does a women have to wear comfortable shoes and pantsuits to be respected by the left?  When I am critical of Hillary Clinton, it is not an ad hominem attack, I speak to the issues.  As a matter of fact, my respect for Hillary Clinton over the last year has greatly increased.  I am no more in favor of her liberal policies, but I am not going to attack her personally.  I have even went back and removed a series pictures of Hillary with funny expressions from a previous blog post.  My apologies, Sen. Clinton.

Let me say this about Gov. Palin.  She is not only pro-life by profession, she lives by pro-life decisions.  Her last child was born with Down's Syndrome and had made the choice to give birth rather than abort the baby.  I given numerous sanctity of life sermons over the years and one of my centerpiece examples has been Down's Syndrome Children.  Are children who have down's syndrome less human?  Are they less valuable?  Are they less deserving of life?  Bill Clinton's former health secretary once bragged that there had been a dramatic reduction in the number of children born with birth defects.  What she failed to mention was that this was due to preemptive abortions when people took prenatal test for Down's.   Tracy and I decided not to even take the test because it was irrelevant.  Most doctors encourage people to take the test, but do not tell them up front that they only "cure" is to abort the baby.  This fact is usually buried on the back page of a pamphlet, stuck in a folder with all of your other prenatal information. 

This issue is incredibly personal for me.  If Tracy and I would have listened to our doctor's advice, we would not have Kaiser today.  This particular doctor was quick to want to do a "D and C"  when Tracy experienced some bleeding early in her pregnancy with Kaiser.  When the doctor told us that everything would be "OK" after the D and C, Tracy was encouraged.  Then after the doctor left, I explained what that was in clinical speak and Tracy about came out of her chair in anger.  After saying NO to the procedure the doctor informed me that his brother-in-law was a Baptist  preacher and that his wife recently went through this, so it is "OK".  I said to him, "Doc, you handle the medical advice and leave the spiritual issues to me and my wife. "  There are some circumstances in which  D and C might be necessary, as in the case of a women who loses a baby, but Tracy knew that Kaiser, although in danger, was alive (we could hear his heart beat on the monitor, it was not a mystical "word of knowledge).  Is this a pro-choice rant?  No, this is a personal testimony against the callus attitude of some in the medical establishment towards abortion.  

Monday of last week and the Friday before that was spent doing memorial training.  The Chaplain school brought in an expert in services to do the training.  This O-6 Chaplain had done duty at Arlington National Cemetery and has performed over 800 services alone. Many of these funerals were for retired military personnel that have the right to a military funeral, but many were from combat casualties as well.  It was sobering training that brings the role of the Chaplain into sharp focus.  Who else in uniform could perform such a duty?  There is a deep connection between fellow soldiers regardless of whether they knew each other or not and military funerals and ceremonies are an important expression of that bond.  This being said, it is an imperative that Chaplains perform this duty with the utmost professionalism and competency.

This is an area in which my ministry experience comes into play.  In the first six weeks as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Tolono I performed four funerals and none before that.  I learned quickly how to sit with a family and get the essence of a person without having met them.  In fact, out of the 20 or so funerals that I have done, I have never know the person very well at all.   I have however, become very close to many families through the ministry I provided during the loss of a loved one.  It is not exactly proper to say that I enjoy funerals, but I will say that I have been blessed by having the privilege of providing that kind of ministry to families during difficult loses.  It is a ministry that people do not usually appreciate until they have lost someone, but a pastor who takes the role seriously leaves a lasting positive impression on families and a pastor who does not handle it properly leaves a lasting negative impression (and rightly so). 

There is a wide range of family responses to a death depending on the family and the circumstances and a pastor (or chaplain) can help frame the experience of the funeral to encourage healthy grieving and recovery.  I have found that the funeral is a first small step towards dealing with death.  I have been with families who are losing a loved ones to long bouts of cancer,  sudden heart attacks, quiet passing after a long life, and even teenagers that have died in car accidents.  Every situation is different and every situation needed a different approach.  Some funerals I have performed have even been somewhat joyous occasions attended by faithful family members who had great confidence of their loved ones' eternal destiny and others were families who had never closely considered what happens to a person when they die.  The difference in the reaction is stark.  Pastors are often the only person, in some situations, that can temporarily hold back the dysfunction of a family long enough to have a proper memorial.

I am sure that I will be called on in the future to honor a soldier and I take that very seriously and as a role of sacred duty.  A man can never hear a greater compliment than, "Pastor (or Chaplain), can you be the one to do my funeral?" 

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

-Longfellow

All the pictures below are from a practice ceremony, this is not an actual funeral or ceremony

 

Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to have discussions with other Chaplains about their back-stories.  One of the common stories that I have heard is that National Guard and Reserve Chaplains are losing their civilian churches because they deploy or because they join the Military.  The laws that protect everyone else's jobs when they deploy do not apply to the church.  Denominations like the SBC are even more susceptible since we have no central authority and individual churches choose their own pastors.  What in the world is going on here? 

Imagine the kind of fervor that small town churches have for supporting the troops and then imagine that same church firing their pastor for serving his country.  It does not add up and it saddens me to think that this is happening.  In fact, it really infuriates me that churches are doing this to their pastors.  Would it not be more Biblical to view the pastor's deployment as an opportunity to send out a missionary for a time being?  What if the pastor is living in a parsonage and his wife and family has to move out (I have heard this story too).  At the same time that a deploying Chaplain's world is being turned upside down and being sent 7,000 miles away to a combat zone, he has to worry about his family's security when he gets home.

What should be done?  A law is not the answer because I never want the government to dictate internal church policy (the reason the current law does not apply to the church).  The National Guard is trying to provide full time work for some of their affected chaplains, but in the end churches need to search their soul about how to handle the problem.  If churches want to support the troops what could be more effective than sending your pastor to minister to thousands of soldiers for a year.  It sure beats putting yellow ribbons on your cars and a lot more needful than a box of cookies.

Over the years, one of the most important parts of my ministry has been in the area of relationship counseling.  My first experiences with marriage counseling were daunting with questionable results.  There were several couples that came to me when they were past the point of no return.  One or both of the spouses had already made the decision to end their marriage and look to me to give them a stamp of approval to their divorce (it was not forthcoming in those particular circumstances).  I took these failed marriages personally and felt as if I had failed.  These circumstances forced me to seek knowledge in the area of marriage counseling and I discovered that the success rate for even the best counselors was less than 50%. 

I then turned to focusing on pre-marital counseling.  As the trainer for this weekend coined it, I tried to do counseling "upstream" from the actual marriage.  I have had good results with the pre-marital counseling route and for those couples who took it seriously, it has produced fruit.  The last couple that I counseled did over 40 hours of sessions!  Both the couple and I enjoyed walking through the common pre-marital issues and the time that we were spending together, so we took our time over a period of 6 months.  Other couples seemed to have mixed results however and I have been carefully considering how I will best use my time as a Battalion chaplain (especially as a National Guard Chaplain with limited time with troops). 

This weekend we were trained to teach a seminar called "PICK: how not to marry a jerk.  This seminar shoots even further "upstream" at single people who are dating. Although the seminar was designed to be a secular training event, it lines up neatly with my Biblical worldview and is backed up by scientific evidence and research.  Apparently,  people who rush into physical relationships,  co-habitat, or fail to objectively judge their potential mate's qualities, have a much higher rate of divorce and marital dissatisfaction.   Huh,  go figure (wink).  We were trained by the man who developed the material and I was impressed by the simplicity and substance of the program.  We only had a day and a half of training, but were given access to all of the underlying research behind the program that allows us to go even further in our understanding of each component.  

Hands down, this is one of the best preventative programs that I have ever seen.  I have found out the hard way that the more time you spend in preventive education on the front end of the relationship, the less time you will spend in crisis counseling on the other end.  In fact, the time constraints on a battalion chaplain are so great,  I will probably be quick to refer serious marital problems to a better trained Family Life Chaplain and spend my precious little time on the preventive measures found in this type of seminar.  Not only does the Army provide us with this training, but they also provide special funds to hold FREE soldier retreats focused on single,  married couple and family wellness seminars.  What an incredibly good use of government funding!  It is good stewardship of both time and money and demonstrates that the Army is serious about taking care of their soldiers.  These retreats are not cheap but they cost a lot less than the damage caused by broken relationships in terms of both personal loss and loss of mission readiness.  

The second layer of training was how to operate a retreat.  To train us, we went on a retreat to learn how to go on a retreat!  We loaded all 160 chaplains on buses and went to the mountains of North Carolina.  We stayed at the SBC Ridgecrest conference center and camp.  This was the same place that the Tolono First Baptist Youth Group went to last year and I was impressed with the faculties.  First of all, the mountains were 10 degrees cooler and much less humid than in the lowlands of Fort Jackson, SC.  Secondly,  the grounds provided a peaceful place to relax and unwind.  The room was spartan but very clean and smelled a whole lot better than my room at Kennedy Hall! There were dining faculties at the conference center that was a huge improvement over my little microwave and the meals were decent.  The only problem is that we went over a weekend and 12 days straight with this group of guys can take a toll.   160 chaplains crammed into one room is not the divine experience one might think it would be!

     The school house approved a request for weekend leave and it allowed me to go home and see my family at a critical crossroads.   I did not tell Tracy about my plans and booked a flight back home on Friday evening.  The training on Friday was suicide prevention and it was the absolute longest day of my life knowing that I was going to be home for the first time in 2 months.  As soon as they released us I was out like a flash and headed to the Charlotte airport.  I got into Louisville at 10:30 and was at the home by 11:00.  Danielle was still up and when I walked in and I shushed her before she could blow my cover.  Tracy was asleep so I slipped into bed and waited for her to wake up.  When she woke up she had that look on her face like she did not know if she was a awake or dreaming and she actually cried!  This may not seem like such a strange reaction but Tracy did not even cry when our children were born.

Needless to say, it was a great weekend.  I got to meet my new grandchild, see the new mom reconnect with the kids and go to church at my own church.  I was afraid of how Eleanor would react, being so young, but after greeting me with a big "Hi Papa!,  I could not pry her away from me all weekend.  K was emotional,  Kaiser played it close to the chest and Danielle was even weepier than usual.  I briefly met the baby's father, but that was a can of worms to open at a later date.  This weekend was for my family and to give Tracy a much needed boost.  Other than the cable almost getting turned off, she has held everything together.  I got a boost too and was able to talk with Tracy about things that I cannot talk to any one else about.  I guess that is the hardest part of being away.  Tracy is my closest confidant and not having her right there to hash things over with has been difficult. 

I dropped by the OG, ate a meal and made sure that I still have a job when I get back.  The job is safe and secure and it was nice to see the closest thing to friends that I have in Louisville.  Clarksville Olive Garden is a great place to work and I am thankful to have this job while I am in this transitional phase between pulpit and Chaplaincy.   It was also great to worship at my home church and spend some altar time with Tracy after being loaded up with new burdens that the Chaplaincy cab bring.  Being a Chaplain in the modern world can be complex and you minister in life and death situations with the great burden of providing ethical counsel to men and women (commanders) who make life and death decisions.  It is not something to take lightly to be sure. 

This last series shows that Danielle is finding that motherhood is an exhausting enterprise.  This is something that her mother is well aware of and is delighted that Danielle has discovered this truth.