Continued from Part 1.

Service-Members Need the Gospel

There is on average one chaplain assigned per battalion (roughly 500 individuals). Other than a few exceptions, chaplains are normally in their mid-40s and from mainline liberal denominations. The guys they are assigned to minister to are not being presented the Jesus who is enthroned, exalted, and getting ready to come back covered in the blood of His vanquished foes. They are being fed the marginalized Jewish carpenter, who has given us some nuggets of suggestions to help us live good lives.

We, as the church, have a responsibility to disciple others. There is a golden opportunity for us to rise up and assist not only the chaplains currently serving, but also men who are called to rise up in the ranks as leaders. The church dropped the ball by not welcoming in and discipling Vietnam veterans, causing many service-members to actually feel at odds with the church.

The church is not designed to be a place for you to go once you have your life put together. It is designed to be the headquarters, sending men out and receiving men in who are trying to piece together their shattered selves through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. We should actually be recruiters who enjoy what we are recruiting folks into, since we don’t deserve the grace Jesus has given us.

While our government has set up measures to help both service-members and veterans through the Department of Veterans Affairs, it is ill-equipped to address the core needs of service-members. The church needs to man-up and lead the nation in restoring the emotional, marital, and familial health and dignity of our veterans. We as the church have what service-members need: the Gospel.

How To Support the Troops

I will be posting about issues pertinent to both active-duty service-members and veterans in order to raise some awareness for Americans who think they are supporting the troops.

Most folks think they are supporting the troops by putting a magnet on their car, forwarding a prayer chain email for the troops that asks you to pray one minute each day for them, or randomly sending a care package full of baby wipes and mints to soldiers in Iraq (to these folks, please go read James 2:16).

This is not support. The support needed looks more like the early church from Acts 2 (committed to community and fellowship), and less like you giving a buck to the homeless vet on the side of the freeway as you drive away sipping your venti $5 coffee. Hopefully I can give you guys some idea of what this support looks like.

After exiting the Army, I have struggled at times to communicate openly with my wife of five years, and even to just feel “normal” in civilian life. I have been extended grace in not only employment, but also in protection from falling into sin.

As I read about the growing numbers of returning warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan who are struggling with the reintegration process and wondering what is the purpose of their suffering and their service, my heart is wrenched as I meditate on the grace which has been poured out and is being poured out over me and my family. I know that I could easily become the man on the off-ramp of the freeway asking for change.

As the church, God has called us to engage the warriors serving and the veterans who have served (Romans 10:14-17). He does not need us or our “help” (Acts 17:25) but has allowed us to be involved in His kingdom-building and the spreading of His glory. I pray that God raises up men who will accept this mission.

Watching the Twin Towers crumble to the ground like a couple of Jenga towers, I knew that my future would be in the military. It didn’t help that Band of Brothers was currently playing on HBO, and I would have felt like a wuss if I hadn’t joined the military. After finishing college and joining the Army, it wasn’t long before I found myself in northern Afghanistan.

It was a couple of surreal weeks during my first month in Afghanistan. I was conducting missions during the day, reading the book of John at night, and watching porn before I went to sleep. It was during this time that Jesus took my heart of stone, gave me a heart of flesh, took the scales off my eyes, and gave me the ears to hear His call.

During these sleepless nights in Afghanistan, as I went through C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, I came face to face with having to decide who I thought Jesus Christ actually was. Through the grace of God, I knew that if He was indeed Lord (and not a liar or a lunatic), the way I had been living my life—commonly referred to as sinning—was putting me at odds with the Creator of the universe. This was when I became a Christian.

King Jim

I started getting plugged into a Bible study with our battalion chaplain, who was a King James-only Baptist dude. I still love the guy to this day, just not some of his theology. He had some arguments for why every other Bible translation was actually from Satan, and as a new Christian I believed him. Thankfully, as I continued to read God’s Word, speak with other believers, and read what other folks had to say, I realized that there's more to Christianity than this.

A year after getting back from Afghanistan, I found myself in a remote base in northern Iraq, which used to be a granary but was now occupied by 500 Iraqi Army soldiers and 75 US military personnel. We had a solid chaplain assigned to our unit, but he was only able to visit our base about once a month.

Jesus laid it on my heart to just start pulling guys together on a regular basis to open the Bible, read it, and have it transform our lives. Over the 14 months that I was in Iraq, our group would fluctuate from 3 guys to 15 depending on our OPTEMPO (operations tempo). We started with the book of John, and chewed our way through 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Matthew.

Gals with shaved heads

Right before we actually got to Iraq, I started to listen to some sermons on my iPod that I had randomly downloaded off of iTunes from this guy from a church in Seattle called Mark Driscoll. The first sermon I listened to was out of 1 Corinthians 11, in which Paul is speaking about head coverings and symbols of authority. As soon as Pastor Mark made some comment about butch ladies and bucking authority, I was hooked on this guy’s teaching.

My wife started burning anything she could get her hands on from Mars Hill, from audio sermons to video sermons, and mailing them out to me in Iraq. We started rounding up the guys and showing at least one sermon a week on a laptop through a projector with speakers hooked up to it, and this was our Sunday church service. There were nights when we would even just chill, drink some coffee, and go through a few sermons.

The floodgates opened up with the guys as we worked through porn, masturbating, beer, Calvinism, the exclusivity of Christ, being a husband and daddy, and war, just to name a few topics.

Gigs of Gospel

When guys are deployed, a lot of them have external hard drives that they keep all their media files on (music, movies, pictures), and they share these with one another. Guys are notorious for having gigs upon gigs of porn—all classified appropriately by gal, act, you name it.

One of the coolest things I got to experience was seeing guys borrow external hard drives from one another, not to get the latest porn, but rather to make sure they had all of the vodcasts posted by Mars Hill from the “Christians Gone Wild” series (1 Corinthians), the “Redeeming Ruth” series (book of Ruth), or the “Vintage Jesus” series. Instead of filling their brains with endless hours of garbage, they were watching Pastor Mark preach through the Word.

Continued in Part 2 here
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