My dad came straight out of Compton (it was his high school) and ended up a prison chaplain (unpaid) for a while. Amazingly, he was recruited to pastor a church, and surprisingly, they didn’t mind that he was LDS. He just didn’t feel comfortable taking that on as well.
One result is that I’ve been planning a post on how to become an LDS chaplain. But I’ve had trouble with it, and I realized that the reason is because I have unresolved issues due to chaplains I have known.
My family was military (enlisted, Air Force) and in the military, chaplains generally avoid hardship tours of duty and gripe about how the Catholic Priests get all the promotions.
Of course, the priests do hardship tours of duty while the other chaplains are avoiding those. Many LDS Chaplains lead the way in complaining and in practices such as requiring enlisted men to stand at attention and answer “Yes Sir” and “No Sir” while receiving pastoral counseling.
[Now, I’m aware of better LDS Chaplains than that. I’ve a niece married to one whose only active tour of duty was a hardship tour. But until I was older than dirt, that wasn’t my experience.]
Outside of the military, my most remarkable meeting with a chaplain was at Dallas Children’s Hospital and involved my daughter Jessica (the first of my three daughters who died). They were running tests, expecting bad news and sent the chaplain to talk to us before they met with us.
It was an interesting meeting. He had an undergraduate and a doctoral degree in theology. He had pastored a congregation. He was in chaplain training because nothing had prepared him to deal with human suffering and he was quite bitter at the holes in his theology. I obviously was under some strain, but I did my best for him as he unloaded his disappointment, bitterness and angst on me.
He then asked if he could observe my wife and I as we received the news that our daughter wasn’t going to make it [Yes, that is how he broached the topic of the expected bad news] as he thought he could learn something from observing someone take that sort of news with good grace. I told him that was probably too much for me at the moment. [The news was actually good, though, as everyone knows, the story still had a disastrous ending].
When people talk about graduate school level training for ministers and pastoral training for chaplains and how that would make things better, I think of him.
I met his boss, briefly, on another visit, when Robin was in the hospital. She was busy and blew me off, since she was preparing the chapel for a service (that no one attended).
I confess that did not impress me any better, especially given just how good the hospital was. If the best regional hospital in the area, with a well regarded chaplaincy training program had someone at the head of it like that, heaven help those who were down stream.
However, I loved my dad, and his time he spent serving as a prison chaplain for people in California prisons serving life without parole and the things he had to say about the service, made me think.
I’ll probably not become a chaplain, but you might want to.
So:
- Is anyone interested in how to become a chaplain?
- Have any of you had a positive experience with a chaplain?
- Are any of our readers chaplains?
- Have any of you met chaplains you admire?
- Was it a mistake for me to write about the personal issues I had to work through about chaplains before I was ready to write about how someone could become one?
That last question is a trick question since as I’ve gotten older I’ve met some wonderful chaplains whom I greatly admire, and not just my dad.
Share your experiences and thoughts.
Wheat & Tares 
I’m not military, but I did have the opportunity to work in a business environment with a former military chaplain (not LDS). We had a lot of fun theological discussions, and he shared some interesting stories from his service. Not everyone liked him, but he still would’ve been infinitely better than the horrific hospital chaplain you had.
I am an LDS hospital chaplain and I am appalled by the way you were treated.
I will add that The best training I recieved about how to listen and develop empathy came through Clinical Pastoral Education. My Masters in Theology was good for book smarts, but did very little in regards to my heart.
And LDS Chaplains are the only ones I heard of providing pastoral counseling to men standing at attention and only allowed to say “Yes Sir” and “No Sir.” I hope he was better than that as well. 😉
Early ’90s, post-mission, early in my marriage, I gave some thought to becoming a US Navy chaplain. As a former (enlisted reserve) Marine, I was interested by the possibility of serving with a USMC unit (this was before the start of The Eternal War). What did not interest me was the necessity of obtaining a master’s degree in counseling, which is what I was told by the LDS chaplain candidate coordinator in SLC.
It was an interesting process, all in all. My local Navy officer recruiter told me that they probably wouldn’t be interested unless I was a Roman Catholic or a Mormon. OK, so far so good. He sent me on to some kind of higher-level officer candidate office in Minneapolis that handled chaplain candidates, where I spoke to some petty officer who informed me that I needed a bachelor’s degree in theology. I informed him that Mormons don’t generally bother with that, briefly explained a lay clergy to him, and asked him to check further. He assured me that I was out of luck but told me he’d check.
Three days or so later, he sheepishly called me back, apologized, and gave me the number of the LDS chaplaincy coordinator in SLC, who told me about the counseling master’s requirement. I assume that those of you coming from predominantly Mormon parts of the US would not run into the same level of ignorance that I did, but that your local OCO would know which end was up.
That said, I have met and been counseled by many talented, kind, and empathetic people who had no formal training in counseling or psychology; and I’ve spent time with and subjected unwitting friends to real duds with doctorates who had no business being in clinical practice. Actual training in counseling may make some difference for some people, but if you lack the empathy and interpersonal talent, and care and love, to counsel, I’m not at all certain that it can be taught.
Br. Marsh, I am sad to hear about your experiences with the martinets among Mormon military chaplains. I suspect those men were once the zone leaders we all hated. I would walk out of the office of a chaplain who tried to ‘counsel” me while insisting on military courtesy.
Again, I was a reservist, and at that time not particularly spiritual. The only military chaplain I knew well, I knew as my own pastor in the church of my youth. Father Jack Donahue was also a Lt.Col in the Minnesota Army National Guard, and he was a blunt, straightforward, honest Irishman who I would think related very well to the troops. I know he did a fine job with our parish, including with me when I left the Catholic Church at about age 16. Would that there were more like him.
I’ve always liked the Catholic priests.
I was just a kid. But it was interesting listening to the GIs and my dad.
Thanks Gerald.
My son-in-law is a LDS chaplain. He served two tours one in Iraq, the next in Afghanistan while he was in the national guard. He then put himself though a masters degree program for LDS chaplains, with no guarantee of being hired by one of the services. He was hired by the US Army and has served for the last five years. He was again deployed to Afghanistan on the Pakistan border. He works long long hours counseling soldiers, families whose children haved died and giving funeral services when he is not deployed. I am surprised by his long hours and his training exercises in the field where is again separated from his family for many weeks a year, then there is his physical training and danger from jumping out of airplanes. This is in addition to the sacrifice his family is making. I don’t see any hubris, just service.
Exactly the way a chaplain should be Honey.
I am a psychologist and LDS. I would like to become a hospital or military chaplain but I have no idea how.
William — guess I need to do part two on how to become a chaplain.
The military chaplain program is pretty straighforward https://www.lds.org/callings/military-relations/military-chaplains?lang=eng but it is the other routes that are harder.
Here is a link reflecting employment for those: https://www.indeed.com/q-Hospital-Chaplain-jobs.html
Here is a link to a training program: http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/education/programs/nondegree-programs/clinical-pastoral-education.html for an example.
I’m sharing the three links so you don’t have to wait for me to finish the essay otherwise.
For a couple other training programs:
http://www.baylorhealth.edu/Education/HealthCareCareerPrograms/ClinicalPastoralEducation/Pages/default.aspx
http://www.methodisthealthsystem.org/cpe Note that the UT Southwestern Program offers a stipend, etc. That obviously makes it more appealing.
If I ever finish my interview with Maxine Hanks, or get one with Sue Bergin, I’ll have to refresh more on their practical experiences. Maxine Hanks, especially, had excellent things to say on the different training associations, regimens and programs.
For LDS Chaplains:
https://www.lds.org/callings/military-relations/chaplains-training?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/bc/content/shared/content/english/pdf/callings/military/ChaplainRequirements.pdf?lang=eng
https://www.facebook.com/LDS-Chaplains-275224832537120/
BYU has a chaplaincy program (which admits both men and women , btw).
sba– thanks
https://gradstudies.byu.edu/program/religious-studies-military-chaplaincy-ma
is the link for the military program.
A blog about military chaplains: http://ldschaplaincandidates.blogspot.com/
And the church news article: http://www.ldschurchnewsarchive.com/articles/56619/Chaplain-school-offered-at-BYU.html
https://gradstudies.byu.edu/search/site/chaplain
Would be nice to see a BYU program for hospital chaplains.
William, Some of the larger hospitals have their own chaplain training programs. Might want to inquire of such hospitals in your area.
The BYU program has both a military snd non military track.
To be a healthcare chaplain you would need a Master’s degree in a theological field (72 semester hours) from an accredited university or seminary a 4 units (1600 hours) of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). There are a few different organizations offering CPE, so it worth checking to see if the hospital or hospice you are hoping to work at has a preference for which CPE training is acceptable.