Captain Dale Goetz cared about the soldiers he served as an Army chaplain—both their physical and spiritual needs.
“He had a great burden for the soldiers,” said Jason Parker, pastor of High Country Baptist Church of Colorado Springs. “His specific prayer request was to see 300 soldiers come to Christ. He was also praying for God to call 10 of those soldiers into the ministry. That was one of his specific prayer requests.
“God was using him. He was very actively witnessing. He didn’t want to be just a social worker. He wanted to see soldiers hear the Gospel and trust Christ.”
Goetz, a 1995 Maranatha graduate, died Monday morning, Aug. 30, in Afghanistan while serving as an Army chaplain. Parker said Goetz was one of four men killed by a roadside bomb while traveling in a convoy near Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan. His death was also confirmed in an Internet posting by Ralph Colas, Executive Secretary of the American Council of Christian Churches. Goetz was one of the group’s approved chaplains.
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Christopher Stout had a beautiful singing voice and could belt out the tunes in a church choir or a more casual karaoke setting.
“I believe he could have made it professionally,” said his uncle, James Stout. “But he thought of others rather than thinking of himself.”
That’s why he joined the Army. He was a chaplain’s assistant and hoped to one day become a minister in the Pentecostal church, which he was raised in, James Stout said.
Stout, 34, of Worthville, Ky., was killed July 13 in Kandahar City, Afghanistan, when insurgents attacked his unit. He was assigned to Fort Bragg.
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The chaplain’s corps of the Alabama National Guard is growing, but adding additional chaplains is still a critical need.
Six Guardsmen recently completed the Army’s Chaplain Training Course at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. One already has completed seminary and the others are attending seminary.
The Alabama Guard currently has 19 chaplains assigned to the more than 11,000 troops and their families statewide. The state has 31 total chaplain slots, Col. Robert Hicks said. He’s the state Air Guard chaplain and the full-time support chaplain at the Guard headquarters in Montgomery.
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TIKRIT, Iraq – To combat the stresses of deployment and maintain the welfare of the Soldiers in their battalion, Capt. Josh Ziegler and Sgt. Michael Kuehne, the chaplain and chaplain assistant for 2nd Battalion, 32nd Field Artillery Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division out of Fort Riley, Kan., built a Morale, Welfare and Recreation Center.
The construction of the small recreation center, named Joe’s, began in December of 2009 and was built within the living area of the ‘Proud Americans.’ It’s equipped with two projectors, games, movies, chairs, books and a plethora of supplies for the Soldiers.
“Basically, in this LSA [life support area] there’s no place for Soldiers to meet when it’s raining, dusty and nasty outside,” said the New Orleans native. “So, Sergeant Kuehne and I put our heads together, and we thought of an idea of [creating] a building that would facilitate that.”
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Conservative groups predict tight restrictions on chaplains’ religious speech if the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” law is overturned, with some evangelical Christian groups contemplating pulling their ministers out of the ranks.
“The approved gospel will be a politically correct gospel,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a Christian lobbying group that deals with marriage and family issues. “If chaplains are limited in the moral teachings they can present [because of a repeal], you will see orthodox Christian chaplains leaving the military.”
Religious leaders in and outside the military doubted those predictions.
Air Force Chief of Chaplains Maj. Gen. Cecil Richardson said he thinks a repeal will be a “difficult transition,” but “I don’t know a single chaplain who wants to get out because of that issue.”
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The careers of many if not most military chaplains will end if the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy against open homosexual service is overturned, more than 40 retired military chaplains contend in an April 28 letter to President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The letter warned that reversing the policy will negatively impact religious freedom and could even affect military readiness and troop levels because the military would be marginalizing “deeply held” religious beliefs.
Military chaplains, the retired chaplains said, “are integral to maintaining high morale.”
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A small group of people, many of them veterans, braved the dreary weather Sunday, April 25 to huddle under the span of the Route 3 bridge over the Passaic River in Rutherford as it was dedicated to a hero of the Vietnam War, the Rev. Major Charles Joseph Watters, an army chaplain and one-time parish priest at St. Mary’s in Rutherford.
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PHOENIX — A Queen Creek man has been indicted by a federal grand jury for making false claims about medals, awards and training he received during his military career.
Kurt Alan Bishop, 42, claimed he was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor, Purple Heart and that he received training to become an Army Ranger, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The indictment alleges that Bishop, an army chaplain, began making false claims in 1991 shortly after he ended his first tour of duty.
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