Several years ago, the Army National Guard reported a shortage of 450 chaplains. That shortage has been cut almost in half recently. But Paul Douglas, a chaplain in the Army National Guard, says it is more than just filling slots. He insists that chaplains must have a calling to minister to other soldiers.

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Being shot by a sniper while ministering to U.S. troops in Iraq may not have been his idea of true mettle but Chaplain Capt. Barron Wester proved that he was more than a spiritual advisor to his soldiers. He was their family and friend.

The 34-year-old patriot was living the American Dream with his wife, Dawn, while being a school teacher in Atlanta, Ga., when he said he felt a strong call to enter the chaplaincy after the 9/11 attack.

“I started looking on the Internet and figured out I had to have a Master of Divinity,” he said. “At that point I stepped out in faith, resigned from my teaching job and we came to Cleveland to go to the Church of God seminary.”

After graduating in 2005, Wester put in his paper work to go on active duty as a full chaplain.

He was stationed in Kansas by the end of the year where a brand new unit, nicknamed Black Lions, was being formed.

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They traveled with him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington while he was home on leave, then caught up with him in Iraq, where they spent five weeks reporting this story.

They shadowed the chaplain as he counseled soldiers, baptized them and dealt with war’s hardships. They also went on foot patrol with a platoon that lost six men last summer.

Every soldier in this story gave the journalists permission to document their interactions with the chaplain. All except one of the scenes were witnessed firsthand. The one reconstructed scene — the events of last summer — appears in Chapter 3 and was pieced together through interviews with soldiers who were there.

READ MORE from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

You can see a preliminary form at www.freebiblecommentary.org/intcdtest/ReadMe.htm

It also includes Bible commentaries in Bengali, French, Portuguese, Serbian, Slovakian & Urdu.

It should be ready to mail by the end of June. For your free CD-ROM just email me a mailing address.

Dr. Bob Utley

Professor of Hermeneutics (retired)
Marshall, Texas

www.freebiblecommentary.org

The quick thinking of Sgt. Richard Lamas, a native of Bovina, Texas and an operations noncommissioned officer for the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, helped save the life of another Soldier who was intent on ending his own life.

Lamas was heading home at the end of the day June 4 when he noticed a Soldier loitering in the parking lot of the Ironhorse Brigade Chapel. Lamas asked the Soldier if he needed assistance when the Soldier stated ‘I don’t think I can go back to my room because I might hurt myself.’

Lamas talked to the Soldier while they went to the chapel and sought assistance for the soldier. Finding the chaplain gone, Lamas took the Soldier down to the Headquarters and Headquarters Troop’s company area and sought the number for the chaplain on call.

READ MORE at KWTX.com

“Let’s make sure we’re on God’s agenda, because it’s much better than what you and I can come up with in our feeble abilities,” Carver said.

“Our soldiers carry a heavy, heavy load,” Carver added. “And we get to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ unencumbered while in uniform.”

Carver addressed the luncheon for chaplains hosted each year by the North American Mission Board. The board endorses chaplains on behalf of Southern Baptists.

Citing the importance of Southern Baptists in the work of military ministry, Carver emphasized the vitality a local church can give to military personnel at home and during deployment.

“Just about every good thing has happened to me happened in a Southern Baptist church,” Carver said. “North Broad Baptist Church in downtown Rome [Ga.] is where I was licensed, ordained, commissioned and sent.

READ MORE from Baptist Press

By Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Monday, April 7, 2008

HEIDELBERG, Germany — A V Corps chaplain accused of sex crimes and assault has been allowed to resign his commission rather than face a court-martial.

Capt. Anthony C. Mastromarino was allowed to “resign for the good of the service in lieu of court-martial,” officials said. “He is leaving the service,” said V Corps spokeswoman Hilde Patton.

Such resignations, which normally conclude with a less than honorable discharge, are a way for authorities to deal with cases that are deemed troublesome to prosecute, experts said, for a variety of reasons.

Mastromarino was charged in January with several crimes that prosecutors said he committed against a male soldier in Vilseck last June: forcible sodomy, indecent assault, indecent exposure and fraternization. He was also charged with twice threatening and assaulting a woman — in 2005 at Fort Campbell, Ky., and in January in Heidelberg. He also was charged with assaulting a military policeman called to the January incident.

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DALLAS, Jan. 30 /Christian Newswire/ — Millions were inspired by the stirring, visceral account of Lt. General Hal Moore’s Vietnam war experience as told in the New York Times #1 bestseller We Were Soldiers Once…And Young. The major motion picture adaptation, We Were Soldiers, was hailed by many as “one of the best war movies ever made.” But there is so much more to the story.

In A General’s Spiritual Journey, observed and written by Hal Moore’s driver, General Moore opens his heart and soul about the role faith has played throughout his many life experiences. The evocative collection of memories and private thoughts are observed and written by his friend and “driver.” From his childhood in Kentucky, through West Point, to the bloody battlefields of Korea and Vietnam, in business and family, and into his current days of writing, speaking, and living without his beloved wife Julia, Hal Moore leaves little doubt as to what he has always valued most in his life–his God.

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Soldiers may come to Chaplain (Maj.) David Langer’s services for a little bit of peace. They may come for God.But they come armed, nonetheless.

“Most of the guys just put their weapons under their chairs,” said Langer, a Congregational minister and Army chaplain assigned to the 5th Iraqi Army Division Military Transition Team, which travels throughout Diyala province.

There are no rules against taking the weapons into the service, he said.

Read more from Military.com