My time as an Army chaplain candidate has been very enjoyable but, at times, also very frustrating. Unfortunately, there is little guidance for candidates and the frequent turnover in chaplain recruiting and management doesn’t help.

So, to help those who come behind me, I will offer a series of posts with advice for chaplain candidates and potential chaplain candidates. My advice will be based on my own experiences and knowledge and does not necessarily represent official Army doctrine. While the information in this series is specific to the Army chaplain candidate program, Air Force and Navy candidates may also find the information helpful.

If you’re a chaplain, chaplain candidate, or potential candidate, I encourage you to ask questions or make suggestions by filling in the comment box below (if you don’t see it, click the title of this post) or the contact form.

If you have an interest in serving God and our country as an Army chaplain, here are some pointers for beginning your journey to soldier ministry. These suggestions are based on my own experience and knowledge and do not necessarily reflect official Army doctrine or policy.

Chaplaincy qualifications

To serve as a chaplain, you must fulfill these basic requirements:

1. Be ordained.
2. Receive an ecclesiastical endorsement for chaplaincy from your denomination or endorsing organization.
3. Have a bachelor degree of at least 120 semester hours from an accredited school.
4. Have a Master of Divinity from an accredited school (or a graduate degree in theological studies, with at least 72 semester hours).
5. Be able to pass a military entrance physical exam.
6. Be able to receive a Secret security clearance.
7. Have ministry experience.

Chaplain candidate qualifications

If you do not yet meet all the requirements for appointment as a chaplain, you can work on completing them while you train for military ministry by serving in the Army chaplain candidate program.

To serve as a chaplain candidate, you must fulfill these basic requirements:

1. Receive an ecclesiastical approval for the chaplain candidate program from your denomination or organization.
2. Have a bachelor degree of at least 120 semester hours from an accredited school, or be in your last semester of undergraduate studies.
3. Be enrolled in graduate theological studies at an accredited school, or have been accepted for admission to such a program in the next enrollment period of the school, or have completed such a program and be actively engaged in a process leading toward ordination.
4. Be able to pass a military entrance physical exam.

From this point forward, I will focus on information for chaplain candidates, beginning with inquiring about the program to accessioning to active duty. Some of this information may be useful for persons who already have completed seminary and are ordained and, thus, are seeking to be directly accessioned to the Chaplain Corps. Some of it may also be useful for chaplains and chaplain candidates in the Air Force and Navy. However, I am specifically targeting Army chaplain candidates.

Please note that this is an ongoing series of short articles. In order to see the list of articles available to date, you must view this article in its archived format by clicking the title of the article. At the bottom of each article in the series is a list of available articles. You may leave comments or ask questions by filling in the comment box at the bottom of any article or you may contact me directly.

I hope you will find this series helpful.

You’ve decided you’re interested in the challenges and opportunities of ministry as an Army chaplain. How do you learn more about it?

The first thing I recommend you do when considering the Army chaplaincy is to read a little about the requirements for appointment as a chaplain and about the ministry of the chaplaincy. You can read this on the Army recruiting website, in the chaplain recruiting area. From this section, you can request a packet of information to be mailed to you, locate the nearest chaplain recruiter, or chat with an Army recruiter (who will probably not be able to answer questions specifically related to the Chaplain Corps).

Go ahead and request an information packet. When you receive this, included will probably be a business card for your nearest chaplain recruiter. The country is divided into six recruiting brigades, with chaplain recruiters in Maryland, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Nevada, and Kentucky. If you didn’t receive contact information for your regional chaplain recruiter, call 866-684-1571 and follow the prompts to be connected.

Chaplain recruiters are chaplains. They have all been through the accessions process and probably even served as chaplain candidates. They are familiar with the special requirements for military ministry. I don’t recommend contacting a local Army recruiter (i.e., one who is not a chaplain recruiter) for information on the chaplaincy. If you do speak to a general recruiter, do NOT take his advice if he suggests that you become a chaplain assistant to “get your foot in the door”. If you meet the requirements for chaplaincy (now or in the future), you will already have your foot in the door; if you do not meet the requirements for chaplaincy, you will never be a chaplain, no matter what else you have been. Chaplain assistants are enlisted personnel; chaplains are officers. I’ll write more about chaplain assistants later.

Chaplain recruiters are different from general recruiters in other ways, too. For example, they probably won’t come to your home for a recruiting presentation or call you every other day for six months. If you’re in seminary, a chaplain recruiter may visit your school once or twice a year to meet students, set up a display, or visit with chaplain candidates. If you speak to a chaplain recruiter at one of these visits, he will not pressure you to join but he will provide helpful information and may schedule individual time to talk with you, if you request. He may give you a brochure or recommend that you speak with a fellow student who is already in the chaplain candidate program.

In my experience, dealing with three chaplain recruiters myself and hearing the experiences of others, chaplain recruiters will not hound you to do anything. In fact, if you are interested in becoming a chaplain candidate, they will expect you to take the initiative and get things done (such as completing paperwork). They will provide you with the information and forms you need–and will even give you guidance in filling out forms–but they will not call you every day just to make sure you haven’t changed your mind. Nor will they check up on you every week to make sure you are staying on track toward fulfilling the requirements for acceptance into the chaplain candidate program or for accessions.

I’ll continue this subject in Part 2.

Technorati Tags : army, chaplain, candidate, recruiting

Additional ways to learn more about the Army chaplaincy and the chaplain candidate program:

Seek out chaplain candidates in your seminary. They can relate their own experiences firsthand. They may be able to help you with paperwork or with contacting the chaplain recruiter. They can tell you what the Chaplain Officer Basic Course (CHOBC) is like. They can tell you where a quality chaplain candidate practicum can be experienced.

Seek out chaplains and chaplain candidates in your denomination; talk to your denomination’s ecclesiastical endorser. Do you attend a diocesan, district, or national council or convention? While you’re there, ask around for military chaplains. It’s possible that chaplains may come dressed in uniform. Ask around for your denomination’s endorser; he can connect you with chaplains. Chaplains can tell you what it’s like at their current duty station or what it was like at their last one. Do you want to know how chaplains minister in Korea? One of your denomination’s chaplains can probably tell you. It’s important that you talk to your denomination’s endorser to find out the special requirements you must fulfill to be endorsed by your church for military ministry; these vary by denomination and are in addition to what the Department of Defense requires.

Visit the nearest Army installation. Call up the installation and ask to be directed to the staff chaplain’s office. When connected, ask to speak to the training chaplain; if there’s no one specifically designated as the training chaplain, ask for the deputy staff chaplain; failing all else, ask for the NCOIC (the Noncommissioned Officer In Charge, who is a chaplain assistant). Tell the chaplain or chaplain assistant that you’re interested in the Army chaplaincy and that you’d like to talk with a local chaplain about military ministry. Believe me: they will jump at the chance! The Chaplain Corps currently has a recruiting program called “Finders Keepers; under this program, any installation that successfully recruits a chaplain is able to have that chaplain assigned to that installation for his initial assignment.

Read the literature. I’ve already mentioned the chaplain recruiting website and requesting an information packet. It’s essential that you read the literature if you really want to understand what the candidate program is about. The brochure will list the exact requirements you need to serve as a chaplain candidate or as a chaplain. Yes, there are steps to complete for each of these individual requirements–and a lot of paperwork to fill out–but the brochure gives a good summary.

Some of these suggestions may seem simple–and they are. Hopefully they are helpful for the beginner who has some interest, however faint, in the Army chaplaincy. When I first began to develop an interest in military chaplaincy, I didn’t know where to seek more information. I saw a couple of chaplaincy websites (Navy and Army, if I remember correctly) but that was it. I called up the general recruiting toll free numbers for the Army and Navy and gave my address for an information packet. The packets came and my knowledge increased a bit.

I called the local Army recruiter and asked about chaplaincy; he told me that I should become a chaplain assistant. Thankfully, I had gleaned enough information from the literature to know better. I was a little intimidated by the requirements for regular Army chaplaincy; so, thinking that the National Guard might have less stringent standards, I made an appointment to talk with an Alabama Guard recruiter. The appointment went fine but the recruiter wanted me to enlist, go through AIT (Advanced Individual Training), then go through OCS (Officer Candidate School). Again, I had picked up enough from the literature and websites to know better. I later learned that National Guard requirements for chaplaincy are the same as regular Army and Army Reserve requirements (and that the same Chief of Chaplains oversees them all).

So, the moral of the story is that you should avail yourself of all the information you can lay your hands on. If you wish, you can always contact me and I’ll help as much as possible.

You’ve decide to take the plunge and become a chaplain–or at least to become a chaplain candidate and test the water. The work has just begun.

The first part of serving as an Army chaplain candidate is submitting a packet for the appointment board. First, let’s run over the list of things you should already have at this point:

If you’ve already taken care of those matters, let’s move on.

The appointment packet requires that you complete a lot of paperwork. Here are some things that will be required:

There are more forms to complete; your chaplain recruiter will let you know what they are. Be certain that you complete them all in their entirety and that you provide truthful information. If you are unsure of what information is required for a particular document, ask your recruiter. In all of your answers, be truthful!

To help you prepare for completing the appointment process, here are a few more details.

Physical Exam
You must submit to a physical exam as soon as possible. You will be required to go to the nearest Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) for a complete physical. At the MEPS, you will complete forms about your medical background; go prepared with a list of any medications you are taking, information about any time you’ve been hospitalized or suffered a significant injury or illness, and be ready for uncomfortable questions and poking.

You will be required to provide a urine sample for drug and disease testing; you will be given a breath alcohol test; you will be checked for hernias; your teeth will be examined; etc. You will be required to bend and squat, to waddle and twist; this is simply a part of ensuring that your body is able to function normally.

While you’re going through all of these pleasantries, remember this mantra: Do it for your country! Do NOT forget to get at least one certified working copy of your physical exam paperwork before you leave MEPS.

School
You must provide transcripts of your undergraduate and seminary work. Contact your schools as soon as possible and arrange to have official transcripts mailed directly to your recruiter. Most schools require that their transcripts remain sealed to be official; don’t send in an opened copy or a student copy–it may be rejected. Some schools require at least a couple of weeks to process transcript requests; order early.

If you have not yet matriculated at seminary, you will need to provide a copy of your acceptance letter.

Security Clearance
Starting well in advance of the deadline for your packet to be in, begin scouring your memory and your records for information that will go on your security clearance questionnaire. You will be required to list every address at which you have lived in the last seven years (including temporary school addresses), how long you lived there, and the contact information for someone who knew you when you lived at that address. You will need to provide names, birth dates, and current addresses and phone numbers for your parents and siblings. You will need to list every job you’ve had in the last seven years (including dates for periods of unemployment), the dates you worked at each, and the contact information for your supervisors.

You will be required to give information about any past due debts you currently have or any accounts that have been significantly overdue. Your credit report will be pulled by the investigators–order a copy for yourself now to make sure it shows correct information and that you include all the correct information on the questionnaire. (I suggest that you order a report from each of the three national agencies; you are entitled to one free report each year.) Do not leave out any information about past due accounts!

You will need to provide information about any arrests. If you formerly led a wild life, be forthcoming. It is essential that you are honest.

It is not necessary that your security investigation be completed before you receive an appointment; however, you will need to submit the questionnaire before the appointment board convenes. Rest assured, your investigation will not be complete any time soon unless something really unusual happens. Before the clearance is granted, an investigator may call to set up an appointment with you to go over any questions he has. Cooperate fully. If there are any concerns about your background (arrests or financial concerns), someone other than the investigator will make an in-depth review and decide whether your clearance can be granted; don’t panic if this happens. Even if the adjudicator wishes to deny your clearance, you will be given the opportunity to contest the decision and to provide any additional information that may be useful.

Read about the security investigation, download the software, and get to work now.

Other Things
There may be other minor things you will need to complete before your packet is ready. Again, follow the instructions of your recruiter.

Talk with your recruiter to determine when you want to have your packet before a board. Boards meet once each month from February through November. Remember that, if you have questions, it’s always best to ask. The chaplain recruiter’s goal is to get you appointed as a chaplain candidate. Communicate to him your needs or concerns.

Give yourself plenty of time in advance of the target board. There is no way you will be able to get all of this done within the last two weeks before a board convenes. All of these things may seem daunting, but don’t give up. It’s not as difficult as it sounds!

Once the board has reviewed your packet, you will learn of its decision approximately thirty days after the board recesses.

There is one more important piece of the appointment process. Please read Part 2 for this vital information.

One of the most critical pieces in the chaplain candidate life cycle–and in the chaplaincy in general–is the ecclesiastical endorsement. For chaplain candidates, this is actually referred to as “ecclesiastical approval” instead of “ecclesiastical endorsement”. You will get nowhere as a prospective chaplain candidate/chaplain if you do not have an ecclesiastical approval/endorsement.

What is an ecclesiastical endorsement? Each denomination or endorsing body that is recognized by the Department of Defense provides endorsement for chaplains. This endorsement states that the chaplain is an ordained cleric in good standing of the respective denomination or body. It also states that the chaplain has completed a certain number of years of ministry experience and that the denomination approves of the chaplain serving as a military chaplain. For chaplain candidates, the ecclesiastical approval is simply a certification that the candidate is pursuing fulfillment of the requirements for chaplaincy and is recognized as a member in good standing of the denomination or body. (Form DD2088 is for ecclesiastical endorsement.)

If you do not have an approval, you will not be commissioned or appointed to the chaplain candidate program. You will not receive an ecclesiastical approval by simply calling up your denominational headquarters and asking that one be sent out in the next day’s mail. Your denomination will require that you fill out some paperwork, perhaps meet with the endorser for an interview, and that you provide documentation that you are enrolled in seminary. Your endorser may also require that you be presently working toward the denominational requirements for ordination (perhaps through some form of non-ordained certification or licensure).

Once you have met with your endorser and fulfilled all the denominational requirements for the ecclesiastical approval, the endorser will submit the approval to the Chief of Chaplains office. Request that the endorser also send you a copy (preferably a certified copy) for your records; this may be useful to you later, particularly if you ever change denominations. Your chaplain recruiter may also request that a copy be submitted directly to him. Your recruiter will not submit your packet for the chaplain candidate appointment board without your ecclesiastical approval being on record.

After you are commissioned and appointed a chaplain candidate, you will not be allowed to continue as a candidate if, for any reason, your ecclesiastical approval is withdrawn. If you happen to change denominations while a chaplain candidate, make sure that no period of time passes between the date your former denomination withdraws its approval and your new denomination submits its approval. If you lose your ecclesiastical approval, you will be separated from the military!

If your endorser requires that you submit progress reports, letters, copies of your grades from seminary, or any other documentation; or, if he makes any other requirements; be certain that you keep these things up to date. Do not give your endorser any reason to drop your approval. Do not give him any reason to think you have disappeared from the face of the earth or that you are not interested in chaplaincy any longer. It is better to contact your endorser too often than too infrequently. After all, when it comes time for you to accession to active duty (or a reserve appointment), if your endorser doesn’t know who you are or remember you, it may be a little hard to receive an updated ecclesiastical endorsement.

Okay, you’ve been through the paperwork and your packet went before the chaplain candidate appointment board. You were approved and you’ve received your appointment packet, sworn the oath of office, and mailed the papers in. You’ve received your commission and your letter of appointment to the IRR. Now what?

Education
The most important thing you can do as a chaplain candidate is to continue your education. The chaplain candidate manager requires that you complete at least nine hours of coursework each semester (full-time status); eighteen completed hours per academic year is the prerequisite for candidate training. So, if you drop out of school or drop below full time, don’t expect to stay in the program.

Additionally, by October 1 of each year, you should submit ARPC Form 1046-1 to the candidate manager. This form must be signed by your school registrar, stating that you are enrolled full-time in a qualified educational program. This form provides a waiver from active duty. If you do not file this form, you are subject to being called up; if you are called up to active duty–and as a chaplain candidate, you are not yet branch-qualified to serve as a chaplain–you could be required to fulfill your military obligation in another branch. This is theoretical, of course, because the Army doesn’t want chaplain candidates on active duty who have yet to complete the requirements of branch qualification (whether chaplaincy or some other branch). If you happen to be a prior service officer who is now in the candidate program, I strongly urge that you keep this form updated! It may save you the headache of a mistaken callup (because you are already qualified in some other branch).

Church
The second most important thing for you to do as a chaplain candidate is to meet the qualifications for ordination by your denomination. This varies by denomination, obviously. However, it is important that you are involved in a local church now. It is also important that, as soon as possible, you become involved in your local section, district, presbytery, deanery, diocese, or council. If no one in your denomination knows you, except for your endorser, the possibility of you gaining ministry experience is very little.

If you happen to work in ministry while in seminary, verify with your endorser whether this ministry may meet your denomination’s requirements for chaplaincy endorsement. Most denominations require ministry experience to be completed after seminary in order for you to be endorsed as a chaplain. In fact, the Army itself prefers this sequence and, if you are endorsed without post-seminary ministry experience, your endorser will be required to provide a written statement affirming that he is endorsing you without such post-seminary experience.

Training
Perhaps the sole reason you became a chaplain candidate was to complete military training. See upcoming installments of this series for information about training opportunities (CHOBC and Practicums).

Surviving
The mere fact that you now have a gold bar on your collar doesn’t mean you know what being an officer is about or how to survive in military life. If you’ve had prior service, you have a leg up. Either way, read the forthcoming post in this series entitled Surviving in the Army.

All Army chaplains must complete the Chaplain Officer Basic Course (CHOBC). This course takes place at the U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School (USACHCS) at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina.

I am frequently questioned by civilians whether chaplains go through basic training. No, chaplains do not go through basic training (boot camp), as enlisted personnel do. However, all officers go through some basic course. Most officers are made either through Officer Candidate School (OCS) or through the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). And all officers must complete their Officer Basic Course (OBC) to become qualified in the branch in which they will serve–such as infantry, finance, artillery, etc. The course that qualifies chaplains in their branch is CHOBC.

Now, someone will ask, “Is it possible to be a chaplain without completing CHOBC?” Yes and no. Some Reserve and National Guard soldiers who already have completed the requirements for serving as a chaplain (other than CHOBC) are given slots as assignments with their local units. However, they are non-deployable because they are not branch qualified, and they must complete CHOBC within a certain period of time after appointment. This case does not apply to chaplain candidates.

Chaplain Candidates may enroll in CHOBC for a summer course (June-September) or a winter course (January-April). In order to enroll, candidates must have completed at least 24 semester hours of seminary coursework in the year preceding the CHOBC class they will enter; in some cases, this prerequisite may be waived or altered–contact the Chaplain Candidate Manager if you have some special circumstance.

Additionally, a chaplain candidates may not complete the entire course at one time, unless he is about to enter his senior year of seminary, or has already complete seminary. Instead, he may enroll in the course in phases. (There are also practicums available that can provide more training opportunities.)

CHOBC is divided into four phases: Chaplain Initial Military Training (CIMT, a.k.a. “Common Core”), Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III. CIMT is the acclimation phase for new soldiers; it includes instruction in common soldiering skills and a short field training exercise (FTX); those who have prior service or are transferring branches may be able to forgo this phase. Also, prior service or branch transfer soldiers may be able to complete Phase I by correspondence. Consult the Chaplain Candidate Manager for assistance. Phases 1, 2, and 3 are primarily focused on classroom instruction, though Phase 3 does include a final FTX aimed at practical application of the CHOBC instruction up to that point.

The next two installments of this series will provide more information about preparing for and thriving in CHOBC.