Friday, January 2, 2009

Typical

Ok so I've caught a bug from my wife with blog reading and last night I discovered a blog that listed a lot of chaplain/candidate chaplain blogs. Boy was I surprised to read some of them and see that they had went through a lot of the same processes getting to their calling, questions from friends and family, and it all turned out ok lol. I remember when I first told my parents my dad asked me "Son make sure you aren't just going back in because of the money, I know you are called to the ministry and I could see you in this but just make sure" and low and behold I read two other chaplains who had had the same question put to them. At one point I was even asked if Christina being pregnant would change my mind about going in, apparently thats a normal question also. All in all I learned a lot about people by reading these blogs. In a recent conversation with a friend of mine whom I consider a sister, she couldn't grasp that a chaplain is a pastor, once again apparently her confusion is not abnormal but many people wonder about it lol. I guess the biggest reason is that most civilian chaplains aren't in actual pastoral roles maybe, honestly I don't know that either. I do know that one of the biggest hurdles for me to get over was the fact that I knew chaplains while I was in who weren't called to pastor and frankly they sucked! I didn't want to be that person as much as I felt the calling to the role I felt it was wrong because I didn't want to be a pastor. As most of my 10's of readers know(i have a tracker so I know I have 10 readers somewhere lol)I accepted the fact that I was called to that role and since then have actually embraced it and I am looking forward to becoming a full time pastor. These thoughts are once again common in a lot of people called into the chaplaincy from places in life similar to mine. I know there are people who go into pastorates before they are called into the chaplaincy so it works both ways, I only know it from my perspective though. Overall I guess I could say that I was encouraged to hear that I wasn't the only one who had questions, who had questions asked and who didn't have really good answers lol

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