wfn.org | Episcopalians: From shock to service: How congregations respond to war's impact

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

April 9, 2003

2003-078

Episcopalians: From shock to service: How congregations respond 
to war's impact

by Jan Nunley

(ENS) For the most part, military chaplains come from 
congregations that receive the news that their priest is being 
mobilized and potentially deployed "suddenly," explains Bishop 
George Packard, the Episcopal Church's suffragan for chaplains. 
"It sends a shock wave through the whole Eucharistic community 
and they have to reorient themselves: how do we function, how do 
we take care of the priest's family left behind, how do we take 
care of our own needs? Will we have enough money for an interim 
priest? So there's lots of kinds of stressors that are brought 
immediately upon these congregations as well as those priests 
who are being deployed as chaplains." 

Packard's office has learned to work with diocesan bishops to 
form a plan for congregations whose priest, now a chaplain, may 
be gone for a year or more. "The old days of the prior Gulf War 
where you would be out for six, seven months tops are a thing of 
the past," he said. "These folks are mobilizing now, expecting 
to be there through December."

Some congregations take it in stride. "It varies. Some 
congregations just plow right ahead and we never hear anything," 
said the Ret. Gerry Blackburn, director for military ministries. 
"Others call us and say they need help. Some don't have the 
resources, and the priest steps out of the picture for six, 
seven months, and attendance sometimes drops, income sometimes 
drops. But that is the exception more than the rule." 

Focus on the work at hand

The important thing for Packard's office is to make certain such 
concerns don't weigh on the mind of a deployed chaplain. "We try 
to enhance the environment so that they're only looking forward 
at the present situation, not at what's going on at home," 
Packard explained. "It's a hard human dynamic to put in place, 
but if they're not present with their current charge of the 
military unit that's around them, they're really nowhere, 
they're caught between two worlds. So it's a very important 
thing to encourage that focus to the work that's at hand."

Packard and Blackburn have been working with vestries and 
preparing materials in concert with the Church Pension Fund in 
the last two months, to help churches that are having a tough 
time financially in meeting the obligations of a priest who's 
away. "The Pension Fund folks have been really supportive and 
trying to help us in every way," Blackburn said.

"We learned the hard way that if you try to reinvent the wheel 
and not go through dioceses, you're in trouble," Packard said. 
"So we have made sure that beyond the obvious thing of 
supporting military chaplains and their families, the dioceses 
are the ones that know of the families of active-duty military."

Already, Packard has had to travel to a prayer service at Grace 
Church in Merchantville, New Jersey, the home parish of Sgt. 
James Riley, a mechanic with the 507th Maintenance Company who 
was among those ambushed early in the war after taking a wrong 
turn near Nasiriyah. Riley and four others have been held 
captive by Iraqi forces since March 23. Injured private first 
class Jessica Lynch and the bodies of eight soldiers from that 
company have been recovered. 

"That diocese has a support plan. They have connected with every 
congregation and tried to find who are the Episcopalians in the 
military," said Packard. "So we've been collecting plans for how 
these dioceses have been doing that, posting those on the web 
page and trying to get dioceses to copy each other." 

A non-anxious presence

If Packard has one piece of advice for congregations and 
dioceses, it's this: "Find out who are the military in your 
dioceses. They tend to be invisible. They're either embarrassed 
about serving in the military, or it just never comes up so this 
is not the time for these families and individuals to be 
isolated. It's also not the time to be isolated from the Islamic 
community, the Arab community, in your town." 

It's also important to provide communities with a "non-anxious 
presence," he said. "This is a time to develop what we call the 
St. Paul effect--keep the lights on in the church and make it 
accessible to all [as St. Paul's Chapel did at Ground Zero in 
New York]. We've learned that despite what everybody tells you 
to do, you keep the church open, the coffeepot on, some sort of 
maven-like character there if the rector's not so disposed, and 
have a place open where people can come in."

Packard and Blackburn emphasized that the experience of the 
World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks and their 
aftermath taught them the importance of preparation for 
disaster. "I remember Bishop Packard calling us all together and 
saying you know, we may have to do this again one day. Let's be 
ready," Blackburn recalled. They've prepared and sent to every 
Episcopal congregation a new CD resource called "What to Do Next 
When a Disaster Strikes," designed to help congregations and 
communities faced with responding to any crisis--going to war, 
facing a terrorist event, even a natural disaster.

------

--The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of Episcopal News 
Service.