“How you manage your personal life is crucial…. The truth of the matter is that there’s another side of life that is much more important.”
As a battalion chaplain, I was asked to participate in a two-week field training exercise where the officers would be sleeping in individual tents, and the soldiers in larger tents with a bunch of other people.
A few weeks before we left for the field, a female officer came to my office to ask if I wanted to share a tent with her while we were in the field. When I mentioned that I was married, she casually replied, “That’s OK. I’m not asking you to leave your wife, just that we sleep together for the couple of weeks we’re in the field.”
I was taken by surprise at her offer. She knew I was the chaplain. She knew I was a Christian. And she was a regular attender of Bible studies and worship services. I never expected this. I told her that I planned to be faithful to the Lord and to my wife, and declined her offer.
“It’s no big deal,” she countered. “I’ve done it before, and I’m a good Christian.” I was still in shock at her blatant proposal and all I could think of to say was, “Well, I don’t live that way.”
That’s the way temptation happens sometimes. It catches you off guard and you have to know your values and commitments and be true to them. One of the principles of effective “ministry of presence” is that a chaplain needs to be where the people in the command are. This is true even when the unit is conducting a training event away from home. But even then, I am committed to keeping the promises I made to God and to my wife.
~ Chaplain Paul Linzey, Colonel, United States Army (Ret.)
See all ten of the top ways to succeed in the personal life of a chaplain in Chaplain Linzey’s new book, Military Ministry: Chaplains in the Twenty-First Century.
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