For Such a Time As This: Back In the Army, 10 Years Later

Well, this is my first blog attempt, so please be gentle with me.

There's a popular jody call* that begins with, "Here we go again (echo), Same old stuff again (echo ...it has been sanitized in recent years to "stuff again")..." Talk about de ja vu all over again. Here we go again, back in the military, this time as an Army Chaplain, with the Florida National Guard. A few Sundays ago, we bid our farewells at my last service as pastor, and I embarked on the newest leg of the journey. I’ve just completed my first week of the three-month Chaplain Officer Basic Course (now it’s called CH-BOLC – more on that later). After finishing the school, I’ll spend a few months on active duty with my unit, the 779th Engineer Battalion out of Tallahassee, and then we will be deploying to Iraq in late spring for a year. Eventually, I will return to congregational ministry and continue as a drilling National Guard Chaplain. But for now, it’s just Army.

Some might wonder why. Why start a new thing all over again? Am I leaving the ministry for the military? Fair questions, and worthy of consideration.

My first concern is to the question of this being something new. Instead, I look at it like God has been preparing my life for thirty years for just this moment. More than ever, I can Identify with Queen Esther, who was challenged by her Uncle Mordecai: “Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?" Okay, I SORT OF identify with her. It’s not like I’ve been made … well, I think you get what I’m saying.

The beautiful Esther was prepared and put in a position where she, and only she, could speak freely to the king. She did so, and saved her people from a vicious persecution. In the same respect, I believe that God has prepared me to be able to speak into the lives of soldiers. Many of these soldiers will be afraid, or angry, or lonely. So many will be asking, perhaps for the first time or the only time, “Does God have a word for me??” I consider it a privilege -- a humbling, undeserved privilege -- to bring that word from God.

Over these past thirty years, God has developed me along two fronts: military and pastoral. I spent the last ten years in pastoral ministry and the ten years before that as a commissioned officer in the Army. In the ten years prior to that, I served a tour in the Marines, picked up my undergraduate degree in Christian Studies and Business, and spent time in the Army Reserves and Hawaii National Guard, while the call of God to ministry was being birthed in my life. All of these experiences are coming together in this newest chapter.

If you want to see in more detail how the military and ministry aspects of my life have led to this moment, you can wade through the endless succession of jobs in my profile, here or on Facebook.com.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be adding some more comments, on what it’s like going back into the Army as a 47 year-old soon-to-be grandpa. A lot has changed in the interim. And a lot has stayed the same.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. I look forward to any comments. May God bless you in every possible way.

Chaplain (Captain) Jeff Peppers


*jody call: one of those sung cadences the soldiers echo while marching or running in formation. They are called "Jody Calls" after the ubiquitous stealer of women, liquor and cadillacs. Jody calls lamented things like "Ain't no use in looking down, Jody's got your girl and gone." Doesn't rhyme or make much sense. But they don't have to.