In the fall of 2008, 3rd Battalion Eighth Marine Regiment
deployed from Camp Lejeune North Carolina to Helmand Province Afghanistan,
with more than a thousand Marines and Sailors in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
In seven months of intense combat
across a full spectrum of counter insurgency operations,
these men and a few women assigned to the unit
fought very bravely and secured a huge portion of southern Helmand Province
as the only infantry battalion in Afghanistan at the time.
In those seven months, and in the months that followed,
I had the challenge, and the honor of conducting fourteen memorial services.
In the Hebrew bible in the twenty-third psalm it says
‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil, for you are with me.’
As a Navy Chaplain serving with these men and women,
it was my calling, it was my privilege
to remind them that God was with them in the darkest times,
and to encourage them to invite God, invite the divine,
the holy, however they defined it,
into their difficult circumstances
to create space for the redemptive power of hope.
That’s what Navy Chaplains do every day.
For Sailors, for Marines, for Coast Guardsmen,
and for their families all around the world.
Good morning everyone.
For those I haven’t had the privilege of meeting,
my name is Chaplain Jason Dipinto,
and I’m the West Coast Chaplain Programs Officer.
I want to talk to you today a little bit about what it means to be a Navy Chaplain.
Talk to you about who we are,
and talk to you about why we chose this profession.
So who are Navy Chaplains?
Navy Chaplains are priests, they’re imams, they’re rabbis,
they’re men and women from across all religious organizations who feel a call.
To wear not just the cloth of their faith tradition,
not just the cloth of their religious organization, but the cloth of their nation.
To serve the men and women of the sea services.
We’re religious leaders, and we’re Naval officers.
We’re faithful to our calling as Chaplains,
and we strive each and every day to grow in our faith,
and to encourage the men and women that we serve to grow in their faith.
But as Naval officers we’ve taken an oath,
to defend the Constitution of The United States,
and to diligently and faithfully discharge our duties.
You know I think, uh, Chaplaincy is a really unique ministry.
And Navy Chaplaincy is not the only kind of ministry.
You can be a Hospital Chaplain, a Prison Chaplain,
a VA Chaplain, a College Chaplain.
Even some corporations have Chaplains that work for them.
But I’ll tell you what.
A Prison Chaplain is not usually him or herself an inmate.
And a Hospital Chaplain is not usually him or herself a patient.
But a Navy Chaplain is a United States Sailor, and a Naval Officer.
We are part of that organization from the inside out,
and we care about our people because we are part of that people.
The Navy Chaplain Corp has more than a thousand men and women
from across all religious backgrounds
who serve in the active and reserve component.
And we represent more than a hundred different religious organizations.
We represent Buddhists, Baptists, Hindus, Lutherans,
Muslims, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, across the entire spectrum.
And we serve in a variety of locations.
As you can imagine serving with all those different components,
we could serve onboard ships, we could serve with Destroyer squadrons,
or with Submarine squadrons.
We could serve on board shore, over seas in places like
Naples Italy, or Rota Spain, or in Okinawa, Sasebo Japan.
But no matter where I go, and no matter what I do,
every Navy Chaplain performs four essential functions.
I want to lay those out for you first.
Our first function that we perform is we provide
religious services for those from our faith tradition.
That’s gonna be worship services, that’s gonna be scripture study,
and the sorts of things that you would expect from say a pastor,
or rabbi, or clergy person in a traditional church.
The second thing we do is something I already talked about.
We facilitate for the religious needs of others.
That means, when I go to a command if I have Jewish personnel assigned,
I’m going to gather those folks together
and hopefully identify somebody who might be willing to serve as a lay leader.
And I do the same thing for folks from the Native American background,
from a Muslim background.
All those groups come together and I help support them
as they step in to worshiping God as they see him.
And then the third that I do, is I take care of everybody.
Provide pastoral care for everybody in my command.
I tell people I don’t care if you’re Buddhist, or Baptist, or nothing.
If you’re having a hard time, if you’re having a tough day,
if you’re going through something that you’re not quite able to deal with,
swing by my office.
We’ll close the door, and we’ll sit down,
we’ll have a quiet, confidential conversation
about what’s going on in your life,
and we’ll hopefully get you pointed in the right direction.
And the fourth thing that Navy Chaplains do,
is we advise the chain of command on the impact of religion upon operations.
That means we’re going to be talking to senior leaders
about things like morale, and ethics.
Spiritual well being of the command.
That means we’re gonna be engaging the command
as they do the mission of the Navy,
or the Marine Corp around the world.
Making sure to create space for Sailors and Marines
and Coast Guardsmen to have quality lives of spirituality.
When we do our job well, when US Navy Chaplains
support the service men and women and their families well,
we create space for people to have hope,
in sometimes very difficult times.
The other great thing that Navy Chaplains have,
is that we have access to the service men and women that we support,
twenty-four seven each and every day.
And if somebody’s having a hard time on a ship or in the Marine Corp,
I can go to that person, find them in a quiet moment,
and just say ‘How’re you doing?”
When I would go up to the, the bridge of the ship,
the command center of the ship, and I would give evening prayer,
my favorite thing to do afterwards was go up topside
and spend twenty minutes with the forward lookout.
‘Cause no one wants to be the forward lookout
at twenty-two hundred in the evening.
When it’s quiet, it’s dark. Sometimes it’s even cold.
But when you’re up there with that man, or that woman,
who’s keeping an eye out,
making sure there’s nothing dangerous on the horizon,
you can have a great conversation about what’s going on in their life.
How they’re doing. What they need.
It’s a chance to be there for somebody,
and invite them to remember that God is present with them
even topside at twenty-two hundred at night.
Now there are a few ways to join the Chaplain Corp,
but I’m going to focus on the Chaplain Candidate Program.
The Chaplain Candidate Program is for folks who are
in the process of completing their theological studies.
Haven’t yet finished that degree,
but are interested in earning a commission as a Naval Officer.
To apply to be a Chaplain Candidate,
there’s a couple criteria that you have to meet.
You have to be twenty-one years of age,
and you have to have a bachelors degree of no less than
one hundred and twenty semester credit hours from an accredited school.
Then you have to have been accepted
in a graduate theological institution for a degree
of no less than seventy-two semester credit hours.
You have to get what’s called Ecclesiastical Approval,
which is just a fancy way of saying,
your religious organization says,
"We think you’re a good Chaplain Candidate,
and we’re willing to endorse you for the program."
And then, once you complete your graduate education,
and then all the additional requirements of your church,
you have to be prepared to supersede into either being a reserve
or active Chaplain within six months.
Once you’ve been selected as a Chaplain,
all Chaplains have to go through basically two different types of training.
They go through Naval Officer training,
and then they go through specific training
to teach you how to be a Navy Chaplain.
If you have a desire and a commitment to serve,
as a minister, as a rabbi, as a priest, as an imam, as a pastor
or a clergy person from your faith background,
and you have a heart for Sailors, for Marines,
for Coast Guardsmen, their families, and the veterans.
If you’re willing to sacrifice to do your part.
If you’re willing to potentially be away from your loved ones for a little while,
but you feel like that sacrifice is worth it because you’re contributing
to a ministry that extends so much broader in a world wide focus.
If you’re willing to bring your talent,
and your experience to a dynamic and focused ministry,
and if you’re willing to work with people from different faith backgrounds
while being respectful of the beliefs of others,
invite you to consider a Navy Chaplaincy
as a fun and dynamic ministry that will challenge you
beyond your wildest dreams,
but reward you beyond all you could hope or imagine.
Thank you so much for your time today.
Again my name is Chaplain Jason Dipinto,
I’m the West Coast Chaplain Programs Officer.
Thank you very much and God bless you.
(applause)