Anyone needs care,
‘
hey, we’re here’ W
ELCA chaplains stand ready with a listening ear By Rachel Pritchett
ith a smile as strong as steel, Paul E. Meeker strides past desks at the Bremerton [Wash.] Police Department. “Make my way through, just check on people, let them know they’re appreciated. Anyone
needs care, hey, we’re here,” Meeker said, ticking off a list of what he does for the local police.
For 20 years, the pastor of Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Bremerton has been a trusted, much-loved chaplain at the station. A records clerk asks Meeker to pray for her son who is learning to drive. “Absolutely,” he says before moving on. One officer’s relationship with his wife has gone cold. Another’s daughter is taking drugs and causing him pain, which he brings to work.
Meeker makes a special stop at yet another officer’s desk. Her son killed himself a few years back. Meeker is front and center for her. “A lot of times I call it a ministry of listening, just a ministry of presence,” Meeker said.
Pritchett is the communicator for the Southwestern Washington Synod and a newspaper reporter in Bremerton, Wash. 32 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
RACHEL PRITCHETT
Bremerton, Wash., is an unpreten- tious city with a naval shipyard and businesses tailored to sailors. In this setting, Meeker provides a minis- try of presence for the city’s police department.
Quietly doing their job No one knows how many chaplains serve in the U.S. Most, like Meeker, are volunteers who quietly do their work year after year, unnoticed by any larger organization.
David C. Johnson, president of the
national Association of Professional Chaplains, estimates there are 20,000 active and retired chaplains in the U.S., though his organization only has about 4,000 certified members (
www.professionalchaplains.org). “They’re not counted in any way,” Johnson said, noting that it’s difficult to demonstrate to employers the cost- savings of having a chaplain on staff without data to back it up. And lack of data really hurts in a slow economy when chaplaincy posi- tions can be the first to go. “That’s part of the problem with the field,” he said, adding that efforts are under way to change that. The ELCA has 202 people on its roster who are certified by the APC, said Judith Simonson, assis- tant director for ELCA Ministries in Chaplaincy, Pastoral Counseling and Clinical Education. Most who take this path in the ELCA receive assign- ments in social services or campus ministries. Another 216 rostered people have earned endorsements through the ELCA Bureau for Federal Chaplaincy Ministries. They work in the armed forces or for veterans’ groups and prisons.
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