Chaplains Reach Out To Many at Christmas

Christian Reformed Church chaplains will be ministering this holiday season to people facing many challenges in a wide range of settings.

Chaplains will, for instance, be reaching out to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, prisoners in Guatemala, to factory and white-collar workers in Michigan, and to those suffering from depression and loss in California and elsewhere.

Although chaplains are active throughout the year, Christmas can be an especially rough time for people – and a particularly busy and demanding period for the chaplains.

Years of experience on the front lines of war or in neonatal intensive care units have equipped chaplains to walk with people in times of great stress and sorrow, as well in times of joy and expectation, says Rev. Herman Keizer Jr., the CRC’s director of Chaplaincy Ministries.

“From my vantage point, I see CRC chaplains as very busy during this season of the year,” says Keizer.

When he served as a hospital chaplain, says Keizer, he worked with patients who had good memories of past holiday seasons, but who were often sad and lonely. As a military chaplain in Vietnam, he experienced firsthand how much he missed his wife and children. Just like the soldiers he served, he was thousands of miles from home.

Prison chaplains work in especially tough circumstances, he says, since they often must minister to prisoners whose memories of family and Christmas are harsh. In addition, they are locked up.

Rev. Joel Van Dyke, director of a gang chaplaincy program in Guatemala, says that although people behind bars face special problems at Christmas, it can be a happy time for some.

“This is one of the best times of the year for our chaplains to be working with gang members,” says Van Dyke, who works with Christian Reformed World Missions. “The prisoners are in better moods, get more visitors, and lots and lots of special food.”

Rev. Roger Bouma, a Navy chaplain, says Christmas is a season when family members share the loneliness and longing experienced by their loved ones serving overseas. Recently, he sat in his office at the Great Lakes Naval Station outside of Chicago with a 4-year-old boy and listened to the boy talk about how hard it is to have his daddy gone.

Rev. Curt Roelofs, a hospital chaplain in Lansing, Mich., says “Christmas time can be the richest and most wonderful time or it may be the worst of times.” 

He has sat with parents and experienced the joy they feel when their baby is born at this time of the year. He also has sat with parents who experience sorrow when a child dies. “Both have a profound impact on how one celebrates the Christmas event,” he says.

Rev. James Kok, director of the “Care and Kindness” ministry at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., says he finds that there is an enormous group of people who suffer during this time of year and try to find ways not to be reminded of Christmas.

“This is usually because a child has died, sometimes a spouse has died, maybe a painful divorce. Christmas decorations, songs, celebrations etc. bring back powerful emotions beyond what they want to endure.”

The answer, beside talking and praying about their loss, can be to do something like take a cruise, go to Las Vegas, or simply engage in some activity that is not linked to the season, says Kok.

Rev. Ron Klimp, a workplace chaplain in Cadillac, Mich., finds that financial pressure can cause hardship prior to, but especially after, Christmas. Others may face the possibility of layoffs or job cutbacks.

Some people are alone for the holidays, feel deeply discouraged and have a hard time asking God to bless them or be part of their Christmas season, says Klimp. There are others, though, who use the season as time to reconnect with God.

Whatever the situation, as a chaplain, you need to get next to people and try to move them in the direction of embracing Jesus and trying to understand how faith in God can carry them through at all times – the good, the bad and the in between, Klimp says.

For more information on CRC Chaplaincy, visit http://www.crcna.org/pages/chaplaincy.cfm or contact Rev. Herman Keizer, Jr., director of Chaplaincy Ministries, at [email protected].