Kenyan Sworn in as CRC Military Chaplain

Pastor Cornelius Muasa raised his right hand on Monday morning and listened as Rev. Herman Keizer spoke the words that made Muasa one of the first African-Americans to serve as a military chaplain in the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

Until recently, Keizer was the director of the CRC’s Chaplaincy Ministries. Now retired, he came back at Muasa’s request to do the swearing-in. Without doing an exhaustive search of records, Keizer said, “I think Neil is the first black we’ve had to serve as a military chaplain.” Keizer himself was a long-time and decorated military chaplain.

“It’s tough for us (he and his wife, especially since he could end up in a war zone), but we also see the need for me serving as a military chaplain,” says Muasa, a Kenyan who is now a permanent resident of the U.S.

Recently graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary and ordained by Woodlawn CRC, Muasa will soon be given orders as to which Army Reserve unit in Michigan he will be attached to. He will be able to start ministry right away among the soldiers, but he won’t be deployed, to a war zone or elsewhere, until he undergoes basic training either this fall or early next year.

“I’ve been thinking about becoming a chaplain for about eight years,” says Muasa, who grew up in Kenya and went to high school and college there before coming to the United States to attend Calvin Seminary. His interest in chaplaincy began in Kenya when, already ordained as a pastor, he worked as a chaplain at a boarding school for high school students.

Muasa says he found the work challenging and satisfying, especially being able to talk one-on-one with young students about their problems and how they could find solace and answers in the Lord. He plans to begin work on a doctoral degree in psychology at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich., next year.

“Once I researched it, I found out that there was a big need for chaplains in the Army,” Muasa said, following the swearing-in ceremony. “I also learned that there is a wide-open door for ministry in the military chaplaincy. You minister to all people regardless of their background.”

Muasa says he looks forward to connecting and doing ministry with young soldiers in the Army, just as he did with the young people at the school in Kenya. “I want to provide emotional and spiritual encouragement,” he says. “My heart is for the soldiers and to be there for them.”

Muasa came to the U.S. five years ago. While here, he met his future wife, Lauren, who was attending Calvin College at that time. As she looks ahead to what her husband might face, perhaps being deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, she says she is apprehensive and yet also finds comfort in knowing that the soldiers in those war zones will be well taken care of by her husband.

“I admire his decision to want to do this,” says Lauren. Echoing the sentiments of her husband, she said, “It is what we want and what we have prayed for for awhile.”

As for being the first black to serve as a military chaplain in the CRC, he said he had no idea that that was the case. Whether he is or isn’t doesn’t matter, though. He didn’t sign up because of race, but because this is the ministry into which God has called him, he says.

—Chris Meehan, CRC Communications