Military Chaplain Reflects on Three Tours of Duty to Iraq

Capt. Jonathan Averill said his decision to become a Christian Reformed Church U.S. Army Chaplain was fairly simple.

When he was serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army Reserve in Kosovo in the late 1990s, he needed someone to talk to, and his platoon leader suggested he speak to an Army chaplain.

“He was really nice and helpful, and I remembered that,” said Averill, son of retired CRC minister Brent Averill.

Then Jonathan came across another chaplain when he was serving in Iraq and then Kuwait in 2003-2004 as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Comparing the first chaplain he spoke with to the second he met while working as the driver of a commander in Kuwait, he saw major differences.

“That chaplain wasn’t very good. He didn’t like soldiers,” said Averill. “Slowly, over time, I thought I could do better. . . . My calling came in the deserts of Kuwait.”

Growing up in the CRC, Jonathan Averill thought he might one day be an overseas missionary. But the calling came in the form of chaplaincy and, after returning home in 2004, he enrolled in Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and eventually went through the U.S. Army Chaplain School.

He is now one of 21 CRC-endorsed military chaplains out of a total of 142 chaplains serving in a range of other settings including hospitals, hospices, industry, and police and fire departments.

Military chaplains such as Jon Averill, said Sarah Roelofs, director of the CRC’s Chaplaincy and Care Ministry, “are charged with developing and administering a viable, vibrant, and complex religious program within a specialized, dynamic context.”

This requires expertise on the part of chaplains to ensure religious freedom and care for all soldiers with whom they work.

“When military chaplains are deployed to war settings, they provide pastoral care in remote and desolate places while risking their lives to answer God's call,” said Roelofs, who worked in a variety of hospital settings and served in the U.S. Air Force Reserve before being named to her current position.

After being ordained in October 2009 and accessioned to active duty that December, Averill was sent back to Iraq, and this time he was given the duty of overseeing a Sunday-morning gospel service, which drew many African American soldiers.

“That was not my CRC tradition, but it was a great service,” he said. “That’s what happens as a chaplain in the military. You work with people in all denominations or with those who have no denomination at all.”

During two tours as an Army chaplain in Iraq, Averill said, he spent time doing such things as making sure Jewish soldiers could get kosher MREs (meals ready to eat) and that Wiccan soldiers could find a space for worship.

He recalls one soldier, a Muslim, who was baffled by Averill’s kindness to people of all faiths. “I was able to tell her I was there to minister for Christ.”

There are many day-to-day aspects to the job as well, such as speaking with soldiers and coordinating worship services. And during his deployment last year, he said, he had to go into a marketplace to buy all of the candles in a shop for a Christmas candlelight service.

Then there are the packages.

“People from home can’t always send packages to the soldiers, so the parcels come to the chaplain to distribute. When the soldiers don’t need what they get — things such as hats and mittens — we give them to people on the base, and their kids are thrilled to get them,” he said, explaining that northern Iraq gets cold in the winter.

As a chaplain, Averill added, he isn’t an evangelist, serving in uniform to bring people to Christ by the words he speaks. “We understand that people come to God in different ways. We don’t force God on them. We plant the seed and let God grow it.” The trust he builds by being approachable often causes soldiers to return in times of crisis, asking more about Jesus and the hope Averill seems to have.

In planting seeds, he said, he has spent many hours speaking to soldiers about their jobs and their struggles, such as being away from home, sometimes having a spouse who left them, sometimes taking lives, and sometimes having to witness the aftermath of violence.

Sometimes these soldiers also came to him with moral quandaries, telling him they never dreamed they would one day be in a war and see so much death and people wounded.

“They can go through some tough things,” said Averill. “But many are able to deal with a situation and move on, although for some their experiences will define them for the rest of their lives.”

In his three tours in Iraq, Averill has seen a clear evolution of the war, starting with the firepower of the initial invasion in 2003-2004, to a time in which the U.S. was still deeply involved in 2010, to his most recent deployment, in which he experienced the U.S. pullback and drawdown of people and resources.

Now back in the U.S. with his family, he said he doesn’t think he’ll be ordered to return to Iraq. While he was there and even now, though, his heart grieves for the persecution fellow Christians face in the Middle East.

“The lives of Christians are being snuffed out in the Middle East,” said Averill. “Being on the ground, I talked to Christians and heard what they are going through, how they are being persecuted and losing their lives or being kidnapped so that their families will pay for them.”

Despite the sorrow he feels over the persecution and the pain soldiers have shared with him, Averill said that serving as a military chaplain is very gratifying. He is less a missionary and more a witness, and that suits him as a Reformed Christian, he said.

“There is a lot of respect for you as a chaplain. I have served under several commanders who believe I can bring something they can’t — a spiritual resilience,” he said. “We bring a sense of morality just by showing up and being there, often on the front lines.”