Being a Chaplain

By Miranda Threlfall-Holmes

Chaplaincy - a place for those who have sold out, can't hack church ministry and don't believe in mission?

Against the negative stereotypes, this book argues that chaplains are a valuable resource to the Church. Embedded in places as diverse as prisons, hospitals, educational establishments and the armed forces, chaplains often encounter social trends well in advance of the institutional churches. Their experiences and expertise can be very helpful for thinking about ministry, ecclesiology and the engagement with contemporary society.

The first five parts of this book gather together stories of 22 chaplains working in a wide variety of contexts and from a range of Christian churches. The final part consists of four essays on key themes: multi-faith issues; the core skills needed by a chaplain; models of chaplaincy; and tensions that can arise in the work.

This book is for chaplains, students, clergy and all those who are considering becoming a chaplain or have dealings with people in the role. It will be of considerable interest to anyone who wonders what exactly chaplains do, how and why they do it and what the churches can learn from their experiences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Apr 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9780281066599

Miranda Threlfall-Holmes

The Revd Miranda Threlfall-Holmes is Chaplain and Solway Fellow of University College, Durham. She has first class degrees in history from Cambridge, and theology from Durham, and her doctoral thesis about Durham Cathedral Priory was published by OUP. She was a curate in Newcastle before her present post, and has been involved in ordination and lay theological training in Durham and Newcastle Dioceses for several years.

Book preview

Part 1

CHAPLAINS’ STORIES – THE ARMED FORCES

1

The RAF

RUTH HAKE

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

(Binyon, 1914)

As I said those familiar words, redolent of childhood Remembrance Sundays spent watching very old men remembering events that occurred many decades before my birth, I suddenly had a moment of resounding clarity. Too often, gathered round some freezing war memorial with those who, it seemed to a child, could never have really been young, I had uttered this poem from the perspective of those grown old. Now, midnight on a freezing runway in the middle of southern Afghanistan, I said those words from the perspective of the young. I was no longer an observer of this rite of remembrance, I was a part of the act. The young man, whose broken body we had carefully placed in his coffin two hours earlier, was being carried aboard the waiting aircraft. He would not grow old.

His repatriation home was also to be my flight home. In the lottery of war, I got to fly home to fill the three years since then with signposts of a life lived – marriage and a baby. For those of us who get to grow old, it is our absolute duty that we never, in our getting old(er), forget those who remain frozen in youth.

Twenty hours after leaving Afghanistan that night, I was at a service station on the M5 motorway in England. As I sat eating my tomato soup, still in desert uniform, with Kandahar sand covering my boots, I was uncomfortably aware of the stares of others. How to explain where I had been? How to readjust to being back in the UK where life continued as normal? How to get anyone here to understand? The sense of unreality pervaded for days if not weeks. I wanted to shout to those around, ‘Do you not care what’s happening there?’ ‘Do you have no