Chaplains Respond to Call of Duty

CHICAGO, IL (April 20, 2003) - One day, Covenant pastors Jim Rucker and Noel Cisneros were at work serving their churches. The next day, they were gone, deployed by the United States military as it prepared to fight Iraq.

Rucker, pastor of the Evangelical Covenant Church of Donaldson, Indiana, is a lieutenant colonel serving as a chaplain in the U.S. Army reserves. He is currently at Fort McCoy Army base in Wisconsin, instructing chaplains preparing to be sent overseas. Cisneros, pastor of The People's Covenant Church in McAllen, Texas, is a major in the U.S. Army Reserves. He has been a chaplain at two sites in Texas before being assigned to Kuwait two weeks ago. Both left their churches in February and are expected to serve for at least one year, although it could be longer.

As in many small towns (the nearest town to the Donaldson church is Plymouth, population: 8,000), news travels fast when crisis hits. Other local churches offered help when they learned Rucker had been deployed. Members of the Donaldson congregation have pitched in to take care of ministry needs during the week and the church used guest preachers to fill the pulpit until after Easter. A local retired minister has agreed to serve as interim pastor until Rucker returns.

Rucker told the congregation, when he was first called as pastor in 2000, that it was possible he would be deployed during times of war. He has spent one weekend per month at a base two hours from Donaldson as a reserve chaplain since he arrived at the church. Those who have served in the armed forces can empathize with Rucker's situation, even though the church has had to scramble a bit to find ministerial assistance.

"It's too bad he had to go, but as a Marine (who completed military service) there's no question of my feelings," says parishioner Ren Van Gilder. "We knew he had to do his duty when we hired him."

Church chair Brian Shafer and his family have tried to care for Rucker's home - the church parsonage - while he has been gone. He says that one of the most difficult things about Rucker's deployment was how sudden it was for the congregation of 60. "No matter how much time they give you, it's never enough," Shafer says. "When he called us and said he was deployed, it was more of a shock that we were losing a friend because he's living in our neighborhood. I think we had a council meeting that night and when they heard about it, their jaws dropped wide open."

Unlike Rucker, who is single, Noel Cisneros left behind his wife, Debbie, and teenage son, Matt, when he was deployed February 10. He was attending the Covenant's Pastor's Midwinter Conference near Chicago when he learned he was being called by his battalion into service at a base in Corpus Christi, Texas. After three weeks, he was moved to Fort Hood, near Austin, where he served until the first week of April. Debbie has been thankful that her husband was within driving distance for two months before he left Texas, but the adjustment to life without her husband is still difficult. While her husband headed to the Middle East, her youngest son (two others live in Chicago) recently signed up for the selective service.

"God has taken us down a road we wouldn't be choosing for ourselves, but He has been gracious," she says. "God first allowed Noel to stay at a home station just two hours away and he was allowed to come home for a weekend. Then he was moved to Fort Hood, which is only seven hours away, and he got another three-day pass. God has taken him away in small steps and that's helped."

Cisneros grew up in southern Texas near where he is pastor and left the area after high school and went into the Army under the G.I. Bill. He served at Fort Hood more than two decades ago. Before being deployed, he was serving an existing congregation while beginning a Hispanic church plant there.

"We've only been here 18 months, but they (the congregation) really love Noel and that love has been extended to us," says Debbie. "This has really affected the church and it has affected my son as well. I think it hit him most when someone said that now Matt would be the man of the house."

For more information on Covenanters in the military, visit www.covchurch.org. Read more about the Covenant's response to the war with Iraq in the May issue of The Covenant Companion.

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