{"id":14656,"date":"2012-01-06T02:17:18","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T05:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=14656"},"modified":"2012-01-06T02:17:18","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T05:17:18","slug":"us-military-chaplain-reaches-out-in-faith-exchange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/06\/us-military-chaplain-reaches-out-in-faith-exchange\/","title":{"rendered":"US Military Chaplain Reaches out in Faith Exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Chaplains protect the religious liberties of US military servicemembers, but as noted here often, they also support the strategic objectives of the US military mission.<\/p>\n<p>A Chaplain at the transit center in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123281259\">did that very thing<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One of the four mission pillars of the Transit Center is to build relationships, and&#8230;Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Steven Thompson decided to reach out to his Kyrgyz Republic brethren.<\/p>\n<p>He asked a few of the translators at the Transit Center if there was a Baptist church in town&#8230;So one Sunday, Thompson, Master Sgt. James Iaun, the superintendent of chapel operations, and a translator showed up for a service.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The pastor of the church in Bishkek, Anton Berdnikov, asked the chaplain to return <!--more-->and give a sermon; Chaplain Thompson reciprocated with an invitation of his own.<\/p>\n<p>After both visits, which included a tour of the American facility and a KC-135, a relationship has been built with the local community, consistent with the &#8220;mission pillars&#8221; of the military location.<\/p>\n<p>It seems the relationship will continue:\u00a0 The center&#8217;s gospel choir is slated to sing at the Bishkek church.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the first time US military chaplains have interacted this way with the local community.\u00a0 In fact, US military members also worship with local communities around the world.<\/p>\n<p>At least one person questioned the wisdom of a chaplain &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurasianet.org\/node\/64637\">preaching outside the wire<\/a>,&#8221; to which the immediate response is: What wire?\u00a0 Kyrgyzstan is not a hostile country.\u00a0 Islam is the predominant religion in Kyrgyzstan, but it is not the only one, as demonstrated by the local Baptist church.\u00a0 In that regard, the &#8220;religious exchange&#8221; is little different than that which might occur at military bases in Germany, the United Kingdom, or even the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chaplains protect the religious liberties of US military servicemembers, but as noted here often, they also support the strategic objectives of the US military mission. A Chaplain at the transit center in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, did that very thing: One of the four mission pillars of the Transit Center is to build relationships, and&#8230;Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Steven Thompson decided to reach [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2589,372,2588,5284,2587,2053,2586,2,17,10,171,2585],"class_list":["post-14656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","tag-anton-berdnikov","tag-baptist","tag-bishkek","tag-chaplain","tag-james-iaun","tag-kyrgyzstan","tag-manas","tag-military","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-steven-thompson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}