Though Reformed chaplains do a wonderful job caring for our soldiers, there are too few of them to care adequately for our military community. Along with the PCA churches that have been planted churches overseas near bases, there is a great need for the calling, equipping, and assimilating military families into local churches stateside.

The Southeast Alabama Presbytery through its military church-planting effort, Ministry to the Military International (MMI), seeks to reach the military community through RUM, Reformed Uniform Ministry.

The Presbytery recently called Teaching Elder Jason Strong to be the assistant director of MMI and Minister of Evangelism and Discipleship to the military community of Charleston, South Carolina. TE Strong and his wife Robyn are blessed with six children, two of whom are active duty Navy service members. The Strongs, along with their remaining four children, will make Metro North PCA their home church. Metro North PCA has agreed to provide space and logistical support for TE Strong.

There is a closeness in the name of Reformed Uniform Ministry (RUM) to Reformed University Fellowship (RUF), the PCA’s agency for college ministry. The leaders of MMI have adopted a model similar to RUF, seeking to place TEs not on college campuses, but on military bases especially in the States.

The goals of Reformed Uniform Ministry are: (1) reaching the lost with the Gospel, (2) one-on-one and small group discipleship, and (3) assimilation of believers into local reformed churches. The TEs of RUM will also seek to help local churches receive and care for service members and their families, who are a highly-gifted and mobile people group, who need the gospel and can be a great blessing to local churches. The same is true of other Department of Defense (DoD) Civilians, many of whom are support members of these military communities.

The Bible is replete with the military metaphors for understanding our calling as the church militant. In the Great Commission, Jesus commands us to go and make disciples. He sends us out to train those He effectually calls to Himself. As soldiers are trained to courageously engage the enemy on the battlefield, so Christian soldiers ought to be trained to engage the world in all its darkness with the gospel. Instead of seeing our military service members as people who will find their way into churches, MMI sends pastors to minister to them to bring them into the covenant community of the church, just as RUF sends pastors to minister to college students. We seek to go and make many disciples, to see many called out of darkness and welcomed into the light of the Savior, to see many delivered from the evil one and from the power of sin, to see many worship God in spirit and in truth, to see many become pastors, teachers, elders, deacons, and servants in the church of our Lord.

Such an effort to our military members is long overdue. Though Reformed chaplains do a wonderful job caring for our soldiers, there are too few of them to care adequately for our military community. Along with the PCA churches that have been planted overseas at bases, there is a great need for the calling, equipping, and assimilation into local churches of our military families stateside. Soldiers are war-weary, having rotated between war zones multiple times. Federal military policies are constantly changing. These policies include the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, so that homosexuals now serve openly. Same-sex marriages ceremonies have been conducted at West Point Military Academy in New York. Read Dr. Michael Milton’s article where he remarks that monumental changes are taking place in our national military in an article, “A War on the Military? Just How Much More Disruption Can the Radical Left Cause Our Military?”

Such aggressive efforts in the current culture are also long overdue. Eric Metaxas’ biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, describes the rise of the Third Reich and Hitler following the end of World War I in such a way that a readers cannot miss the similarities of the German culture of the 1930s and the present day. What followed the rise of the Third Reich was a brutal period of genocide, state oppression, media propaganda, and a weak church. Some pastors in the Confessing Church refused to bend the knee and were taken to prison camps and the Eastern Front. By following a messianic Fuehrer, the German military committed unspeakable atrocities to complete the mission.

American citizens still hold the US military in very high regard. However, history tells us that regard can change quickly. As our culture drifts further away from the truth found in God’s Word, the need for Christians to be grounded in their faith, firm in their convictions, and courageous in the Lord will become even more apparent. Those in our military are not immune to the changing tide of our culture, and as such need to be prepared to, “… make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…” (1 Peter 3:15 ESV). Reformed Uniform Ministry (RUM) hopes to prepare our military families to do just that. To have many in uniform who have a deep and abiding faith in Christ, to be salt and light in our nation, and to be unashamed disciples with a fixed moral compass in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments would benefit our nation and glorify God. This is a time for the church militant to rise up and put her armor on!

TE Doug Hudson is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as the Director of Ministry to the Military International for Southeast Alabama Presbytery. He is a Chaplain (COL) Retired.