Category Archives: The Chaplain Kit
The Chaplain Kit is Growing…but needs your help!
I hope that you have enjoyed what The Chaplain Kit has been offering. In the six years since I created The Chaplain Kit, I have strived to add new content as often as I could to make The Chaplain Kit more valuable for people interested in military chaplaincy and chaplain history.
One of the exciting things happening with The Chaplain Kit this month is that we’re major improvements on the YouTube channel. With the addition of new video series like Chaplains in Chapels Drinking Coffee and On This Day in Chaplain Corps History The Chaplain Kit is regularly producing media for you to learn about chaplain history and provide resources for you to use to tell the chaplain story.
But it takes time to fully develop a YouTube channel, time and subscribers. With more subscribers to The Chaplain Kit’s YouTube channel, more features will become available that will better enhance what we are able to do to provide meaningful content for you and to a broader audience of people interested in chaplain history. Would you consider visiting and subscribing to it? If you don’t want to be bothered with notifications, you can turn them off, but by subscribing you will help The Chaplain Kit become more effective sharing content about chaplain history and the military chaplain’s impact on the service members they have served throughout history.
You can find The Chaplain Kit YouTube channel here.
Thank you for helping us serve you better!
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Moral Conflict & Courageous Leadership
A new independent training module has been added to The Chaplain Kit Education page! In “Moral Conflict & Courageous Leadership” Chaplain Bob Boettcher, ethicist at the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, helps chaplains better understand morality in the context of leadership. This training was presented at Fort Rucker, 11 February 2021, for the 110th Aviation Brigade Unit Ministry Teams.
Click here to go to the training page where you’ll find the video, presentation slides and lesson plans.
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2018: The Chaplain Kit in Review
2018 has been an amazing year for The Chaplain Kit. The website had nearly 80,000 page views compared to about 43,000 in 2017. Of those 80,000 views, over 56,000 came from the U.S. while nearly 3,000 came from the UK, over 1,300 from Canada, over 1,000 from France, nearly 1,000 from Germany with several hundred each (in order of views) from Australia, Philipines, South Korea, Belgium, Japan, Hong Kong, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Poland, Romania, Ireland, Indonesia, Russian, Brazil, Ukraine, Kuwait and the European Union. Fewer than one hundred each came from 130 other countries.
Of the pages viewers went to, Prayers had the most views with nearly 10,000 followed by Chaplain Kits (1,474), Chaplain Corps Prints (1,111) and Chaplain Uniforms (1,016). Stories that were viewed were led by “Chaplain” John McCain (1,168), Truce in the Forest: The Story of a World War II Christmas Eve Truce Between German & American Soldiers During the Battle of the Bulge (1,602), One Chaplain’s Near-Encounter with General (Ret.) James Mattis (669) and I Walked to the Gallows with the Nazi Chiefs (648).
Referers to The Chaplain Kit website were topped by Facebook, primarily through The Chaplain Kit’s Facebook page (which is about to reach 700 page likes) followed by the WordPress Android app, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, WordPress Viewer, Operation Where We Are, Linkedin, Chaplains International, Norwich University and a number of search engines.
In the past five years, The Chaplain Kit has come to include a greater variety of chaplain history and ministry resources, growing from 2014 when The Chaplain Kit had only 2,234 views with most of those being of simple pages showing chaplain kits.
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Helping Vets
On this third anniversary of The Chaplain Kit, I thought that it would be a good time to introduce a new initiative that is needed in the military/veteran community. I often see posts from an organization in Las Vegas which I support, that they have an urgent financial or material need for a homeless or in-need veteran. I always try to help but my personal resources are limited. I also realize that for every “call to action” from Caridad, there are certainly dozens or likely even hundreds of other immediate needs across the country to care for former Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsman who need a little help in a hurry. While there are many organizations out there that provide assistance for Veterans, often those wheels move slowly and/or are not available in the “immediate” timeframe needed to help them be ready for a job interview, get a place to live, or even have food to eat today. I would like to have a fund that can quickly be dispersed to legitimate and certified “charities” when there’s a call to action for an immediate, and limited, need to help a Veteran.
I reasoned that chaplains, and others who are interested in the ministry of chaplains (visitors to The Chaplain Kit), are likely to be among the most compassionate givers around, so anticipate that this can be a tremendous ministry drawing from the hundreds of people who view The Chaplain Kit every month. So, The Chaplain Kit is beginning The Offering Plate as a place for interested people to contribute to a fund which can be quickly disbursed through recognized charities to help veterans with an immediate need.
This fund will not be used for development or maintenance of The Chaplain Kit website, collections, exhibits, advertising or anything related to The Chaplain Kit; to promote or evangelize for a particular faith group; to establish, develop or support charities or ministries; or anything other than the stated purpose of the fund.
This fund will be used to quickly get money to recognized charities when a call to action goes out for a limited, immediate and urgent financial or material need for a veteran or veterans. Funds from The Offering Plate will go directly to meet the need of the veteran (through a recognized charity) and not into the charity’s general or administrative funds.
Official 501 (c)(3) status will be pursued, as well as membership in a financial accountability organization such as the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, to provide accountability and transparency in regard to receipts and distributions. From the beginning, The Offering Plate page will have publically available receipts and disbursements as well as any “testimonials” received from recipients, so donors and interested visitors can see exactly what has come into the fund and what has gone out.
Very soon, a new widget with links will show up on The Chaplain Kit Facebook page and website. Readers are encouraged to keep up with what The Chaplain Kit is able to do through The Offering Plate and, as you are able, contribute to this important and vital fund to help our veterans.
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Photo of homeless veteran from The Blaze website. The caption read: “In this Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2013 photo, homeless Korean War veteran Thomas Moore, 79, left, speaks with Boston Health Care for the Homeless street team outreach coordinator Romeena Lee on a sidewalk in Boston. (AP/Steven Senne)”
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The Chaplain Kit 