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Saturday, May 25, 2013

Ministering to Military Families


Plenty of guides to military ministry advise churches to do things like pray for the troops from the pulpit on Sunday, post pictures of deployed service members on a bulletin board, and extend special counseling to soldiers and their spouses. While these are good ideas, reaching out to military families doesn't require tacking on extra Armed Forces-specific ministry tasks, but focusing on the essential roles of the church: to serve as a spiritual home and gospel-centered community.

Military families move, on average, every two to three years. Our country's 700,000 military wives often live far from their friends and relatives, plus they spend days, weeks, and months away from their husbands, who get sent off for training or deployments. This lifestyle aches with the strain of distance and loneliness. For these families—ones like mine—the church offers a resting place for the sojourner, comfort for the weary, and a home for those seeking belonging. The church serves military families by simply being the church.

Maybe you already know of military families in your community. Or, maybe this Memorial Day you notice a yellow ribbon pinned to someone's shirt or a service flag hung in the window of a house on your street. Here are five relatively straightforward and fundamentally Christian disciplines the church has to offer them....Read more

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