by Nathaniel Logan, Army Chaplain, ACBC Certified Biblical Counselor
This article offers an account of my deployment as an Army Chaplain during a military conflict and from the perspective of a biblical counselor. It highlights the significance of evaluating situational requirements, delivering spiritual support in times of crisis, and using biblical counseling methods to effectively address the changing challenges Soldiers face. We will look at the unique challenges my unit ministry team experienced during a time of conflict and draw lessons that parallel biblical counseling.
If you’ve served on an Army staff, chances are you’ve worked through the military decision-making process (MDMP)—a standardized guide that helps officers consider essential factors when planning any mission or event. I won’t get into the weeds of every step; there are ADPs (Army Doctrine Publications) you can go look up. Everything I mention is openly available online. No classified or sensitive material will be discussed here.
The MDMP steps begin with receiving the mission. Then we conduct mission analysis, develop courses of action (COAs), analyze and compare the COAs, approve a COA, and produce orders. An effective leader knows that a single analysis isn’t enough to address a mission’s full scope. He must continuously analyze the battlefield.
When I analyze something, I start by identifying what I know as facts. I also look at what I think is true—what we call an assumption. I don’t yet know if my assumption is true; my goal and work is to either prove or disprove it. I also want to know any limitations or constraints affecting my mission. I identify the specified tasks and the implied tasks. Implied tasks are the smaller actions required to complete the specified tasks. These are just a few of the things I must consider before building a COA.
When I arrived at the Air Defense Artillery (ADA) unit at Ft. Hood in January 2024, I knew they were going to deploy. That’s the reason I went there—I wanted to deploy. For context, the deployment’s location was the Middle East. The unit wasn’t ready to deploy at that time, and my first duty was to perform a memorial ceremony for a suicide—the brigade’s second suicide in as many months. The suicide wasn’t as impactful on the Soldiers as one might think, because the majority of the Soldiers didn’t know the deceased man. He had only just arrived in Ft. Hood.
The road ahead required much work for the unit to be certified and ready for deployment. The unit began training and preparing in April and wasn’t prepared and certified until the end of September. I’d never worked with a group like this before—they didn’t operate like others. I spent the entire summer learning about the people, the way they think, and the way they fight. Like all things, it was easier to learn the doctrine than the practical ways that life lays out. Some people call ADA "A Different Army." The unit’s personality was certainly different, therefore requiring more analysis than other units.
When we first deployed, I felt very jet-lagged and tired. It took me some time to get my feet under me and figure out what my ministry would look like. I had Soldiers in five different countries. I decided not to be in a hurry to fail. I would simply start by doing ministry one day at a time. I wanted to be present, give the staff time to adjust and learn the operational environment before I start planning my travels.
During my first month, the area was calm, though we had seen escalating tensions between Iran and Israel from January 2023 to June 2024. Those were marked by several missile strikes in response to specific provocations. Notably, in April 2024, both countries engaged in a major exchange following heightened hostilities. This highlighted for us the seriousness and complexity of the conflict. The situation created much fear in our Soldiers, especially as certifications on their weapons systems proved more challenging than they’d expected.
For me, this was a time of calm and the time I needed to get settled and adjust to being on the other side of the world. However, calm was not the case for a female Soldier in the unit we were replacing. She was in a time of great distress.
The Calm Before the Storm
The unit we were replacing no longer had a Chaplain; he redeployed early. Their Soldiers were coming to see me, and I made a point to visit them as I did my own Soldiers. The young female Soldier came to see me. She confided in me, and I listened intently to her situation. As God moved our conversation, I realized she was not saved, which prompted me to share the gospel with her. Right there in my office, God saved the young Soldier. She was baptized a few days later, just before returning home to the United States.
Once the mission’s authority transferred to our unit, I dove deep into analyzing our mission. Then I wrote the following problem statement.
"How do I spiritually sustain Soldiers across multiple aspects of the range of military operations (ROMO), provide religious support in a widespread operational environment, and advise the command teams on issues of religion, morale, moral and ethical wellbeing of the force, personal impact of the command policies, leadership practices, and management systems while considering these factors: X-number of service members are spread out in five different countries, x-number of ADCON and TACON units attached, limited movement capabilities, and an increasingly complicated and hostile battlefield?"
When I say "range of military operations," I mean that I had Soldiers to minister to who were at different ends on the combat scale. Some received $250 a month in combat pay, while others received $50. Some were engaged in active combat operations while others were on the peacetime side of the scale. You can see there was a range. My job was to provide religious support to every Soldier, regardless of where they were on that scale.
My approved COA would move me to each undisclosed location for one week, keeping me away from headquarters for just over a month. Then I would remain at headquarters for a month. This cycle would be repeated three times, visiting Soldiers, conducting counseling, and teaching classes.
The first time around, I planned to teach a class I wrote based on several common biblical counseling principles. I took what I most often taught in counseling and placed it into lecture format. It was a biblical cognitive decision-making model. Don’t confuse "cognitive" with cognitive therapy. I was simply using the term to teach Soldiers to think about their choices based on biblical principles rather than emotions.
For mixed groups. I planned to open the lecture a bit to include their principles—those that could come from God’s Word, family tradition, Army values, or other sources. By framing it that way, I would include other perspectives, which could reduce complaints from liberals and enable me to teach the biblical perspective.
On the first trip, I would take this lesson with me, planning to teach it three times on three consecutive days in each location because the Soldiers were working twenty-four-hour shifts.
We took off to our first destination.
Do you remember the part of the problem statement that says, "limited movement capabilities"? We started our trip with a plan to leave on Monday and arrive either late Monday or Tuesday morning. We had scheduled a three-day travel window, but we ended up arriving on Friday. Things changed and we got stuck in places.
By the time we landed, things had changed in our unit. They were now on three eight-hour shifts. Stop. Reassess. Analyze. Build new COAs. Having lost time travelling, I would now need to teach everyone in one day. I taught two crews in the morning change-over shift and in the evening change-over shift. The shift change, by the way, told me we were in a higher state of alert. Time to travel. A new location, a new assessment. The landscape was now different. I needed to analyze the mission again.
In the second location, the layout allowed me to walk everywhere I needed to go. I averaged twenty thousand steps a day there. In the third location, the distance I needed to travel was just too far to walk and transportation was an issue. Also, the weather became a problem—temperatures were in triple digits, even at night. Getting to a site meant climbing into an LMTV (light medium tactical vehicle) at midnight and riding for thirty minutes. At this location, I needed to teach in three shifts each day, which meant longer days and an inconsistent sleep schedule. But this would give me more time with the crews.
The Storm Is Rising
After returning to headquarters, things started to heat up—not just the temperature, though it now averaged 113 degrees daily. There were rumors of Israel daily attacking Iran. Iran publicly told America that if Israel attacked Iran, then Iran’s retaliation would be nearby American assets. Threats rang out and Soldiers’ nerves were high. The air carried a tense excitement of anticipation and anxiety. They were nervous because of the pending conflict, excited because they felt trained and ready. They knew that threats carried out meant they would be the first Soldiers in this hostile situation to do their jobs in real-life combat.
I had been in the headquarters area for three weeks and had flights lined up to go out to each location again. I was closing up a few things in my office for the day when a Soldier entered. He said the Ops Sergeant Major wanted to see me. Strange, I thought. I had just walked out of my office when I saw him striding toward me. He met halfway between his office and mine where he informed, "Your Charlie Battery commander is dead. He took his life." This was the second suicide tragedy since I’d taken office. The situation had changed once again: I now had a dead commander and a nation on the verge of war. Analyze the mission. Build new COAs. My primary mission was to honor the fallen and care for the wounded.
The General’s jet was made available to my command team and me, and we flew to the deceased commander’s location, which did not belong to the Army. I needed to network a joint effort with the Air Force and the Army National Guard component. Though this presented challenges, the individuals I worked with were incredibly helpful and encouraging to me. We honored the fallen commander with a memorial ramp ceremony as his body was loaded onto a C-130 plane.
With hostilities rising and my commander required to return to headquarters, I needed to assess whether we could accomplish a full memorial ceremony before he left. Being on an Air Force base, key elements were missing for the memorial. We had no Army memorial stand; we’d need to build one. There was no ammunition for the twenty-one-gun salute; that would have to be brought in. And we no bugle for Taps. The commander’s official memorial ceremony would have to wait.
My commander returned to headquarters, and I remained at the Air Force base to care for the wounded and nurture the living. You may be confused by "care for the wounded." I use that phrase because when someone finds or learns of a coworker, commander, battle buddy, mentor hanging by the neck, the loss injures them no matter how tough they are. Something like that is wounding. Many had questions and many needed counsel. The reality scared people and caused them to seek help regarding their own dark thoughts.
Shots Fired
I made a new COA to conduct the memorial in two weeks. Our battalion commander would travel to higher headquarters for a change-of-command ceremony then immediately return to us for the memorial. The plans were coming together well when, suddenly, an Israeli attack on Iran became much more immanent. Once again, the commander was ordered to return to headquarters, and all ceremonies were canceled.
Stop. Assess.
My location was filling with airmen. There was a disproportionate number of Chaplains to airmen and Soldiers. The question became where my services would best be used.
The Israeli attacks begin and our troops were shooting down enemy missiles in Israel. Missiles were flying overhead of everyone and Soldiers in multiple locations were jumping into bunkers three times a night. Should I be in a location closer to the impact? Should I stay in my location due to the increase of Soldiers and Airmen?
News of events at each location began to pour in. Everything at our headquarters had shut down—civilians gone; the hospital was closed, except for the ER; injured Soldiers were ordered to see local unit medics; the chapel was closed; gyms were closed; the chow hall was closed. The situation has changed. Analyze the mission.
The closed chapel indicated to Soldiers that Chaplain support was currently unavailable. I contacted our location’s religious support office, and they advised me that, due to quarantine restrictions, they were separated from my troops and unable to provide ministry services. While I was able to get one Chaplain from a higher echelon to visit my Soldiers, it was apparent that the men would not be able to receive the counseling care they needed.
As I thought through the facts, assumptions, limitations, and constraints, I realized I needed to move to our headquarters’ location. The fact was that Soldiers were jumping into bunkers two and three times a night; they had restricted or inconsistent access to Chaplain services; and they were eating MREs. They were in harm’s way and witnessing launched missiles in the distance every night.
Headquarters had the largest number of Soldiers and for the three locations I served, my headquarters was situated where Chaplain access was most limited. When I arrived back headquarters, the entire camp was a ghost town. Where I would normally see service members of all kinds milling about, it was quiet—a little too quiet. Eerie. It was not that I was experiencing fear, but the barren scene, cast only with military police and a select few air defense artillery personnel, looked and felt unnatural. We knew the number of missiles in the Iran arsenal and how many they had already fired. When will they turn those on us? Which camp or base will they choose? We were all in harm’s way. Yet, I felt great comfort knowing the amount of firepower President Donald Trump had deployed to the region. I saw numerous fighter jets firsthand. Sufficient to say is that we had enough advanced weaponry, military strength, and international support to discourage Iran from initiating any conflict with the United States. For example, our deployment of cutting-edge missile defense systems and the backing of key allies showed a formidable deterrent. These capabilities, combined with ongoing diplomatic efforts, made it clear to Iran that engaging in direct confrontation with our armed forces would have significant consequences, leading them to avoid escalating tensions further.
Early in the deployment, I sent an email to a group called Mothers and Wives of Deployed Soldiers. They responded with five hundred boxes of care packages filled with crackers, noodles, candy, and various snacks. Many of the boxes arrived just before the conflict began and I handed out the care packages to our Soldiers.
Each day, I put a few new boxes in their work areas. Since the Soldiers were eating MREs every day, the small packages were wonderful pieces of grace for them.
The conflict escalated with an American strike on Iran—an opportunity the ADA took to shoot down incoming missiles. The strike was a proud moment for everyone who served as ADA. For a time, they sat center stage, showing the world their capabilities. In retaliation, Iran fired on the US air base in Qatar. I was not on the base at the time and fortunately there were no casualties. Shortly after, President Trump negotiated a peace deal.
With the conflict ended, the situation changed. Analyze the mission. What are the facts? One of my locations had not seen their Chaplain for five months. And my mission to honor the fallen was not yet complete. There were many operational considerations that were significant to my mission and timeline.
In short, my course of action completed the memorial two months from the day of death. I stayed with the unit one week post memorial for support. I then moved to the unit I had not seen in five months. There was much counseling work to be done there. From there, I returned to my headquarters and redeployed to the US.
You might be wondering what all of these accounts have to do with a biblical counselor’s point of view. For me, this deployment was about gathering data, analyzing it, and creating a way forward for our Soldiers’ counseling needs. Receive the mission, analyze the mission, create a COA. If I consider Paul David Tripp’s "love, know, speak, do" model of biblical counseling, I understand that knowing the counselee (CE) is more important than how much I speak or have them do homework. I constantly assessed the deployment situation, as I do for every counselee I have.
I deeply value hearing a Soldier’s problems during the entry gate of our counseling, setting up a pathway forward, and keeping that plan in place. But keeping a plan as set is not always possible. To be honest, unchanging paths forward describe what my deployment in Europe looked like a few years ago. I pastored a chapel, visited my Soldiers daily, set up charity events and those that boosted morale and spiritual enrichment. The deployment was fruitful—seven baptisms and four salvations. But war, as with life, does not always give us easy ministries or counseling. They’re often complex.
While you may have perfected the art of David Powelson’s "X-ray questions," the counselee will not always think to tell you everything you need to know in the entry gate conversation. Listening to the CE is essential in each session, as is assessing the situation and creating a course of action that also fits your initial assessment. Did your CE do homework? What data did you gather from their completed assignment? Is their progress consistent with the COA you desire for them? What facts and assumptions did you gather as you listened? Were there assumptions you were able to conclude as facts or disprove? What limitations or constraints did the CE have? Do you need to adjust the homework amount or the plan to fit those specifics?
My latest counselee came in struggling with a belief that if he did not do X, Y, Z works, God would be mad at him. And after reading Ephesians that week, he revealed a feeling of condemnation. Anxiety about works and feeling condemned indicated that his practical theology or faith in Christ’s salvific work is weak.
I also assessed that he wasn’t comprehending the Scriptures he read. After all, how does one walk away from Ephesians feeling condemned? I can only think of four possibilities: (1) He may not have actually read the book; (2) he may be clinging to wrong theology; and/or (3) he may not be understanding what he’s reading; and/or (4) he may not be saved. Either way, there is a need for an assessment of new data and to adjust slightly to the new data.
In his case, one of my assumptions was based on his own statement that he is saved. So, I started by giving the benefit of the doubt. I sat with him and discussed the passages he was to read. At the end of the session, he was able to back-brief me on the principles of God’s grace concerning his salvation. His further homework included Romans 5–8 and a Scripture to read ten times daily to keep the principles fresh on his mind. I’m not so much looking to tell him his theology is wrong as much as I want him to discover correct theology through the reading of the Word. If the role of the Holy Spirit is to convict him of the truth of the Scriptures he’s read and comprehended, then I believe what’s important for him is to spend significant time engaging in the text.
He revealed that at times he’ll read the Bible until 2:00 a.m. I’m concerned that his lack of sleep is adding to his anxious feelings. Part of my COA includes teaching him meaningful and fruitful reading of Scripture rather than reading for long hours what he’s not comprehending.
Each time we speak to a CE, it’s tempting to look at homework and then jump into a lesson. Being a Baptist preacher, I can go off on long-winded pontifications, as perhaps you’re well acquainted. The greater need is to understand the limitations and constraints and consider the facts and assumptions. Did I turn any assumptions into facts? Did I identify any ways in which the homework needs to change in order to address the CE’s needs? Has the CE specified any particular desired changes or needs? Are my implied tasks based on those specified needs?
For example, toward the end of my CE’s session, he pulled out his journal and told me about feelings he’d written down that he’s struggling with. How to deal with those feelings is a specified task. The implied task for the counselor may be personal, individual reading on the subject, either through online biblical counseling resources, journals, podcasts, or books on the subject. In the case of my CE, one of my implied tasks during the week between our sessions is to think through good X-ray questions to better understand his fears. He’s expressed fear of condemnation and of satanic and demonic attacks. What is the root of these fears? Has he done something that in his thinking is a cardinal sin? If so, we need to address that specifically. I need to do further analysis to find out how to best help the CE.
In conclusion, analysis is not something that’s accomplished one time in the entry gate process, any more than it’s a one-time step onto the battlefield. Analysis is something we must consistently do, which will not only show our counselees that progress is being made in the counseling process, but also showing our love through our ability to listen and adapt to their everyday life situations.
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