FORT BENNING, Ga., (Aug.12, 2015) --This year marks the closing chapter of the Family Life Chaplain Training Center at Fort Benning, said Chaplain (Col.) Thomas Waynick, Fort Benning garrison chaplain.
The training, which has been around for 21 years, was a 15 month program designed to take mid-career chaplains and put them through a masters degree in Family and Marriage education and counseling, and provide them with over 300 hours of face-to-face practicum counseling, Waynick said.
"The program was established right after Vietnam when the Army was a lot like it is today - full of war weariness, with a lot of issues surrounding Families and Soldiers coming back from the war," Waynick said. "Someone in the chief of chaplains office at that time decided it would be a good idea if we trained them ... and then put one per post to help the younger chaplains in their counsel."
The trained chaplains are assigned to a Family Life Center at an installation around the world, and they help mentor and train younger chaplains. Four chaplains who completed the course graduated Aug. 4 during a ceremony at the Infantry Chapel at Fort Benning, and they will be the last class to graduate from the Columbus State University and Fort Benning chapter of the Family Life Chaplain Training Centers.
"Commanders, as they've always done, use chaplains as the first line of counseling when someone has need," Waynick said. "So we want to make sure our chaplains are well trained and have the best practical training and skills to be able to take care of our Soldiers."
The decisions to close the training center at Fort Benning came about last fall as a result of the Army deciding to streamline the locations of the training coupled with CSU dropping the Family and Marriage counseling degree from their program, explained Waynick.
"We will no longer be a training center, but we will continue to have an assigned Family life chaplain and will continue seeing Soldiers and their Families at our Family Life Center," Waynick said. "We will not be able to see the number of clients we have seen in the past, but we will see as many as we can and continue to provide for their needs."
There are two other Family Life Chaplain Training Centers in the Army, located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Fort Hood, Texas, which will remain open.
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