Chaplain/carpenter builds Fort Sill faith

By Monica K. GuthrieAugust 13, 2015

New chaplain
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

FORT SILL, Okla. Aug. 13, 2015 -- It might be a good sign that the new Fort Sill installation chaplain once worked as a carpenter.

There once was another carpenter who taught a few misfit men and changed the world, and while Chap. (Col.) John Morris is humbled simply to walk in Jesus' footsteps, his ministry goals are no small task.

"One of the things I'd love to do is continue to build the relationship between the community clergy and the garrison, and help train those clergy on how to provide the best religious support possible to military members, their families and retirees," said Morris. "I think if I could be part of another legacy, I want to be part of the team that beats suicide."

Morris believes empowering young noncommissioned officers to know their Soldiers combined with helping Soldiers develop the skills to deal with life's problems can help in decreasing the number of suicides. He also said it is important to develop squads that can intervene before things go so far that Soldiers consider taking their own lives.

Morris arrived July 22 and has jumped into his role saying having a military family helped shape his desire to serve.

"My mother literally survived World War II in occupied France, and I grew up with a debt of gratitude ingrained in me by my parents for being an American," he said. "I had a sense I wanted to repay that and there was no more honorable way to do that than by serving in the military. When I experienced my call to ministry, I knew immediately it was a call to military chaplaincy."

Morris joined the Army in October 1984 as a chaplain candidate in the Army Reserve. After being ordained by the United Methodist Church, Morris needed three years of experience as a pastor before he could join active duty. Ten years later Morris, his wife and his three daughters, said goodbye to their civilian church in rural southern Minnesota to serve full time as an active-duty chaplain. It was a change for the family.

"At that time, like right now, the Army was downsizing," he said. "I did three years on active duty where nine months of the year I was in the field or in the Middle East so that was quite a transition for a small-time pastor in a guard unit to a high (operational tempo) armor unit."

Morris' unit, 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment from Fort Stewart, Ga., was sent to the Iraqi border in 1996. Just two weeks before they were to return home, the unit was extended. They were no longer participating in an exercise, but were a contingency operation with an indefinite ending as a result of the Khobar bombings. They got word of the change on Mother's Day.

"That call home on Mother's Day was 'hey I won't be home in two weeks. I don't know when I'll be coming home' and there is the implication of 'I don't know if I'm coming home. There's a war brewing here and I'm in the middle of it,'" said Morris. "I've done a lot of tough things in my life, dealing with life and death, but I think, on the family side, this was the hardest thing I've ever done. There were a lot of tears on the receiving end and a lot of questions I couldn't answer due to (operational security) and I just don't know the answer. At that point I'm a captain and I don't know. I don't have the information. I just have a job to do.

"I remember standing on the Kuwait-Iraqi border and, you call this naive but I remember just the strongest feeling that 'I'm on the forward edge of freedom.' Right across that border are people who have a dictator running their lives, who is torturing them and denying them basic human rights and behind me are the Kuwaitis who we [fought for] their freedom. This is truly an honor to be part of this."

Morris held on to the memory when, in 2004, he found himself in the Al Anbar province in Fallujah, with Army psychological operations (psyops) Soldiers attached to the 1st Marine Division.

"That was very grim," said Morris who was a major at the time. "We had surrounded Fallujah for the largest urban combat since the battle of Hue for the Marines from Vietnam. I'm seeing dead Americans at times almost at an hourly basis. Severely wounded. A lot of rocket fire. I had a psyops team that got hit by a mortar round, two guys injured, a translator killed. Some of the translators that worked with my headquarters element were murdered. I had a strong sense that my whole life led up to this moment. This where I was prepared to be and what I was prepared to do. Offer hope to people, comfort to wounded people, strength to people getting ready to go out on missions, advisement to commanders on everything from combat stress to the role of religion on the battlefield."

All his experiences combined to allow him to work with religious leaders during his final combat experience in 2009. Morris was serving in southern Iraq conducting engagements with Christian religious leaders, Iraqis, Muslims and Madâns (a small group that live in the marshes of Iraq). Despite having religious differences, Morris' worked to deter their people from contributing to the insurgency and to help the stability of Iraq.

"When I met with religious leaders who we knew from solid intelligence were whole-heartedly dedicated to killing Americans -- that's, that's pretty hard to take," said Morris. And yet trying to work with them and civil affairs officers, psyops officers and general officers, to convince them to get out of the fight and work in another way to benefit their people -- that's a noble endeavor. [...] I felt, as a member of the Christian faith, I was living our the most important dictates of my faith: love my neighbor as myself and love my enemy."

Morris has been placed in situations of unknown safety, and oftentimes in known life-threatening danger. He recalled Chap. (Capt.) Dale Goetz, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. He was the first military chaplain killed in action in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"He did a worship service at one forward operating base and was convoying to the next and his vehicle was blown up and he was killed along with several others," said Morris. "That's what I was doing, but I'm not unusual. Any chaplain that went out to a forward operating base had to put their lives in God's hands.

"I often tell chaplains we share some similarity with the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard has an unofficial motto: you have to go out. You know the Coast Guard goes into the storms that everyone else is fleeing from. And the motto implies you might not be successful. You might not come back. It's not in your hands. You don't have the luxury of choosing to go out only when the weather's good. Chaplains, when you sign up for this and accept this call, you accept that you're going to be where the fight is, not in the rear with the gear, because that's where the Soldiers need you. They need a sense of God's presence with them in the middle of mayhem. "

Morris comes from the National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C. where he served as the staff chaplain for the Army National Guard. He provided oversight for the 800 guard chaplains and their religious affairs specialists working with policies, resources and traveling to conduct training. Morris knows his role at Fort Sill will be unlike his previous roles in Washington or in war. In a garrison environment, Morris said chaplains and religious affairs specialists have different challenges to overcome.

"(There are) so many distractions here and that's a great thing," Morris said. "We're in the United States we've got so many options. And what we lose here is what we develop in the best sense downrange. Because of limited options and somewhat austere living conditions, you can develop a sense of community. You know your people and your people know you. Here, on an installation of this size, that's hard to do. We could really look our Soldiers in the eye every day. We were living the same life they were living. We would see them at the gym, we would see them at the chow hall, we'd see them on convoys -- it's a little more difficult here. We have to be more intentional to look people in the eye because we don't always get that chance to see them like we did downrange."

As the installation chaplain Morris works with the 27 chaplains and religious affairs specialists stationed at Fort Sill while supporting the commanding general and garrison commander's initiative to take care of Soldiers, families, Department of the Army civilians and retirees.

"I'm happy to be here, it's an honor to serve, it's an honor to follow Chaplain Matthew Pawlikowski who was my predecessor and who did such a great job," Morris said. "One of the hallmarks of our country is religious freedom. It's enshrined in our Constitution and protected in our laws and it's an honor to be part of ensuring all of our Soldiers and their families and all our DA civilians can worship according to their conscious."