By Jeff Finley
Free Methodist Co-Directors of Chaplain Ministries Tim and Patricia Porter didn’t initially realize that following the Lord’s leading would include serving at military bases in global hot spots or overseeing an international chaplaincy ministry.
Tim received his call to ministry in 1979 at Oregon Conference family camp.
“It was a very definitive moment. The Lord wanted me to go into ministry, and serve Him, and I’ve never regretted that I said ‘yes’ to Him! It’s been exciting to follow the Lord’s leadership, and His plan has been so much greater than the plans that I had in my own heart,” Tim said in an interview with Light + Life. “Following Jesus has been an adventure for us.”
The couple met at Central Christian College of Kansas. They married and moved to Oregon, Tim’s home state, where they completed their education.
“We pastored two different churches while I served in the Air Force Reserve as a chaplain. I never thought that I would join active duty,” but in 2000, we felt really called to go into the Air Force. We knew God was in it, but it was really hard to give up [pastoring a local] church to go do chaplaincy full-time, but we definitely knew God was calling us to step out in faith and go do it.”
Tim served with the Air Force on active duty for 20 years. Nine of those years included serving as a wing chaplain.
“I oversaw all religious activity on the installation for the wing commander, and so that was quite a special privilege — and a lot of responsibility — to oversee the religious programs, which included Catholic and Protestant programs,” said Tim, who also had the duty of ensuring followers of other religions would be able “to practice their faith on the installation too.”
He found himself stationed where he’d previously dreamed of visiting during his time as a pastor. “God was so gracious in letting us go to Alaska, South Korea, and England, and then several stateside assignments,” Tim said.
He also deployed to Balad, Iraq, and later to Kabul, Afghanistan, amid dangerous circumstances.
“We were attacked daily in Iraq, in the morning and at night … the chaplain team was present to minister to the needs of the service members,” Tim said about his time in Iraq. “When I was there, the Fallujah uprising was happening, and so military members who were injured in combat were evacuated through our base and airlifted to Germany, and so we were there providing spiritual support to them. Leading chapel services, Bible study groups, and providing counseling and spiritual support in a war zone is part of the chaplain’s role in those locations” along with “providing dignified transfers of military members who had been killed in battle, back to the U.S.”
In Iraq, he said, he and the other chaplains would “read a scripture and say a prayer for the deceased, and their unit and the family that was going to receive them.”
While serving among NATO forces in Afghanistan, Tim led three worship services each Sunday.
“This is just a demonstration of the flexibility of Free Methodist chaplains. I led a liturgical service in the morning, then a contemporary service midmorning, and then a gospel service in the evening,” he said. “Our Free Methodist chaplains can offer open communion to all believers, so we’re serving a broad spectrum of people from different Christian denominations as well as independent churches.”
His ministry sometimes extended beyond people serving in the military.
“I ministered to members of the State Department at the U.S. Embassy as some would come to chapel services,” he said. “The chaplains would provide two chapel services a month — Protestant and Catholic — at the U.S. Embassy there in Kabul.”
Although evangelism isn’t typically considered a primary focus of chaplaincy, throughout his career, Tim led military members to the Lord as opportunities arose. He said that military chaplains are noncombatants who “don’t carry weapons. We carry the Word of God, and we offer spiritual care to all military members — believers and non-believers — and their families who seek support.”
Chaplains are often asked to pray at primarily secular events such as retirements, promotions, award ceremonies, and national holidays or observances. Although a prayer might be only 45 seconds in length, Tim said, “it was 45 seconds when I could focus people’s attention to think about God, His attributes, and His blessings on the U.S. and in their lives.”
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“One day she realized that God also had called her into ministry, and then she heard the Holy Spirit say, ‘Why don’t you get ordained?'”
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An Unexpected Call
Patricia said she “went into ministry more in a circuitous route. The reason was I never thought I would ever be interested in ministry. I was really into the medical field, and so I became a physical therapist, and I thought that would be my career for the rest of my life. Obviously, the Lord had different plans for me.”
Over a 13-year period, she led the worship for two churches that Tim served as senior pastor. She recalled that she eventually “was spending one day a week as a physical therapist and the rest of the time in ministry, and I was very involved in leading women’s ministries, children’s musicals, and worship.”
One day she realized that God also had called her into ministry, and then she heard the Holy Spirit say, “Why don’t you get ordained?”
“I initially laughed about it, because I said, ‘Oh, why am I talking to myself in this way?’ And then the Lord said, ‘It wasn’t you. It was Me,’” Patricia recalled. “I realized that I had more joy in doing ministry than physical therapy.”
She stopped working as a physical therapist and entered full-time ministry — becoming the church administrator and worship pastor. While she was in the ordination process, Tim followed the call to chaplaincy.
“I was ordained in 2007, and so I worked alongside him in the Air Force in the chapels — helping with small groups, doing marriage retreats alongside Tim, and preaching occasionally,” she said. “We worked as a team there as well.”
The couple furthered their theological education while serving.
“I had the 9/11 GI Bill, and I used some of it for a doctorate in Marriage and Family Therapy [from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary], but Pat was able to go to seminary during one of our assignments where Fuller [Theological Seminary] had a satellite campus, so she was able to get a Masters of Arts in Theology with Biblical Emphasis,” Tim said. “God really provided some financial resources so we could develop more skills and education to do ministry.”
Connecting Christ to Community
When Tim retired from active duty in 2020, the Porters accepted the new assignment of Free Methodist Church USA co-directors of chaplain ministries with Tim also serving as the endorsing agent.
“Our story is really one about us co-laboring together, co-serving together in church life, as well as when I was in the Air Force and then this job, so it’s been exciting to serve as a couple,” Tim said.
After becoming co-directors, the Porters realized the FM Chaplains Association needed to clarify its mission and vision to encompass “all domains of chaplaincy, so we came up with the mission that chaplains ‘connect Christ to community.’ They take the sacred into — in most cases — secular spaces where they serve,” Tim said.
The Chaplains Association began to emphasize that chaplains “care compassionately as we love others and counsel redemptively as we make disciples” with “Christ always, as we love God.”
“Always Christ is at the center of what we do,” Tim explained. “Caring compassionately is really a key component of what chaplains do, and in counseling redemptively, helping people through their suffering, through their difficulty, through their conflicts.”
Patricia noted that chaplaincy work is “not in a pastoral setting where the same people come for church each week,” and chaplains also have a different focus. “Many times, they provide compassionate care and ministry of presence, and they are ministering to diverse religious faith” or “nones,” a growing group of people who do not identify with any religion. A recent survey found 49% of Americans seldom or never attend church services, and 45% of self-identified Christians didn’t attend a church service in the past six months.
“If half of Americans never attend church, and half of Christians don’t attend church, think about the percentage of people outside the church walls that would never be reached, and we feel like chaplains are there to do that,” she said. “We always think of the Great Commission in terms of church work, but isn’t the Great Commission all about going outside the church building and being in the secular world?”
The association includes “chaplains in all kinds of settings, and I think a highlight for us has been to see the numbers of lives that they touch in those settings per year. So, in the chaplains’ annual reports, it’s nearly up to 500,000 contacts that our chaplains have per year,” Tim said. “Some of those touches are maybe a brief conversation in a hospital room or a prayer that’s offered in a hospital, or a chaplain out in the military walking through a work area and having a short conversation with somebody.”
Other touches include longer conversations and deeper connections.
“As people struggle through crisis or suffering, it might be in a hospice setting where a chaplain actually is there when somebody is dying, and they’re ministering to the family as well as to the one that is passing. It might be in a police department where maybe they’re making a death notification with a law enforcement officer to family members, and so they’re there to provide care as that notification is made,” Tim said. “It could be in a marketplace setting where the chaplain is ministering in a corporate setting, and they’re walking through a business, getting to know employees, and just being a ministry of presence in those settings. One inspiring highlight for us is reading all that our chaplains do annually in the lives of others in the settings in which they find themselves.”
Chaplains serve in military, hospital, hospice, business, prisons, and senior living settings and also with police and fire departments.
“We have a university chaplain at Greenville University working with students,” said Tim who also highlighted community chaplains whose work includes “people that are in homeless situations and other places in the community where there are needs.”
“We have a river chaplain that’s been embedded with whitewater rafting guides who probably would have never been in contact with anyone from the church,” said Patricia, who noted that the “popularity of the chaplaincy ministry” is “exploding in the U.S,” and “we’re finding internationally, people are wanting chaplain training because they’re realizing that they need to go outside the church walls to minister.”
The Porters have helped train chaplains from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda. Their work has also included the recent training of more than two dozen theology students who have interned in chaplaincy at Kibogora Hospital and the Porters are collaborating with professors to start a chaplaincy program at Kibogora Polytechnic, a Rwandan university.
“Once this is established, we would like to lead VISA ministries where we take chaplains to utilize their chaplain training, education, and experience to teach not only Free Methodist chaplains but pastors,” Patricia said. “What pastors can’t use crisis counseling, or grief and bereavement or trauma care training?”
Although chaplains care for people, “we’re from that tradition where it’s not just about caring.” Patricia said. “Evangelism is always in the back of our mind. … It’s and/both not or. … We want people to give answer to the hope they have.”
Patricia believes some Christians “minimize the importance of compassionate care and ministry of presence, because we focus so much on evangelism that we don’t really think about Matthew 25. When you look at the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus basically talks about taking care of people.”
She said chaplains start with the care described in Matthew 25, and then they include evangelism and discipleship as opportunities occur. Chaplaincy “is one of the most interesting and innovative forms of ministry. It finds its roots within the established church, … but takes the ministry of care, compassion, and presence into the world in a diversity of healing ways.”
She emphasized that the current “chaplaincy is not the chaplaincy of your grandparents. It’s the chaplaincy of the Gen Z, and the reason I say that is so many of the young people are finding that they love chaplaincy ministries.”
Along with chaplaincy becoming more intergenerational, the FM Chaplains Association also looks different in another important way.
“We’ve doubled in women chaplains in the last five years,” Patricia said.
She also said many myths exist about chaplains. People mistakenly believe chaplains don’t preach, share the gospel, or pray in Jesus’ name. They do all of these things, while endorsed Free Methodist chaplains still adhere to the denomination’s doctrine. Instead of chaplaincy pulling leaders out of a local church, many chaplains also remain active in their congregations, and many are co-vocational as pastors of congregations.
“We see chaplaincy as a partnership to expand the Great Commission, and also partnership with the churches to expand ministry in their communities,” she said. “The mission of the church can be expanded by really embracing chaplaincy as a ministry of the church. We have really appreciated Bishop Keith Cowart, who is our supervisor, and Pam Cowart, as they have embraced chaplaincy and have supported and encouraged the FMCA chaplains.”
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“It is amazing to see what God is doing through the grant funding in the U.S. and around the world.” – Tim Porter
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Continuing to Engage
The Porters will officially retire March 31 from leading the Chaplains Association (a forthcoming Light + Life article will share more details about their successor), but don’t expect them to stop doing ministry.
“We want to travel more and enjoy different countries while we can, but on a ministry side, we want to continue to be engaged in missions wherever the Lord leads,” Tim said. “We can use our ministry gifts to teach in a foreign country short-term. We would definitely enjoy that.”
Tim plans to continue teaching an “Introduction to Chaplaincy” class through the Center for Pastoral Formation with which the association, in partnership with the center, has developed a chaplain certificate program consisting of five courses. The Porters also will continue to be involved in the Butterfield Foundation, which they currently serve on the Board of Directors.
“This really gives us joy to represent the spiritual care/chaplain side on the board and to see what Butterfield is doing all over the world but also locally in Oklahoma and across our country with helping Christian nonprofit organizations support people that have medical and spiritual needs,” Tim said. “It is amazing to see what God is doing through the grant funding in the U.S. and around the world.”
The Porters have really appreciated partnering with Dierdre McCool, executive vice president of Butterfield, as she and the foundation have been very involved in the African chaplaincy training missions and hospital internships along with the Porters and the FMCA.
The Porters also plan to stay active in their home church — Lamb’s Fellowship in Lake Elsinore, California — where they currently lead a small group. They plan to start a community Bible study and may also provide marriage training, which they have previously led.
As the Porters prepare for retirement, they are also spreading the word about a major achievement for the association — the recent release of “Agents of Grace: Inspiration from Free Methodist Chaplains.” The new book features stories from chaplains in their own words, and it builds upon the legacy of E. Dean Cook’s earlier book “Chaplaincy: Being God’s Presence in Closed Community,” which recorded the history of chaplains from 1935 to 2010. Click here to purchase “Agents of Grace” from the Light + Life Bookstore.
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