For 25 years,

Chaplain Charlie Reynolds closed the memorial service for U.S. Army Spec. Anthony Vaccaro, “the most-loved soldier in the battalion,” a medic who died in Afghanistan in 2006. Then Reynolds moved to Vaccaro’s memorial display so he could encourage the young man’s devastated comrades as they saluted their friend one last time.

“As the first soldier came up and gave a salute and walked over to me, I reached out my hand,” Reynolds recalled. “He buried his head in my chest, and our tears mingled together on the blouse of my uniform. Every soldier in that company except one cried in my arms.

“Something happened that had never happened in 40 years of ministry: I felt like I wasn’t there and that it was the arms of Jesus holding those soldiers.”

Thank God that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship endorses and supports chaplains.

Remarkably, that wasn’t a foregone conclusion. In the early 1990s, “intensifying divisions in Baptist life” worried many chaplains and pastoral counselors who had cast their lots with CBF. They wondered whether their endorsements were in jeopardy, Ed Beddingfield, a pastor and pastoral counselor from Buies Creek, N.C., reported in the book CBF at 25: Stories of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

Most of them had received endorsement through the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board. Denominational endorsement provided the required credential that enabled them to hold down an array of ministry jobs. Would the stridently conservative SBC drop them because they had affiliated with CBF? Would they be forced to choose between signing a creed or keeping their jobs?

Even as they pleaded for help, CBF Executive Coordinator Cecil Sherman resisted. He feared declaring CBF a “denomination” for endorsement purposes could force dually-aligned congregations to choose between CBF and the SBC. Southern Baptist leaders piled on, telling them a church could not affiliate with two denominations.

In 1995, the CBF Coordinating Council’s Church Ministry Resources Group created a study committee to find a way forward. They decided terminology need not create a barrier to endorsement. So, in the summer of 1997, they recommended that CBF declare itself a “religious endorsing body” without mentioning the word “denomination.” That fall, the Coordinating Council established the CBF Council on Endorsement.

Then, in January 1998, CBF endorsed its first class—including Jim Harwood, a U.S. Navy chaplain; Tim Madison, a Texas hospital chaplain; Paula Peek, a Kentucky hospice chaplain; and Jim Pruett, a South Carolina pastoral counselor.

CBF had not yet received accreditation from any national chaplaincy and pastoral counseling organization. But Harwood’s strong military contacts—he was assigned to the U.S. Navy Chief of Chaplains Office in Washington—proved fortuitous. That June, the United States military recognized CBF as an endorsing body. Two years later, the SBC confirmed those early fears: The SBC North American Mission Board, successor to the Home Mission Board, required chaplains and pastoral counselors to affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message doctrinal statement.

Today, CBF’s decision to endorse chaplains and pastoral counselors—plus subsequent accreditation by professional organizations—is vital for these ministers affiliated with the Fellowship, explained Renée Owen, CBF’s endorser and director of chaplaincy and pastoral counseling ministries.

“Ecclesiastical endorsement certifies that a minister is in good standing with a religious body and is appointed to minister on its behalf,” she said. “This endorsement is required by institutions that employ chaplains and pastoral counselors in healthcare settings, the military and government agencies and is also a requirement for membership in certain professional board-certifying organizations.

“CBF’s endorsement process is intentional and relational. The chaplain or pastoral counselor is vetted as being spiritually, emotionally, educationally and clinically prepared to serve in a specialized ministry setting outside the local church. Our Council on Endorsement also considers the candidate’s relationship with CBF, since that person’s ministry becomes an extension of the work of our local CBF congregations and the larger Fellowship.”

That “extension of the work” has encompassed 1,200 endorsed chaplains and pastoral counselors across the past 25 years. It includes 876 currently active people serving under endorsement. And many are leaders in their specialties, Owen said, noting three of the eight highest-ranking U.S. military chaplains are CBF-endorsed.

For its part, CBF maintains five commitments to chaplains and pastoral counselors, explained Gerry Hutchinson, Owen’s predecessor and the second full-time CBF endorser following George Pickle:

• Assist ministers in the discernment process regarding serving as a chaplain or a pastoral counselor.

• Help inquirers understand if CBF is a good fit as their endorsing body.

• Endorse candidates to ministry settings for service as either chaplains or pastoral counselors.

• Provide professional and personal support for CBF-endorsed chaplains and pastoral counselors.

•

Before becoming CBF’s endorser, Hutchinson experienced the other side of the endorsement relationship.

“I was a chaplain in the U.S. Naval Reserve for 26 years, endorsed by CBF from 2001 to 2014,” he said. “I can’t overstate the value and peace of mind that came from being endorsed by CBF, knowing I had theological congruence with the Fellowship. This was no small thing after years of seeing the SBC—under whom I was endorsed from 1988 to 2001—become more and more fundamentalist and knowing this was not who I was theologically.”

Chaplains and pastoral counselors expressed similar appreciation for CBF’s endorsement, relationship and support.

“As a female chaplain in the Air National Guard, CBF’s progressive values are a great fit for me. I am fully supported and empowered to pursue my calling, which includes encouraging other women to do the same,” said Col. Leah Boling, director of the Air National Guard Chaplain Corps and one of those three highest-ranking military chaplains endorsed by CBF.

“CBF’s commitment to inclusivity and support for women in leadership has given me the freedom to take on significant leadership roles without fear of being judged or questioned.

“The CBF community is an incredibly empowering one, and this is largely due to its open and welcoming stance toward women in ministry,” she added. “What makes the CBF community particularly unique is its embrace of diversity and inclusivity. This openness has allowed me to celebrate my faith without feeling constrained or limited. As a result, my faith has truly thrived and blossomed in this supportive and nurturing environment.”

CBF endorsement is valuable because “it gives the chaplain a sense of support,” noted Rhonda James-Jones, manager of spiritual health care at Wellstar Paulding Hospital and Nursing Center in Hiram, Ga.

“Endorsement is not for the organization to say, ‘we have this many chaplains who are endorsed by us,’” she said. “It’s really for the chaplain to say, ‘I have this many people who are standing with me.’ So, as you are going out here to do this work, you are not going alone. There are people who are in this with you.”

CBF provided an answer to a life question for Nicole Tota, a mental health chaplain in the VA Health Care System in Sioux Falls, S.D.

“I searched for a long time to discover my vocation as an ordained female Baptist minister, and I feel affirmed in that vocation working as a chaplain for the VA,” she said. “The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship allowed me the opportunity to pursue this. I am grateful for my endorsement with CBF in that they allow me to be flexible in my ministry, adapting to the needs of the veteran before me.” That “before me” location takes chaplains and pastoral counselors to people who might not receive ministry any other way.

“Chaplains and counselors take the Church where the Church can’t go,” said Beddingfield, pastor of Memorial Baptist Church in Buies Creek, N.C., as well as an endorsed pastoral counselor. “The work of Jesus that we do is in different places, but it’s the same as churches do. We’re trying to touch people in their hearts where they hurt and let them know God loves them.”

“In today’s world, there’s a big call for how we move out of the church into spaces where people still need spiritual care,” added Paul Byrd, for three decades a pediatric oncology chaplain who now works alongside rural healthcare providers.

“It is meeting the loneliness, the grief, the lack of meaning, the despair, the mental health issues,” he said. “Those are big, big issues, and there’s a huge role for chaplaincy. Sometimes, it may be helping doctors understand what to do with spiritual issues in their clinics.

It may be helping ministers and churches know how to reach outside their comfort zones to meet some of those needs. So, it’s pretty exciting, I think.”

Chaplains and pastoral counselors supplement the ministries of congregations, Owen noted. “They are excellent resources to our local CBF congregations in areas of trauma-informed care, grief and bereavement, and self-care for staff,” she said, adding many often fill Fellowship pulpits when pastors are away. She is also leading CBF to explore how chaplains and pastoral counselors can serve congregations as pastors and interim pastors.

Echoing Beddingfield, Owen pointed out that chaplains and pastoral counselors often go where the Church can’t—hospital intensive care units, trauma rooms in emergency departments, prisons, schools, alongside first responders to the scene of an accident, and alongside military service members on a mission. “In those spaces, they represent CBF, carrying with them the love of God and hope of Christ to all persons,” she said.

The likelihood chaplains and counselors will reach people the Church doesn’t reach is increasing, Hutchinson added. “As more Americans have less identification with religious tradition and less participation in religious services, the probability is high that they will meet a chaplain before they meet a congregational minister,” he said.

“So, the opportunity for chaplains to interface with people at times of need will be there.”

Simultaneously, chaplains and counselors are partnering with congregations as they become more community-focused, particularly as healthcare providers move into more community settings, Owen observed. This provides reciprocal opportunities—or chaplains and counselors to minister alongside and support congregations, and for congregations to better understand who chaplains and counselors are and what they do, “so we can advocate for them within our Fellowship and communities.”

One of CBF chaplaincy and pastoral counseling’s greatest strengths is its diversity, Owen said. “We are a very diverse group in the specialized settings that we serve. We also are diverse in gender, race and ethnicity.”

But despite progress, the ministry is not as diverse as it needs to be, she conceded, insisting continued diversity is a vital goal.

“Representation speaks volumes,” she said. “If we want to continue to grow in meeting the diverse needs of our communities and those we serve in specialized settings, we must reflect that diversity in those whom we endorse.” That mirrors one of several goals for CBF chaplaincy and pastoral counseling in its next 25 years, Owen added.

“My dream for our ministry team is to be able to support our chaplains and pastoral counselors in an excellent professional and compassionate personal manner so they are prepared, empowered and upheld to live out their call to ministry in specialized settings,” she said.

“I hope we will continue to invite chaplains and pastoral counselors into the Fellowship to equip and empower them as they offer the transformative ministry of compassionately companioning and journeying alongside others. We must support them as they meet people where they are in their journeys, offering skilled emotional, spiritual and pastoral care during sacred life moments.”

As CBF celebrates 25 years of chaplaincy and pastoral counseling endorsement, “I am so proud of the ministry our chaplains and pastoral counselors offer every day,” Owen stressed. “They enter spaces where people are hurting, frightened, lonely, grieving, anxious and seeking peace. They enter into these sacred spaces, meeting people where they are in their own spiritual journeys, bringing compassionate presence and representing the unconditional love of God and peace of Christ.” at Temple Baptist Church March 12. She will be commissioned during the CBF General Assembly in Atlanta, June 28-30. She will be a member of CBF Global Missions’ International North America Team.

Her path to this ministry began years ago, when she grew up in Yadkin County, N.C., where she loved to fish and do her homework on the banks of the Yadkin River. History does not record how well she fished, but she excelled at homework. As a high school senior, she became a National Merit Scholar and received full-scholarship offers from 43 universities across the country.

Her father offered wisdom that helped her make the choice that was right for her. “He explained to me, ‘I raised you to be rich in the Spirit of God, but some of the students you meet will believe “rich” means having everything they want,’” she recalled. “He said, ‘I know you will do well, but with two children already in college, we don’t have the means