Reassigned: Military Lessons for Ministry Leadership
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What if the years you thought were behind you were preparing you for what comes next?
When Bart Denny, himself a pastor and a U.S. Navy veteran, began doctoral research on pastors who had successfully led struggling small churches toward renewed health, he wasn’t studying military veterans. Not intentionally, anyway. Yet seven of the eleven pastors he interviewed had served in the armed forces.
That unexpected discovery raised a question that eventually became Reassigned: Military Lessons for Ministry Leadership: What if military service forms people for Christian ministry in ways veterans—and their churches—often fail to recognize?
Veterans leave the military with much more than technical skills and an unusual résumé. Years of service may have taught them to accept responsibility, work as part of a team, prepare before a crisis, endure difficult assignments, follow before leading, train others, receive correction, make decisions under pressure, and keep the mission in view. Those habits don’t make someone a pastor, and military experience is no substitute for Christian character, theological preparation, spiritual formation, or the discernment of the church. But neither should those years be dismissed as irrelevant to what God may call a veteran to do next.
Reassigned helps veterans look back at their military experience with new eyes. What did those years actually form in you? Which strengths can now be placed in Christ’s service? Which habits need to be adapted for ministry? And which instincts may need to be corrected, healed, surrendered, or left behind?
The church can learn something from the military, too.
The armed forces devote enormous attention to preparing people before responsibility arrives. They give developing leaders meaningful work, evaluate performance, provide feedback, train for crises before crises happen, and expect leaders to prepare others who can eventually take their place. Churches sometimes pray for leaders while overlooking capable people already sitting in their congregations—and veterans may be among them.
Drawing from more than twenty years of Navy service, pastoral ministry, doctoral research, leadership scholarship, and Scripture, Bart explores lessons involving mission, stewardship, followership, accountability, preparation, resilience, delegation, succession, and the development of future leaders.
But the church is not a warship.
Congregations aren’t crews. Volunteers can’t be ordered into action. Rank doesn’t
Reassigned: Military Lessons for Ministry Leadership
$12.99