Anderson, who is ordained by the Evangelical Covenant Church, is returning to Iraq until early 2007. He will assume his course instructor position in February 2007. The top photo shows Anderson addressing troops stationed in Iraq during a memorial service.
“This is a great honor for John, personally, and also a significant statement regarding the quality of ordained pastors that the Evangelical Covenant Church is endorsing for military service,” says Capt. James R. Fisher, the Navy’s director of chaplains for the Atlantic fleet, who also is a Covenant minister. He is a former deputy naval instructor for the chaplains school.
The chief of Navy chaplains selects the instructors based on their “personal integrity, depth of spiritual insight, a maturity level exceeding that of peers, and pastoral skills that have been exhibited in the most difficult of situations,” Fisher says.
“After the individual is selected by the Chief of Chaplains, the Chaplain School staff determines the individual’s ‘collegiality index’ for compatibility with the staff/team,” Fisher notes. “His selection speaks well of who we are as a denomination and the level of our institution’s commitment to pastoral development.”
Fisher says Anderson will personally impact between 400 to 500 incoming chaplains during his three-year assignment. That amounts to half of the Navy chaplain corps, he notes.
“Especially for a denomination our size, we have a good record of our own people being chosen for rather significant assignments,” says Rear Admiral James Erickson, a Covenant chaplain with the Navy.
Erickson says Covenant chaplains tend to do well because of the denomination’s ethos. “I think the one thing we have going for us is the Covenant’s ability to minister quietly, but forcefully.”
Anderson was one of the chaplains featured in September 2005 issue of The Covenant Companion that focused on the denomination’s chaplains serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also was featured in a May 2005 USA Today article that described his ministry in the “Soul Train,” an old train car (accompanying photo) that had been converted to a chapel.
Copyright © 2011 The Evangelical Covenant Church.
