You’re one sick puppy. How did you become a Covenanter pastor?”

The tired old stewardess opened the decrepit airliner’s cabin door. The acrid stench of burning human-waste-mixed­with·diesel-fuel punched me in the nose, knocked me into the Vietnam vortex, sucked me into a psychological sewer.

It is a long road from close-quarters combat to the pastorate.

Flashbacks have their drawbacks—but then it is kind of interesting suddenly to find yourself back in a firefight while simultaneously knowing you really are still in the U.S.A. Some folks probably consider post-traumatic stress an unusual qualification for the pastorate.

In February 1971, my body returned from Vietnam. By 1983, as an Army chaplain, I was learning about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), its intrusive hostile thoughts, and its generalized fear. While dealing with other combat veterans, these poster-children for PTSD, I began to study the malady pastorally and professionally. In the course of that study, I occasionally caught glimpses of myself on the road back to “normal,” defined by Christian humorist Patsy Clairmont as “just a setting on your dryer.”

For over 20 years, I experienced blood-curdling emotional-psychological traumas, dramatic Technicolor nightmares, at least 300 nights a year. Some of my memories are real, and some are “false memories,”—”second­hand trauma” induced by the nightmares. My wife Marilyn and our children paid a price for Vietnam. They learned to “beware the sleeping crazy,” since nightmare-combat is occasionally a bit frantic.

“Preacher-man, ‘dat is messed up! How come you to preachin’?”

Faithful Covenanters, just doing what Covenanters do, set my ministry trajectory. I am Covenanter born, Covenanter bred, and when I die—Covenanter dead. Unknown to me, family members had been praying since before my birth that I might become a pastor. They did not pressure me; they just waited on the Lord. It is not as though I put myself forward as a candidate.

Raised in the church and taken to church camp, I had religious experiences around 12 years of age, under the ministries of both Pastor Ken Smith and Pastor Jack White. Was I saved at that time? I thought so. I “felt the call” to pastoral ministry and responded. However, I did not want to be a preacher.

Later, my disobedient rejection of God’s call may be the reason that, lsrael-like, I experienced a decades-long detour through a howling wilderness. My generation’s desert experience was the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Yet, through that devastation, God kept calling.

My first week “in the ‘Nam,” my Light Observation Helicopter (LOACH) was opening the road from Cu Chi to Dau Tiang. That is, we were flying a few feet above the road to break up any ambush the Viet Cong (VC) might have prepared to attack the first convoy. As you can guess, the VC felt obliged to “pop the bush” on our aircraft, on me! Watching machine guns shooting at you right after breakfast is a lousy start to another day in paradise. Thanks to God who was piloting, and to the heroic warrant officer whose body was at the controls, we made it though. Why? Do you suppose I began to wonder if God was speaking to me from the barrel of a gun?

One beautiful spring day our “tracks” (light tanks and armored personnel carriers) were stopped; I don’t recall why. I was sitting on the ground leaned up against a wheel of my APC. Aware that I was doing it for no reason, I got up and walked to the other side of the track. Another cavalryman took my place leaning back against the wheel. A VC fired a crude rocket, which hit that other soldier directly. His remains would fit in a match­box. I am the guy who should have been obliterated. Why wasn’t I? Was God speaking to me out of the mouth of a rocket launcher?

On two different occasions, I hopped off a helicopter, and, as it took off, it was shot down and all crew members were killed. Why was I spared? When Sergeant Floyd jumped off my Huey into a major firefight, he was disintegrated by a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade. His body absorbed the explosion that would have taken down the helicopter with all hands still aboard. Why didn’t I die?

My guilty conscience thought I might be hearing the voice of the Lord, and it was neither soft nor gentle. I was afraid that He might be reminding me of a plan for my life. Was He giving me another opportunity to obey instead of doing what I might have wanted?

My cavalry regiment was suddenly ordered to load up our tracks and prepare to move out that night. Moving a light tank at night in enemy-controlled territory is suicidal. A track is just “a big coffin with tracks.” The Vietnamese “civilians” (spies) who worked in our base camp at Cu Chi had been saying for a couple weeks, “Soon you die,” “G. I. die soon in Kam Pu Cha,” and other similar encouragements. We enlisted peons had no idea what was going on—we just did whatever had to be done. But, with those orders, even we could figure out that the Vietnamese rumors muse be right, as usual. “Bad vibes, man, bad juju.” About midnight, a strange officer in a jeep drove up to my track, called my name, and ordered me to put my stuff in his jeep. The next day, the medic who took my place was killed in Cambodia. US forces attacked the NVA/VC safe havens across the river (the international border) in Cambodia. Remember the protests unleashed by the peace movement against that incursion? It saved many American lives, but it took my fellow medic’s life. Why his, not mine? How much longer would the patience of God last? Enough war stories. The real-life lessons had made their impact on me. I was aware that God kept preserving me. Why? Each miracle reminded my guilty conscience of church-camp commitments to ministry.

“Vietnam” is part of the reason I became a Covenanter pastor. My experience there was summed up by a four-star general (whose life I saved while he was a major, the executive officer of my squadron). He said, “You are about the only…Cav guy I know from that era who completed a tour without getting dusted off.”

You get the picture. Young prodigal, foreign country, running from the pastoral call, racking up a life time of terrible fearfulness, yet surviving by what were obviously divine interventions. This soldier-prodigal was a dead man walking. The question frequently haunted me: Why was I spared? My parents and church friends didn’t lecture me, but assured me that God had spared my life for some good purpose. That was powerful preaching to a guy who was conscious of his rebellion. If you guessed that all this combat-trauma baggage might have caused some inner turmoil for a 22-year-old predestinarian, you were right.

Back home in Kansas, my winter of ‘73 started out tough. For years, God and I maintained a running conversation about my war and life. Unfortunately, I talked more than I listened. Unemployed, alone with negative thoughts, in the quiet of our farm-home, I acknowledged to God that my sin had messed up my life so badly that it was not worth having. There were no lights, angelic choirs, or sawdust trails, but I submitted to Him, gave myself to Him.

God sure doesn’t need me, and I have nothing to offer, but He repeatedly called, broke my rebel’s heart, and (what I could never do) made me willing to submit to Him. He accepted me, ” warts and all.” There is a miracle! That afternoon I relaxed for the first time in four years—subjective evidence to me that God had indeed heard. When Marilyn came home from work that afternoon I briefly told her what had happened and that we needed to go to the seminary. She just said “okay.” No fuss, just “okay.” Well, as they say, “Ya coulda floored me with a feather.”

Being unemployed and in debt for two college educations is an inauspicious beginning for another three-year academic experience in an Eastern city. Within a week of submitting, I was offered a high­paying job constructing a new facility for the Shawnee RPC in Kansas City. (A year later, I interned under Pastor John Tweed and the Shawnee session; my membership still resides there.) By August, Marilyn and I were essentially debt-free with a thousand dollars in the bank, so there was no way to wiggle out of my commitment to go to seminary. We loved seminary and were blessed in significant ways too numerous to mention here.

From before seminary graduation and continuing until December 1982 when I was commissioned, several individual veterans had come to me privately to indicate that they thought I should consider becoming an Army chaplain. One such man, an RP elder and a Marine colonel, administered my oath of office and commissioned me. I was sent into the Army chaplaincy by my church, as a missionary to the military, a pastor to soldier-families.

Becoming an Army chaplain brought me “home” to minister to people who needed a pastor with a rough background.

My wife and children were blessed and were a blessing to other soldiers and soldier-families.

My pastoral ministry has been primarily “secular.” My congregations do not consist of heaven-bound hallelujah­shouting saints moving “like a mighty army” from victory unto victory. Our congregational ministry has been more like a hospital, where “walking-wounded” support one another, incorporate other wounded people into our faith hospital­community, and do the best we can to fight the good fight of faith. God’s army still needs local hospital-churches.

Through Vietnam, God confirmed, for a number of people, the call into pastoral ministry. Through Vietnam, God uniquely prepared some for specialized pastoral ministries. He overruled willful sin and turned wilderness experiences into spiritual blessings. Through Vietnam and along the road back, God preserved me, reiterated the call, and changed my heart. “Even the wrath of man shall praise Him: what remains, is kept from ill.”

By God’s grace alone, is how this prodigal became a pastor.

If you have God’s call (confirmed through the church) to serve Him in any vocation—take this tip from a geezer­prodigal. Submit quickly! God’s gracious affliction of you will bring you to Him. Spare yourself lifelong negative consequences. In His service you will find the joy and satisfaction that most people unsuccessfully seek elsewhere.

Chaplain (Major) Copeland retired from the Army chaplaincy on Jan. 1 after 24 years. He and his bride of 35 years, Marilyn, of Hebron (Clay Center, Kan.) RPC, currently reside near Fort Huachuca, Ariz. Marilyn is the “Test Administrator” for the Army Education Center on Post. Stan teaches college courses while pursuing pastoral ministry opportunities. His membership remains in the Shawnee, Kan., RPC. Stan and Marilyn are parents of four adult children, three of whom are soldiers.