#211: Chaplain Brady Feltz: Honoring the Fallen
Brady Feltz is an Army Chaplain stationed at Arlington National Cemetary. He is also a friend, and he shares his story this week!
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*Chaplain Feltz shares his own opinions and his opinions do not reflect those of the US Army
TEXT
EP. 211
Tony: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Reclamation Podcast, where our goal is to help you reclaim good practices for following Jesus. If we haven't met yet, my name is Tony, and with over a decade in the local church, I desperately want to help you connect with Jesus at a personal level. We believe that through intentional dialogue every single week, actually twice a week, we can help you move closer to what Jesus desires.
With you, which is a deep personal relationship. Also, this podcast would not be possible without my incredible producer, Caleb Stanton. I love to give him a shout out. That new intro music that you heard on the way into the podcast is compliments of Caleb and his team over at Stanton Creative. If you have any audio needs, he is the guy to talk to.
Be lost without. Today's dialogue is so much fun because it's a friend of mine, a guy who [00:01:00] is a pastor, who's also an army chaplain. His name is Brady Felts. Brady is a dad. He's a chaplain. He is a a deep thinker who I deeply appreciate, and we talk about his role at Arlington National Cemetery. We talk about what he does in the Army about the chaplain sea, some of the things that are near and dear to my heart, and it just felt really appropriate to release it this week since we'll be celebrating Veterans Day.
So guys without any further ado, here's my conversation with Chaplain Brady Phelps. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited today to have a dear friend of mine chaplain and well, just really a great pastor Chaplain Brady Phelps. Chaplain Phelps, thank you so much for being here today.
Brady: Yeah, great to, great to have a chance to talk with you.
Tony: Now. Obviously I know a little bit of your story because you and I have gosh, we've known each other for the last 10 years probably, and you've got a beautiful family and all the things. [00:02:00] I'm wondering if you could give us the Reader's Digest version of your career, like just the vocational part of like, Hey, this is where I started doing and this is what I'm doing now.
Brady: Yeah, yeah. So probably the, the fact that's gonna matter most for where some of the conversation we're planning on having goes k started back in high school. I felt my call to ministry on a trip to Europe. There are pictures of me in John Wesley's pulpit in London, England. Hmm. And there, and then I had a chance a few days later to go to Omaha Beach at Normandy and, and the combination Oh, wow.
Of those two locations and, and my spiritual life at the. Led me to feel a call towards military ministry. So I came back and started looking through that. I, I did RTC in college, went to seminary straight out of college for chaplaincy in the Army. I was a chaplain candidate and then going through the ordination process, I was in a local church for about seven or eight years.
I served at three different churches in the West Ohio conference where we [00:03:00] bumped into each other. I think we met when I was at my first church cuz you were. Near Dayton. Yeah. At your, at the when you were on staff there. And then, yeah, I, about three or four years ago, no, 2019, my wife and I felt the call shift back to active duty instead of local church.
I was in the reserves the entire time, so I bounced around, served a whole bunch of different reserve units, and then I went down to Port Stewart, Georgia in 2019 where I was assigned to a cavalry squadron with armored vehicles. We deployed to Europe. I came back. Reassigned to Arlington National Cemetery.
So that's the condensed version.
Tony: Yeah. So I, of course, for those listeners who don't know, I was in the army for reserves for 14 years as the chaplain's assistant. So all the words that he's saying, I know, and it's gonna be very easy for Brady and I to jump into military talk, which I'm going to desperately try to avoid.
So, and
Brady: I, I will want to try and avoid that myself. Yeah. .
Tony: Let me ask you, How would you [00:04:00] define what a chaplain does? Cause I imagine there's somebody on a treadmill right now who's like, Oh, this could be interesting. I don't know what a chaplain or what a chaplain does. Yeah,
Brady: it's, it's a really odd amalgamation of different roles.
I am required to have theological training at a graduate. I am required to be able to perform rights and rituals based on a religious tradition. And so part of that is I provide religious and spiritual support for service members in my faith tradition or whoever's really willing to be comfortable receiving.
Rights and rituals from me and who I'm comfortable offering them to. But then beyond that, there's, so there's, there's the ministry component of it, and then I also serve as an advisor to a commander or to different leaders at different echelons inside of my unit, my, my assignment. And that it, so that advisement ranges on everything.
Here's how the [00:05:00] soldiers are doing. Here are some issues that I'm noticing a trend in, right? So we're having 10 or 15 families or people who are coming to me because they have family issues. Maybe we need to adjust our calendar a little bit to accommodate this, or we need to offer something. And then a, a good chunk of it is when you're in the unit, it's, or when you're in a unit, it'll be counseling.
And so I, I have a, had a number of conversations at very acute moments in people's lives to. Calm down and, and figure out where to go next in the midst of a crisis.
Tony: Yeah. It's a, it's a big job. It's, it's, it's got a lot of breath to it. I'm gonna ask you kind again, unfair question, so forgive me in advance.
Yeah. But why are chaplains important for the most elite fighting force in the world?
Brady: So, I, My answer to that is whether you acknowledge it or not, and, and we get people [00:06:00] from all walks of life, all spiritual spectrums, whether people choose to acknowledge spirituality as a core component of being a human being or not, it is, even to say I am an atheist, is a spiritual statement, right? Even to say, I don't believe or I don't care, is a spiritual statement.
And so being prepared for that, that that readiness component, that, that idea of, of having answers. But then usually what happens is life happens. Hmm. So all these really comfortable answers of I didn't need, God, I don't care. It's not important, starts to matter. When you know you're gonna be deployed or you're dealing with really big, the conversations we have to have and the things that we have to be prepared to do.
The military are unique. Like as an anecdote, when we were doing training in Europe, we were doing, I'll say, force on force and Tony knows what that means. But imagine like several thousand Army soldiers playing laser tag with each other for [00:07:00] 10 days in a very, not as much fun as that sounds way cuz that's how the army does things.
And one of the scenarios that hit was I. A group of guys who I was assigned to be the chaplain for of, I'll say 80 people, and they lost 60 in a simulated chemical strike. Wow. A so like having to mentally prepare yourself for that being a reality is unique and that brings up questions and conversations that I am well-suited to.
Well, I say, well suit. I guess I'm there to have, I, I don't know about well suited, but I'm there to have those conversations ,
Tony: Right? I, I don't know if anybody's ever well suited for Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brady: That, But let me, let me walk that back then.
Tony: No, I, I, I appreciate that and I think that that gives some text, some context to the big job of what the, the chaplaincy is and does how, I mean, you mentioned earlier in your story about.
Being in Wesley's pulpit and then also [00:08:00] being at, at the Normandy Beach. You know, one of the questions I always love to ask people is kind of about their call. How, how would you articulate the call that God has placed on your life?
Brady: Yeah. I knew this was coming. I'm a Engram five, so like I've only listened to about a dozen of your podcasts to try and get ready.
I, the succinct way I would put it is I, I feel like God has called me to both seek out and offer God in hard places. Hmm. Tony will probably remember, I, I struggled in the local church at times because the, the complaints and the frustrations that I would get always felt so trivial to me. in comparison with what I, I recognized as true pain and suffering around the world.
Which is not to negate, you know, the, the needs of the congregation, but that was a, a bristle for me. And so I, [00:09:00] I enjoy having conversations with people to help them connect with God in hard places.
Tony: Let me ask you this, cuz I, that's a, that's a, a very succinct calling and you're one of the few people that have ever prepared for that question, so I appreciate that and I love it.
How do you spiritually prepare for the heaviness that that call brings? Like what are some of your daily disciplines, your non-negotiables? In your life that help you answer that call in a healthy way, or, I'm sure there's been times where it's been unhealthy as well, but how, what, what, what are some of the, your, your guardrails that keep you on track when it comes to living out that heavy calling?
Brady: Yeah. I, I try to build rituals and rhythms around a lot of things. On the, on the larger scale that most people listening will probably, like. I have a [00:10:00] regular touch point. I get up, but the first thing I do is have my quiet time with God. I try to get some exercise in, usually in the morning as well.
And like just being physically active is really good for my emotional health to burn some of that anxiety and some of that stress and that that worry off. . But then outside of the normal stuff, I like, I've just developed a couple of things along the way. I try to stay in touch with empathy as like as best as I can.
The, the best way I've found to have hard conversations with people is to try and put myself in their shoes. Cuz you know, a lot of times people will come to me with problems that I would not be in because I, they made decisions that I just haven't made or wouldn't make sure. , but then, you know, you just stop and think like, All right, well if I had done X, if I did decide to, to go drinking and driving, or if I didn't think that this was that big of a deal, and if I were sitting in that chair instead of mine, how would I feel?
Hmm. And then [00:11:00] like as we get into speci, like, so I've written 55 and performed 55 funerals in six weeks here at Arlington, or probably about closer to eight weeks. . And even when I was in a local church, I have a playlist specifically of about six or seven songs that I listen to only when I am tapping into grief and, and that kind of emotional side of the spectrum.
And that, that has helped me kind of keep it there. So sometimes if I need, like, if I can tell I've got that welling up, those, those feelings of like, where is God in this or, or kind of, I just feel that need to sit in it a little bit. I can, I can tap.
Tony: Yeah. I, I, I I want to ask this, and I, I don't want to be quippy about it, but is it, Yeah.
Is it basically like is it a playlist to kind of make you cry almost? Like, is it, I I mean it would be, Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's, I mean, it, it's, it's an intentional move towards a feeling, towards [00:12:00] feeling feelings.
Brady: Yes. Can, it's a specific set of feelings. I've got a playlist for working out that I ti like I've got some of those songs that I'll listen to if I need some motivation or some energy at other times.
But specifically like when I am, I can tell that I've got stuff and hey, I need to journal this out. Like I need to just process this stuff. It's a playlist I can put on for that. If I'm dealing with some of the grief or I'm losing my mom from a few years ago, I can put the playlist on and, and kind of sit and process a little bit or Most cases, I'll listen to it for about an hour while I'm writing funeral sermons.
Tony: I think that's super helpful you, because you correct me if I'm wrong, but you're not naturally an overly emotive person.
Brady: You know, I think I am, but most other people think I'm not really that demonstrative with it. ,
Tony: what would your wife. ,
Brady: my wife would absolutely say I'm more robot than human in that sense.
Tony: Oh, you mentioned Arlington. I want, I want to jump into some of that. Yeah, it kind of, [00:13:00] you know, you know, there's probably somebody's listening who who's not familiar with the mission of Arlington National Cemetery out of dc. I've had the privilege of being there before. Give, give us some scope on like how big, how wide, I mean, like you guys, you guys, how many funerals are you guys gonna do this year?
You said 55 and almost eight weeks. How many funerals did the cemetery do this year?
Brady: So the cemetery averages 20 to 25 a day across all branches. So I can't tell you what, like, I, I don't know the math on how that'll play out across it. Three branches. Sorry, I should clarify. That's not trying to diminish the role of the Marine Corps or the Coast Guard.
They just fall underneath the Navy. So whenever the Navy is doing funerals, it's also for the Marine Corps and for the Coast Guard. Wow. So we have Army, Air Force, and Navy that are doing funerals every single day. And so the funerals are for spouses or [00:14:00] dependents as the the military phrase is, but like family.
And then service members who served honorably they get to receive honors during their funeral. And that's, that's what more, most people think of with the firing party and the flag folding and, and taps and all that. And so we'll do I, I'll do 10 funerals next week, which is a normal week. And I've got four, or I've got three Protestant colleagues and two Catholic co.
Who will all be doing comparable numbers.
Tony: Yeah. So I, I did the quick math yeah. On a calculator, if you, if you just said 25 a day, and let's say that you did 350, that's somewhere in the range of over eight, you know, it's well over 8,500 funerals Yeah. This year. And I'm, I'm probably, that's probably a fairly conservative number.
Part of why I wanted to have this conversation so much is because of this idea. , the, the spiritual side of what that [00:15:00] space might feel like. Like that's, yeah, that's a lot of people. It's a lot of honor. It's a lot of volleys throughout the day. It's a lot of taps. Like, it's a, it's just a lot. What have you learned eight weeks in about God, Not about this space yet.
We're gonna get there in just a second. Yeah, Yeah. But what have you learned about God that you didn't know before?
Brady: That's a good question that I was not as prepared for. What are you doing to me, Tony? ? No, it's, I think, I don't know if it's been a relearn or any, or if it's a brand new aha moment. I, I've had God reinforce just the simplicity of faith within. , it's easy for us to get bogged down in theological nuance.
We, we, being clergy church leaders, pastors, people who are trying to lead in a spiritual realm, we [00:16:00] get bogged down in what does this sect of us say? What is the, you know, like, what's the nuance behind this? The reality is like I don't know. God weeps with those who weep. God celebrates with those who celebrates.
God feels, and God is more quiet. And that has something to do probably with the space. God has a, a softer tone and a softer voice than I think we often give credit for. I dunno if I'm making any sense.
Tony: No, that's, that's beautiful. I, and, and actually it resonates some with, you know, God's gentleness has really been on my heart lately that what a gentle God that we have.
L Let's talk a little bit about the space of, of where you work. Yeah, how, how, how is sacred space formed in your experience? How, how does it become sacred?
Brady: So it's as I was thinking [00:17:00] about this and as I pro, like I threw the, the idea out to you. Part of what, what made me realize it was seeing two components at the c.
On the one hand. On the one hand, like our nation, our, our collective patriotic society and that that's kind of its own cultural thing, has imbued. I think, I think we as a nation have kind of given a sanctity and a sacredness to Arlington. And I think we can do that in our own spiritual life. I think our faith tradit.
Have certain key locations that, that we have said like we united a Methodist. Wesleyans would probably say Wesley's Chapel. There, There are certain places in West in Wesleyan history that we would say would not necessarily be sacred, but like special. Yeah. But like you take a look in the Bible, there are definitely locations where God himself seems to reach down and touch this mountain and say, Mount Sinai is significant.[00:18:00]
I have met you here in a way that will only happen. . So I think that there's a biblical precedent for that. And so I became more aware of that as I was watching people kind of trek and journey and, and to some extent take a pilgrimage to Arlington.
Tony: Yeah, I mean it was certainly a place that when I was in DC I had, I felt like I had to go to, yeah, I had to go to how, how do, how do we steward.
How do you steward sacred space at Arlington? How do we do that well in our own lives? Like what, what does that mean to like, to both honor God and honor the practical nature that like, hey, like this is really important. This is really sacred. Also, you know, there's, you're still dealing with, you know, 18 to 30 something year old.
Young soldiers. Yeah. And they're goofy and they [00:19:00] have lives and they are going to do goofy things. Not because never on duty, but you know what I mean? Like the, you guys are still humans, right. How do we deal, How do we live in that tension?
Brady: Yeah. How so? It's, it's a both and I think you have to be intentional in being that you have to be intentional in recognizing that it is a sacred.
Whether I show up to work and feel something significant about Arlington doesn't really matter. Like, I don't have to feel it for it to be actually significant. So I just have to be intentional in my approach to that. And then I think you have to be open to, to the sacredness in that there are certain moments, like I don't have any big aha.
Like I, I don't have big moments at work where I go, Man, this is a. Special thing, like I have little moments where I see names on gravestones or I see decorations or awards that people have earned and, and different things [00:20:00] like that. Or I see the way that people who are there, tourists who are, are walking around, stop and watch a funeral procession and the, the kind of the solemnity, the sobriety, the, the, their honor that they give in those small.
Kind of will, will reinforce that. So it's, I have to show up and be intentional about acknowledging this is kind of a set apart space. And then I, I have to capture and take advantage of being open to those small moments when they occur.
Tony: So you, you collect those kind of small moments. I think a lot of us throughout the course of our life or collecting small moments,
How, how do we what do, what do we do with them after we collect them? You got any thoughts on that? Like, I, I, I'm thinking about the person who's like, Man, I just had this really solemn, I sacred, special, whatever word you want to use moment. And now I've kind of like that. Well, now I gotta go take out the trash.
What, how do we live in that? [00:21:00] What do we, what do we do with that?
Brady: I, yeah, I don't know. I mean, you. You cannot feel the pressure of capturing all of them. And I say that cuz that's a thing that I struggle with, right? Like, there's a part of me that feels like, Oh, if I don't, if I don't take more pictures or if I don't journal this, or if I don't tell this story, I feel like I'm dishonoring it.
And that's not true, right? Sometimes God shows up and just shows you a thing and it's just for you. And I also think it's kind of arrogant or, or a scarcity mindset. , if you feel the, the compulsion and the need to kind of capture all these small moments. It's kind of saying, I'm not sure God's gonna show up later.
It's that, it's that man imagery from Exodus with the with the Israelites. But I will say so. So there's that. But I do think that there are times that are worth capturing to some extent. I have come home and shared stories with my wife. , These are really cool funerals and I can't believe I got to do this one today.
Oh, wow. Or I'll talk [00:22:00] with some of the people I work with of like, this was a really hard funeral. Or I saw a gravestone that really like tugged in my heart because it was for an infant. They, a kid who lived one day didn't even get named and is buried next to their dad. And so like some of those, you kind of just have to let them beat.
But in my life I've had other moments. as I reflect on like a trip to St. Peter's Basilica or St. Fran, the basilica of St. Francis or Normandy. I have a bottle of sand from Normandy, from Omaha Beach that I keep with me at my office. So I think some of it is you've just gotta recognize how significant is that moment between you and God.
How formative do you think this is going to be? And sometimes you just have to take a chance and say, This is gonna be at a really important moment. This is gonna be one of those things that I need to hold onto and anchor off of. So I'm going to take a picture, grab a rock, you know, the Ebeneezer id. I'm gonna I'm gonna write about it.
I'm gonna tell somebody about it cause I need this to stay.
Tony: Hey guys, just pausing this [00:23:00] conversation with Chaplain Phelps to remind you about the Spirit and Truth Conference. If you haven't signed up yet, there's still time. This isn't a conference, like a traditional conference. It's really gonna be like fresh breath.
We want to give you new. March 9th through 11th here in Dayton, Ohio, the Spirit and Truth Conference will be held. The Vineyard Church. Super excited for what God's gonna do at this conference. I'll be there, Kim Moss will be there. Marion Hayes, Matt Reynolds, the whole spirit and truth team. We'll be there seeing what God's gonna do.
So if you're ready to sign up, we got a discount code for you. Just go to Spirit and truth.life/conference. And when you get to the checkout counter, be sure to use the code. Podcast. Podcast. Now let's finish up this conversation with Brady Now. I would imagine the heaviness of your work and, and now granted, you've, you've been doing it for eight weeks, so it's not like you've been doing it for years and years and years.
Yeah. But the, the [00:24:00] nature of the, the, just the realness of the work that you do, Right. The you, how, how do you, how do you not bring that home? Right. How, how do you, Yeah. How do you find a way to, to find joy? When, you know, your 40 plus hours a week is spent being serious.
Brady: Yeah, it's, we have a number of things that I, I came in with very intentionally to safeguard it.
So I like one, I'm allowed to show up in civilian closed street clothes as long as they're business casual. And then I change into my dress uniform. There we have lockers and all. So I only to the best of my ability, I, I haven't followed this strictly, but I only intend to talk to families and write funerals when I'm in my uniform.
So there's a, there's a tactile, there's a, a physical, I feel it, different kind of vibe and all of [00:25:00] that. Like I try and just do all of it there. So that's one of the things. My playlist for writing funerals is another intentional component. This only happens with this, and so it, it helps me separate. And then lastly, I think probably the biggest help, my colleagues are really like, they've done this longer than I have and we make a point of laughing.
We, soldiers typically have darker senses of humor and so there are probably jokes that we make in the office that would not. Kosher or you know, the average. Sure, sure. We certainly wouldn't want, like, and we're never disrespectful at the risk of, like, I realize people are listening in and they're like, What do they say?
It's never disrespectful. We always recognize that, like, and we always make a point of saying like, we get it. The family is suffering and we, we are doing what we can to honor that, that pain as they are saying goodbye. Like everything we do is about that mission set. And sometimes that means we need to laugh because a family is, , you know, divas, and they're being, [00:26:00] they're asking for too much and they're, they're trying to do too much.
But we will do everything we can to be professional and care for them. And sometimes we're just like, life is weird and so we just need to laugh about this with each other.
Tony: Yeah, I, no, I mean, that's been my experience in the local church. That's one of my favorite things to do is to ride with funeral directors in.
in the the, I I'm gonna use the word convoy. That's not professional. I couldn't, Yeah.
Brady: The, I was like, what's the, here we are, . You've been out for a long time and you're still slipping into convoy.
Tony: Well, here, I'm, I'm in that mode talking to you. Yeah. And so I always love to ride with the funeral director because they have the best stories.
They have like the weirdest, most bizarre stories and they. , you know, it's, it's part of how I think you deal with the, the heaviness of it is by bringing some levity to it and recognizing that, that even in the midst of our deepest grief, we can find joy. I, I, I am curious, you know, not every [00:27:00] chaplain has the experience in the local church that you have.
What, what did you learn in the local church that's really prepares you for what you do today?
Brady: The playlist, It was a big one. Truthfully. So I, early on when I did funerals at my first church, it was a student pastor, which is to say it was a church that was set up for someone who was at seminary, to also pastor there while they were getting ordained and all that.
And it was an older congregation. And so I, I showed up and actually I think I hadn't even. I hadn't moved in yet. I had barely been assigned to that church before. I had to do my first funeral, so that was awesome. Yeah. What I learned early at that church was just like, if I did not create guardrails mm I was gonna wear myself out emotionally.
I remember coming back from doing funerals and just needing like an entire day of just binge watching sitcoms to kind of catch myself up [00:28:00] emotionally. And part of that was just, I didn't have good emotional awareness of how to navigate that at that point. And I, you know, I would pour myself in too much.
So I, like, I had learned some of my own thresholds and my own boundaries in that. And I got to fine tune it. I got to practice it along the way. I did probably 30 ish funerals in the local church while I was in. So I had practice at realizing like if I'm doing hospice visits or bedside visits and home visits and collecting stories in person, that takes a heavier toll.
My current job, I do phone calls for families. And so there's, there's some emotional distance created there. We have a very tight script and schedule that we have to stay to that, that also creates some, some safety for emotional health and wellness in.
Tony: And, and this might be a little too drilled down, but could you kind of take us through the script of what an average funeral at Arlington looks like?
Brady: Yeah. So when, [00:29:00] when it's a graveside committal I have about five to seven minutes total from, from start to finish. And so I start off with, we have a customary welcome to our Arlington National Cemetery, where I kind of try, we do that. Set the tone. We want, part of the reason why people choose to get buried at Arlington is, again, going back to that there's a sacredness about the space for service members.
And so we like to begin with that intro and that customary greeting to kind of set that tone, I do a prayer. I will read a scripture. Usually it's the 23rd psalm, unless the family has a very specific request and then I get into a eulogy. And I have a pretty standard format. Most of us have a pretty standard format for what that looks like.
I think in that, my time in the local church fine tuning my, my eulogies has paid off cuz I've figured out how to, how to say traits [00:30:00] about a hu about a person really well articulately and, and kind of humanize them rather than just reading off facts. I get done with the eu. I do a committal prayer, and then if they are a service member, I have a, a paragraph and a script that I read for rendering honors or for queuing the hiring party and the bugler and, and all
Tony: that.
Wow. And the whole thing takes about seven minutes.
Brady: By the time you add in the honors portion, it'll be 10 total. Okay. Yeah.
Tony: And then that's, that's kind of the committal side of it. Yep. And then do you guys do a funeral service as well, or you guys just do committals?
Brady: So we do some chapel services, but the family has to request it, and it takes longer to get to, right?
Like we only have so many slots in a day to do chapel services across all the branches. And so if you say, I'm gonna do a chapel full honors service, well, okay, we can schedule that, but it's gonna be two extra months instead of. [00:31:00] Three months total or something like that. And some families go for it, some families don't.
And that gives us another 15, 20 minutes. But if we do a chapel service, I only do like a committal prayer when we get to the graveside. Yeah.
Tony: And the truth is, is that that's really not that far off from what we do in the local church, typically. Yeah. Like my committal services in the local church are always less than 10 minutes when we're Yeah.
So sometimes we might play music instead of a bugler or something like that. Yeah. But typically, you know, if I just follow the, the book of worship committal side service, that's, I mean, so it's not like, you know, we're not rushing through anything here, I guess all that to say. Yeah. Right. You're, you're giving them it, it feels like a lot of time there.
I would imagine
Brady: it can. Yeah. Some families feel like it's a lot less, and some families feel like it's perfect. Most families feel like it's the perfect kind of,
Tony: Yeah. So speaking of families you've got a family and you've [00:32:00] got I do a beautiful wife and a young man. And well, how, how, how do you nurture the spiritual development of your family when when your work is so all consuming?
Brady: Yeah, I have done better at maintaining boundaries and balance at this assignment than my last assignment.
This assignment is much more regimented and I think that's by design. Sure. When you're a battalion chaplain, like you're kind of on call all the time and hey, we're going out to the field, so you should be prepared to spend the night for a few nights out in the woods. And hey, this meeting running late, or somebody needs to talk to you here.
I don't have to do a whole lot of. I don't have soldiers underneath me that I'm, I'm meeting with on a regular basis. It's strictly prepping for and executing funeral services. Mm. And that's by design. They like, they don't want us to mess this stuff up, so the margin for error is, is much less here than when I was in a battalion.
[00:33:00] So I, all of that is to say I, it's easier for me to like commute home and that commute is also helpful. Right. My, my drive. Is helpful for me to start shifting mental gears. And then I get home and I take advantage of the fact that we live near Washington DC and we go to Smithsonian Museums, or we go to the National Zoo, or I don't know, we just hang out at home and, or we go to, there's a park about a mile away that's really awesome for our son.
And we just, I, I do my best to leave work at work and not bring anything burdensome home. Oh, that's good. But that's part of it. Like that's, that's a discipline that my son, who is too, is not gonna be able to recognize right now. Like, I'll have to tell him about that when he is 10 or 12. We try really hard to develop a rhythm of like, we, we have a morning routine.
He gets up, he gets his bottle, we, or he gets his milk that he's too, he's not getting a bottle anymore. We just give him milk and a cup. And then[00:34:00] we. And we just have him like we repeat. I, I keep it super simple. Yeah. So for dinner we take, we hold hands. I pray the same prayer every single time. It's not theologically like robust, big or, Yeah.
It's, it's, Thank you for this time food. Bless this time to our bot or this time to our souls and our food to our bodies. Amen. And that's it. Like, I just want him to start grasping how this goes. . We read Bible stories at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. And that's kind of the, the nuts and the bolts of that.
We, we make a point of getting him involved in, in church programs and things like that, but it's, it's more about setting up a structure and a habit for him more than like, here's any form of actual theology.
Tony: No, I think that's good. I, I mean, you know, I'm a big disciplined guy, so I, I love good disciplines and I think that they're the bedrock to our, our faith.
I, I want to ask you to kind of speak to the, [00:35:00] my community about soldiers for just a second. Yeah. Right. And this is, this is a, one of those big unfair questions again. , what do you think the average person listening to this podcast needs to know about the American soldier?
Brady: Okay. Trying to put it succinctly is a, is the challenging part. So I may verbally process all over. Your listeners. They like it, it. Yeah, no, it's a conversation. That's all. It's on the one hand, it's worth knowing that like your average soldier does not consider themselves a hero. They don't consider themselves anything special.
Like they signed up. I, I don't know many people who signed up to do all the stuff that you see in movies. I, I've met plenty of them who, you know, I, I played Call of Duty, I wanna do all this cool stuff, but like most of them signed up cause they wanted a. They wanted to serve. Like, not to, [00:36:00] not to diminish the fact that they were just looking for a job, but they knew it was a good environment for them which is, I, I say that they weren't signing up because they wanted to be GI Joe.
They weren't signing up because they wanted to be this American hero. They signed up sometimes because they felt like they owed it to the country. Sometimes they did it because it was a good opportunity.
But I also think it's worth noting that like if you were in the local church and you were like receiving service members, if you have soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, who are coming to visit or attending your church I mean like you have people who are hardwired to focus in on your mission. So if you can give them the mission and they buy in, You have some of the best people in the world to tap for getting stuff done.
That was always part of my disconnect with the local church and my, my training and my, my [00:37:00] background as, as, as well as a caveat, I will always be more critical of my tribe. I e the American church, the American Protestant Church than any other. And one of my big frustrations. We have this mission from Christ to go into the world to make disciples, to help people connect to God.
And we get hung up on worship styles or we get hung up on all these small things that like don't matter. And I'm sure that like there's somebody on a treadmill like you like to say. , this absolutely matters. How dare he say that? And, and I'm not trying to say what does and doesn't matter. I have my perspective on it and I wanna be respectful of the disagreements there.
But to loop back, if you get somebody who served and they still have some of that wiring in them, and you can say, Hey man, I really think that we, our mission in this area is X. Can you help me [00:38:00] accomplish. You really just need to get out of their way. Like give them, right, like you just need to give them the bare bones.
We, we call it the five Ws. Who, what, where, when, and why. Like if you can give them the answer to those five questions and give them like their boundaries on here's how much you can do and how little to do and all that, just let 'em go and they will change the world for God faster than you would.
Tony: Yeah, that's good. I love that. I love that. Is there anything that you wanna say that we didn't get to, because I know I was kind of all over the place based off of our
Brady: notes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, Most people come on here and they have like a book that they're, or a product or some kind of tool that they're like, Hey, I really wanna help explain this, and I don't have that.
I just was like, Here's a random idea. So I was kind of all over the place myself. . One of the things I wanted to touch on that has drawn, that has come out in my time at Arlington is I think we need to be more intentional [00:39:00] about finding locations to meet God. I think there's a benefit to having a separate space.
I think there's a benefit of having a separate space in our home, but I also think that there's a benefit of having a separate space that is more than the church. I like, I've gone on spiritual retreats at a Catholic spiritual center in Ohio near where my family grew up. And I, I have regularly had touchpoints with God there.
Yeah. And I only go there maybe once every year, every two years. And I don't have big bush burning moments with God where he shows up and like redirects my life. But usually it's just a somber 10 minute conversation that occur. With God there that that only occurs there. I think we should be intentional in that because, and here's what drew my attention to it.
The church can be guilty of a lot of spiritual tourism, which is to say we like to go on mission trips to [00:40:00] nice locations. Nice locals. Yeah. Or locals that are fun to say. I went to, we do some good work, but we also. are kind of there watching the culture instead of participating with it. Mm-hmm. , we're kind of there to get souvenirs.
We're there to get stories. We're there to, yeah, we're there to encounter God, but it's, it's a trick more than a pilgrimage. And there's a vast difference between those two things. And I, I noticed this cuz I would watch people come to the c. . And they'd walk around with their maps out and they're trying to find famous graves or they're trying to get to the tomb of the unknown soldier and they're trying to see the, the eternal flame for jfk.
And these are all really cool things to do if you come and visit. And I'm not knocking people who come as a tourist, cuz some of it is, like you were saying, they feel a sense of, of compulsion. They feel like they should. Yeah. Go and honor, honor Arlington and, and honor what that site means for the. . But there's a difference between somebody who's doing that and somebody who, [00:41:00] and I've seen this plenty of times, somebody who is there visiting their loved one.
Cause I've seen people pull up camp chairs in front of a gravestone and they're there all afternoon and they have a cooler and they're talking and that's what they're doing. They're visiting their brother, their spouse, their kid that they buried a few years ago. Hmm. And. That's different entirely than just, yeah, hey, I'm, I'm going on this mission trip because I think I should.
No man, I'm here to, I'm the tri, the Christian tradition has pilgrimages in it, and we don't capture that enough. Right? So being intentional, and I'm going on the spiritual retreat, being intentional on, I'm going to the sacred site because I, I need to see God there. I think is a thing that we lose. . Yeah.
That's
Tony: really good. I love that. Okay. You know, I have one more question for you, but [00:42:00] before I ask it, I'm sure that the, the people may want to connect with you. Is there a space on the internet that we wanna send people to or I mean, you, you got Twitter or where, where if people want to ping you with questions, where can they go?
Brady: I have a Twitter account that I don't check at all because Twitter gets. I have Instagram, but I don't check that for the same reason. I, You can find me on Facebook just at Brady Phelps. It's nothing special. Yeah. You can email me if you want to. It's just Pastor Phelps at gmail. So Pastor, just like the job, Phelps, just like the last name, which should probably be in the show notes.
It will definitely be in the Yeah. at gmail. And we can put the email address in there and I'll, I'll be happy to field any questions that come up or connect with people as they want to. Yeah, that's probably the easiest way.
Tony: I love it. I love it. Well, last question, I always love to ask people, it's an advice question except I get to take you back to a very specific time in your life and you know, I [00:43:00] thought, thought quite a bit about what season of life I wanted to take you back to, cuz you've had several different seasons.
I wanna take you back to the day that you raised your right hand and said yes to the. Okay. If he could go back and give that younger version of Brady one piece of advice, what's the one thing that you're telling him?
Brady: Calm down and
get over yourself. . Yeah. So, so in that timeframe, I was a junior in college and I knew, I knew exactly how all of my, my career trajectory and, and my call and all this process was supposed to go. And what that did, it gave me incredible focus, which was super helpful at times. But like, I had plenty of people speaking into me about, Hey, you really need to do X, Y, and Z for your ordination process.
And I was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wouldn't do it so, [00:44:00] Took years to get through the ordination process, and I got told no multiple times at multiple levels, and it cost me opportunities that I, I would've loved to have had. Now, it also opened up other doors because of the way the timing all works.
So not to take away from where I'm at, I don't, I don't regret my current season and, and how I got here, but like I, there was a lot of wisdom that I just ignored along the way that I ignored because I was. in the Army, we would say, I was like super whoah. I was, yeah, I was super motivated and I was super keyed in on like, I'm gonna do X, Y, and Z, and, and God's gonna make it happen.
So I'm not gonna worry about how this is all gonna happen. And God was trying to make it happen by having people who were smarter than me show up and say, Brady, you need to do X, Y, and Z. And I'd be like, No, I don't. God's gonna take care of it. And so I would tell myself just to get over myself and I would also tell myself to calm down because the opportunities that I was really pursuing are great and all.
They're not the end all, be all right, like doing all these really cool [00:45:00] things. Having stories is nice, but you'll always get stories if you do your job well. If you honor your calling, you'll have stories, you'll have a life worth living and you'll have a story worth telling when your family, when your family calls your pastor and says, Here's what we want you to say about mom or dad at your funeral.
If you live your call. You'll have stories to be told.
Tony: I love it, man. I think that's good. It's a good word for all of us. Brady, you know, I love you and your family. I'm so thankful for our time together today. I'm thankful for the work that God's called you to, and we're praying for you, for you and for all the soldiers and family members who have to talk to you.
So yeah, Appreci. What an in-depth look at what it means to be an army chaplain. So thankful for Brady, his heart, what God's doing in him and through him. And hey, be sure to follow him on the socials. Make sure you connect with him. Let him know you heard him here on the podcast and that you appreciate all he does [00:46:00] for all of us.
Guys, I'm super thankful for you. If you want to connect with me, the best way to do it's on Instagram at T wme, T W M I L T, and the highest compliment you can give us. If you enjoyed this episode, share this episode with a friend. Maybe somebody who you know really appreciates the military, somebody who appreciates the Chaplain Sea.
Lot of good options out there, guys, thankful for you. And remember, if you wanna follow Jesus, you must be willing to move.
