Church in a VFW, Great Way to Connect Veterans in Montana

Church in a VFW, Great Way to Connect Veterans in Montana

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We were at Sykes Diner having breakfast with a great Montana veteran- Vietnam Vet and State Senator John Fuller. That's when he introduced us to another veteran at the diner that morning- Cowboy Bill Miles...the State Chaplain for the VFW.

(VFW stands for Veterans of Foreign Wars for those who don't know. I'm proud to be a Life Member of the VFW myself)

Cowboy started telling us about all of the innovative things the VFW has been doing to connect veterans and help bring a stop to the high rate of veterans suicide. One creative way they're reaching vets: church. Church in a VFW.

Fast forward to last week, we had the great honor of getting to hear from Joe De Cree- a green beret veteran who serves as the chaplain for the VFW Post in Kalispell.

Joe De Cree: "We are a veteran church.  I believe that the Bible has many aspects of military life and of combat. These are not necessarily the overt ones like the faith of the centurion in Matthew, there are many other aspects. We try to get vets to repurpose their lives for Jesus. After all, we have a ready made pool of fighters and we are in a spiritual war. Seems an obvious switch."

What makes this church service unique, aside from meeting in a VFW?  
Joe DeCree: "We start every service by looking where we are at on the operations order format for that subject or book of the Bible. We often apply military methodology to the Bible; for example, the problem solving steps with the pastoral letters. I do believe that military life helps us understand the scriptures in ways that are interesting and sometimes faster than someone else trying to figure it out."
It was great chatting with Joe. You can listen to our full conversation in the 2nd half of the below podcast.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1DmRsSOHr34ns6f9lUyEyC?si=Hm-JQhHiSY6i8n31icE3nw

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