Photo By Chad Menegay | Members of the Fort Gregg-Adams Religious Support Office stand for a photo in front of...... read more read more
FORT GREGG-ADAMS, Va. — The Fort Gregg-Adams Religious Support Office started a Community Religious Leader Engagement program as a mutually supportive community outreach to off-post areas recently.
“The local community is providing religious support to our Soldiers, a place for their families to go to worship, for them to serve and volunteer, so we thought it would be a great idea to collaborate and work together,” said Col. Thomas E. Allen, the installation’s senior command chaplain.
The program is designed to help strengthen military families and the greater FGAV community through the building of partnerships and the fostering of shared understanding.
“It is mutually beneficial and not a competitive environment in any way,” said Lt. Col. Lyde Andrews, U.S. Army Fort Gregg-Adams Garrison chaplain. “We have our Soldiers and military families who are giving their time and pouring their talents into their churches.”
A couple staff officers in the RSO developed the Concept of Operations for the program in late 2024—Maj. Rick Pak, the FGAV community chaplain, and Maj. Tim Ice, the FGAV Family Life Chaplain.
The program, as constructed, is unique in that there is no directive from the Chief of Chaplains Office to have relationships with people from the outside community, Allen said. However, it is aligned well with FGAV leadership’s strategic priority to build community partnerships.
Cooperating with and having congenial relationships with local communities is a common-sense approach, he said.
The RSO, like other FGAV offices and departments, attends the Civilian Military Council every quarter, building relationships with mayors, city councilmen and other community leaders.
The chaplains worked with installation leadership to put together a list of key local religious leaders who FGAV service members are engaged with in the surrounding communities.
From that list, a meeting took place with several local pastors from churches that represent where the majority of FGAV service members worship.
“The timing couldn’t be better on this because we’re getting the community outreach started again,” Allen said.
About 60% of FGAV service members go off post to find religious support at local churches, synagogues, mosques, etc., in the greater FGAV area, according to a recent community needs survey. The other 40% go on post, mostly Advanced Individual Training students, with a weekly attendance between 725 to 750.
The first major event for the program is a Faith Community Partnership Symposium May 14 at Liberty Chapel on Fort Gregg-Adams. Meetings will be held bi-annually to foster religious community partnerships.
“We’re going to talk with local religious leaders about what Army chaplains provide and how the local faith communities provide for us by taking care of our Soldiers, by using their talents and resources in their places of worship, to sing in their choir, to teach Sunday school, to watch the nursery, to lead religious education,” Allen said. “They’re providing spiritual resiliency to our Families.”
The first symposium will also serve as an opportunity for a number of these faith communities to meet one another.
“The Jewish rabbis will be invited, the imams of the local mosques, catholic priests and the protestant churches around the area—along with law enforcement and first responders,” Allen said.
Emergency services personnel are key because they are intimately engaged with local communities already—responding and dealing with tragedy, giving notifications to families, Andrews said.
A second element to the local religious leaders initiative is to build relationships in case the RSO needs help with casualty notifications to families.
“There may come a time in a Large-Scale Combat Operations situation, where the RSO and Casualty Assistance Center will be overwhelmed in making notifications, and we’ll need to rely on our community partners to help us do that,” Allen said.
The RSO, like many offices in the Army, trains and prepares to be ready for almost any eventuality.
“The Army is really good at security, operational security, cyber security, physical security, and so I look at this as spiritual security,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jeremy Levens, the senior religious affairs noncommissioned officer for FGAV.
| Date Taken: | 02.07.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.07.2025 15:12 |
| Story ID: | 490355 |
| Location: | FORT GREGG-ADAMS, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 16 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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