After 30 years as a hospital and military chaplain, I returned to the pastorate last year. Now I’m rediscovering things I missed.

I missed preaching, potlucks and the fun I share with parishioners. I don’t miss the pressure clergy feel to recruit new parishioners. I was never much good at that.

In the Air Force I had ample opportunities to “troll for souls.” Each base chaplain is assigned workplaces they must routinely visit. My assigned areas were the hospital and security police station.

PK is an old-time church abbreviation for “preacher’s kid.”

My wife and I are both PKs. Her dad pastored Fairvale Baptist Church for 49 years in Fair Oaks. My father pastored multiple churches, moving us every three or four years to a different California congregation.

We were PKs and proud of it. But my siblings and I knew our title was sometimes applied in a pejorative sense to describe bratty kids that ran unabated through the sanctuary before and after service.

On April 4, 1991, I was halfway finished with a yearlong chaplain training program at UC Davis Medical Center when a social worker approached me with news.

“Our team is on standby tonight,” she whispered. She meant our Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Team, which was specially trained to debrief people who witness horrific incidents.

“Why?” I asked.

“You better catch the news,” she said, pointing toward a waiting room of people watching television. The special report conveyed the early hours of what is still the largest hostage crisis on American soil.

There’s nothing I love more than travel. Like the circuit-riding preachers of old, I’ll fly anywhere to speak to a crowd.

The only way travel improves for me is when I use frequent-flyer points for free flights.

So I was in a good mood recently as I took a free seat on a Southern California flight to see my family.

My usual airline doesn’t assign seats, so I’ve developed a strategy to find the best seat. Unfortunately, the strategy failed me this time. I took the last available spot, a middle seat over the wing.

Judgment Overruled There’s a way to balance those opinions By Norris Burkes August 2023 In the short time since I returned to pastoring, I hear again the same old complaints against organized religion. Sometimes my responses to these critics are served...

The true cost of war is something I learned about while serving as chaplain on death notification teams. We delivered news no one wants to hear.

Movies often depict these teams visiting a three-bedroom house where Mom is making dinner and Dad is helping a younger sibling with homework.

Television dramas cast the teams in a four-man role as they approach the door in dress uniforms, knock, deliver the brief announcement and retreat to a government sedan.