I am a veteran.
I spent just over five years on active duty in the United States Army, including a deployment to Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division during the opening year of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Even though I’ve spent 100% of my vocational ministry life in military communities, I have been out of the Army much longer than I was in it.
Still, the Army never completely left me.
I notice it in how I approach a problem. I notice it when I travel and instinctively want to know the plan, the backup plan, and where everyone is supposed to be. I definitely notice it when a meeting starts late (or when the meeting could have been a text message).
Veterans Day gives me an opportunity each year to think about the men and women I served alongside. It also makes me think about what those years gave me.
For me, military service was fun, but not always easy, and I have no interest in romanticizing it. There were long days, stupid details, difficult leaders, time away from family, and experiences (and smells) I would never want to live through again. The twelve months I spent in the “Land Between the Rivers” impacted me greatly.
I am grateful I served.
The Army introduced me to a world much larger than the one I knew.
I grew up in Tampa, Florida, a melting pot for sure, but nothing like working for Uncle Sam. The Army put me alongside people from places I had never visited, with backgrounds very different from mine. We did not get to select one another. We were assigned to the same unit and expected to figure out how to accomplish the mission together.
You learn a lot about people that way. You also learn that you are capable of more than you think.
The Army has a remarkable ability to put you in situations where what you would prefer to do becomes largely irrelevant. You’re tired. The weather is terrible. You don’t particularly enjoy the task. Nobody asks how motivated you feel.
The job still has to get done.
Motivation is useful, but discipline is more dependable.
I learned something else in the Army that I did not fully appreciate until later.
Responsibility has weight.
As a young soldier in the E-4 mafia, I could look at a decision made above me and wonder how anyone could possibly arrive at such a conclusion. Sometimes I was right.
Most of the time I simply couldn’t see what they could see.
After I left the military and became responsible for other people, their safety, training, development, and ability to accomplish the “mission” were no longer somebody else’s concern.
Leadership became less theoretical when actual people were affected by my decisions.
The most unexpected gift the Army gave me was a community I would spend much of the rest of my life serving.
When I left active duty, I jumped straight onto a church staff in the Clarksville/Fort Campbell community. For the next 18 years, my family and I dedicated everything to vocational ministry and making much of Jesus in Screaming Eagle country. In 2010, we got connected to Manna Church Fayetteville by extension, which opened up the doors that would eventually lead us to living and serving in the Fayetteville/Fort Bragg community as president of Manna University.
Manna University now serves students across the country and around the world, but our location is not incidental to who we are. We were formed in the shadow of Fort Bragg. Military students and families have been part of our story from the beginning.
I’ve come to appreciate the God-ordained continuity of it all.
The Army sent me to places I never expected to go.
Years later, ministry and higher education have done the same thing.
The uniform changed. The assignment changed. But I am still serving people who serve.
Scripture records an interesting encounter between soldiers and John the Baptist in Luke 3. Soldiers ask him, “And we, what shall we do?”
John does not tell them to stop being soldiers. He tells them how to conduct themselves while serving. Don’t extort. Don’t falsely accuse. Be content with your wages.
In other words, honor God where you have been assigned.
I wish I understood that when I was a young soldier.
I spent too much time wondering what came next.
Where would I go? What would I do after the Army? How would any of this fit into whatever God had planned for my life?
Looking backward, I can see connections I could not see then.
I can see how military service prepared me to lead, how it introduced me to people I might never have known otherwise, and how an assignment I once viewed as temporary became connected to a community I would serve for decades.
So, this Veterans Day, I am thankful for the Army.
I’m thankful for the people I served with.
I’m thankful for those still serving and for the families who carry a portion of that service with them.
I’m thankful that, more than twenty years after Iraq, I still get to serve the military community.
The Army was one assignment.
It turns out the people were a much longer one.
Dr. Carlo A. Serrano, President