CHAPLAIN SHAWN SCHERTZER
This is my testimony of faith. I was called to ministry late in life. Like many of my baby boomer peers I was raised in church, but walked away in my late teens because I wanted to fully experience life as an adult. I was drafted after flunking out of a Christian university because I just couldn’t find time in my busy party schedule to attend class. It turned out I was a better soldier than student. During my first year of service I was selected for Officer’s Candidate School and commissioned a second lieutenant at age nineteen. Infantry command suited me, but I continued to play as hard as I worked. When a Reduction in Force in the army occurred, I realized that a young officer without a college degree would eventually be vulnerable. So, I left active duty to attend the University of South Carolina. By the time my wife and I left Columbia, we had one child and I had earned two degrees: Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and a Master of Public Administration. While still in grad school I became a Special Agent with the Defense Investigative Service. I was regularly promoted and served through several name and agency changes until retirement. I also served concurrently with the US Army Reserve until my retirement as a colonel.
For most of my working career I avoided church. I never really lost my faith in Jesus, but couldn’t figure out how he fit in my life and it was too easy to find better ways to spend my time on Sunday morning. I returned to church only a decade before I retired. I still remember the sermon that changed my life for the better. It was about God saving humankind through Noah and the boat, or ark, God told Noah to build. The pastor’s final challenge was “Isn’t it time you got in the boat?” At a time of life when I just wanted to retire from public service to spend time with our grandchildren and ride my motorcycle, my life changed with a call to ministry. And it wasn’t just ministry, it was chaplaincy.
We gave my wife’s motorcycle to her brother and the two of us rode to Sturgis Bike Week in South Dakota. After the rally, Dana headed toward his Pennsylvania home as I rode back to Washington. He crashed outside Indianapolis and spent several days in the hospital with no visitors. That thought bothered me so much, I asked the chaplain at our local hospital if he would have someone call me if a biker showed up there who had no local social support. Because of privacy concerns, I was required to become a pastoral care volunteer. Now I should mention hospitals scared me. In my capacity as commander or manager, I was so afraid of them that I always delegated visits to my soldiers or subordinates to my executive officer or deputy.
On my first day as a pastoral care volunteer, I stood outside the hospital looking at the cross at the top of the building. I told the Lord how scared I was and how much I wished I did not have to go in. But, praise God, I eventually did. And when I came out after my shift, I was ecstatic. I felt like those old Peanuts comic strips where Snoopy danced on his tip-toes. From that hesitant beginning, God led me through five units of Clinical Pastoral Education, a Master of Divinity and a Doctor of Ministry degree. I soon realized I could not stand by and watch someone die without hope. I could not be silent about the life-changing influence of Jesus. Yet, by department policy, I could not offer the hope of the gospel unless I was specifically asked. That limitation eventually led me to leave chaplaincy to focus on evangelism, sharing a timeless savior for our time. And I have never looked back.
My Citizenship
I am an American. I began paying taxes before I could legally vote and completed military service about the time many of my friends had finished college. Since then, I have spent most of my adult life in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” I love mom and baseball, but admit a certain ambivalence toward apple pie. Those are a few of the attributes I exhibit as an American. But none of them make me one. I am an American because I was born in a small town in wind-swept, western Nebraska. To prove to the rest of the world that I am an American requires a passport. And to obtain that I was required to show proof I was born here and shell out $110 to Uncle Sam. I am actually a dual citizen. My primary citizenship is in God’s kingdom—the earthly one now and the heavenly one later. I am an American because I took my first breath on American soil.
My earthly citizenship is merely a consequence of where my mother was on the day I was born, nothing more. I did not do anything for the unmerited favor of being born a citizen of this special place. Heavenly citizenship is also a matter of unmerited favor, which the Bible calls grace, and a re-birth into God’s kingdom. Jesus paid the price for for that passport. It cost him everything, but it cost me nothing. I could not buy it for any price. I could not earn it no matter what I did. It is the result of grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone.
This website examines exactly what it really means to be a disciple of Christ—a God’s kingdom resident. It is about having an abundant life, living God’s way in the world now while anticipating an eternal life to come. If you have not decided to follow Jesus yet. Think about it. Pray about it. It is the wisest decision you could ever make and it is free for the asking! But it is not cheap or easy. Jesus cautioned his followers to, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”(Matthew 7:13-14 NIV) Please join me as we walk the road of discipleship together.