Voices for Voices®

The Army Chaplain That Changed My Life | Episode 176

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 176

Share episode

The Army Chaplain That Changed My Life | Episode 176 | Episode 176

Become a supporter of the show!  Voices for Voices® (The Voices for Voices TV Show and Podcast +)

Chapter Markers
0:01 Military Chaplaincy and Spiritual Leadership
15:04 Suicide Prevention and Self-Worth Commitment                                  23:41 Mental Health and Suicide Prevention                                                              

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with Chaplain Daniel Yancey Sr., who shares his inspiring journey from civilian ministry to becoming an Army Chaplain. Motivated by a deep passion for service, Chaplain Yancey opens up about his experiences with marginalized communities in Akron, Ohio, where he found the divine in unexpected places. He candidly recounts the challenges he faced while transitioning back into military service, overcoming red tape and gaining respect from troops of all faiths. Through his story, we explore the vital role of chaplaincy in nurturing the spiritual well-being of military personnel and the universal call to meet individuals where they are in their spiritual journey.

In this engaging episode, we tackle pressing issues such as mental health and suicide prevention within the military. Drawing from Chaplain Yancey's experiences, we delve into the struggles of those with mental health conditions like schizophrenia, underscoring the importance of medication, support systems, and seeking help. With alarming suicide rates among military personnel, we emphasize the crucial need for mental health awareness and self-worth. This episode encourages listeners to become advocates for themselves and others, fostering a more compassionate and supportive community. Stay tuned for part two, where we'll continue to empower our audience with insights and actionable steps.

Hosted by Voices for Voices® Founder, Justin Alan Hayes, this episode features Chaplain Daniel Yancey, who navigates the intricate relationship between military service and mental health. Focused on suicide prevention and the significance of empathy, Yancey emphasizes the role of chaplains in cultivating sacred spaces for healing.

• Chaplain Yancey's journey from soldier to spiritual leader
• The crucial role of chaplains in military mental health
• Insights into the rising rates of military suicides
• The importance of self-worth and community support
• Encouragement to seek help as an act of strength

Thank you for your service, Chaplain Yancey, and all members of the military. Tune in next week for part two of our conversation.

Voices for Voices® is the #1 ranked podcast where people turn to for expert mental health, recovery and career advancement intelligence.

As you can see, the Voices for Voices® podcast publishes episodes that focus on case studies, real life examples, actionable tips and "in the trenches" reports and interviews from subscribers like you.

Join us by subscribing!
—
Thanks for listening!

-Support Voices for Voices®: https://venmo.com/u/voicesforvoices or at https://www.voicesforvoices.org/shop/p/supporter
- Learn more about Voices for Voices®: linktr.ee/Voicesforvoices

#ArmyChaplain #CivilianToMilitary #FaithInService #SpiritualLeadership #MilitaryMinistry #ReligiousSupport #SoldierWellness #ChurchAndState #ChaplainCorps #SacredCallings #MilitaryFaith #SpiritualCounseling #MilitaryChapla

Support the show

Speaker 1:

Welcome to this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes, also your host for today. Thank you for all your support. Thank you for hanging in with us. With well over 150 episodes of the show, couldn't do this without you. If you could do us a huge favor like, share, subscribe, comment that would be very helpful for us to continue our mission and to be able to help 3 billion people. Over the course of my lifetime and beyond, it's going to take a lot more help than just myself. This episode is incredible, like all our episodes are.

Speaker 1:

We are able to speak with Chaplain Yancey. He is a bishop with the Church of God in Cleveland, tennessee. He has served as minister since 2003. And, as mentioned, he's also an army chaplain, so he really brings together a unique blend of spiritual leadership and military service to his role. From an education standpoint, he holds an undergraduate degree from Lee University and has furthered his theological education at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary. So you're going to see and hear our conversation.

Speaker 1:

That touches on many areas. One of those areas is the rise in suicide for military members. The chaplain Yancey has kind of come across with his work and talks about again that spiritual side as well, as, you know, being a member of the service. So we say thank you to the Chaplain Yancey for her service as a member of our military and we hope you enjoy part one of our conversation with Chaplain Yancey. Yes, we just want to thank Chaplain Daniel Yancey Sr for joining us on this episode, the Voices for Voices TV Show and Podcast. He's got a hectic schedule so we are doing this remotely, doing this remotely and we want to just thank first of all Daniel for his service, as he is in the Army. So thank you for your service and thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, you're welcome.

Speaker 1:

So maybe we can walk through a little bit of your life's journey, to walk through a little bit of your life's journey which has kind of led to where you're at today, to maybe talk about where the interest of helping others really came from in your life, that really led you on the path to join the military and want to give, give back with the faith uh, with with others yeah, I think.

Speaker 2:

Um, I am prior service. So when the military in 2006, I got out in 2010, had a 14-year break in service and came back in as an army chaplain. So you know my initial ministry in the local church. I was a licensed minister in 03 initially. So I was a licensed minister when I came in before. But I didn't really know about the army chaplaincy, didn't really have the credentials, even if I did know to be an.

Speaker 2:

Army chaplain, but I think the desire to be where I am today started in the civilian world. What led me to come back into the uniform is not the uniform itself, but the soldiers I served alongside when I was in before. So what I mean by the civilian world leading me to where I am today so in the local church in 2016, I had an accident. I ran in the back of another semi while I was doing 68 miles an hour and the other semi was doing four miles an hour and that took me out of work for a little bit, but during that time I was still in the local church. So I started doing a lot of outreach ministry. I started working with the Oriental House in Akron, ohio. We had a few other facilities. We were going into Bible study, we'd bring them to our church on Saturday for breakfast and stuff, and really started integrating with them. I don't know if many people remember, but we used to have a tent city in Akron that was publicly known before it got cleaned out by down there close to the university. But so I started working with them during that time too, and what I realized is, through the organizations and stuff, that people had chaplains in the organization and paid them to be chaplains. And then I realized, oh yeah, we had chaplains in the army. So, and then that led me back to figuring out if I was too old to come back in the army. So, you know, knocked out in 2020,.

Speaker 2:

I started finishing out my undergrad, went in, I knocked out my Masters of Divinity, um, then I was looking at um having the requirements that it needed to come back in as army chaplain, went through the boarding process, which is no short term about two years of fighting red tape and stuff, cause I was prior service. So there's medical issues that I had to get cleared on sleep tests and x-rays and all kinds of stuff, being a 38 year old man trying to go back in and be with some young troops. But after all that, I think the drive in the middle of that is meeting people where they were. You know, some of my biggest experiences during that time of outreach is realizing that I wasn't bringing God to the individuals in the tents or in their recovery, but God was already there and I was just meeting him on the mission he was already doing, and I think that's what I found at not even a year into my first duty station in the 101st Airborne Division.

Speaker 2:

You know, standing outside a tower doing air assault school praying for troops right before we get threw off a tower hey, chap, we need your prayer, and the respect and honor that they give the chaplain, no matter if they're religious or not, is unlike anything I've ever seen.

Speaker 2:

The only thing you have to do as a chaplain is make sure you do not abuse that position and treat it with dignity and respect, and the troops will respect you and they will honor God, even if they're not religious. It comes with a heavy weight, but if you're, if you're doing it for the right reasons, you can bring a lot of glory to God in the mission that he's already doing within the military. I didn't bring God to the military. He was already here working with troops when I came. So I'm just trying to let the Holy Spirit use me in the mission that he's already doing and try to stay humble and respectful to every troop and every family member, and because it's not my job to infer onto them what they should believe and how they should believe, but it's to me to create them sacred spaces where the holy spirit can work with each individual as he see fit yeah, that's, that's incredible.

Speaker 1:

And when you're helping people, I would assume it makes you feel good about what you're doing and in general, just as a just as a human being, that when you're helping somebody it's like okay, whether it's monetarily or just helping somebody, like through their, through their trials and tribulations that they're going going through. Uh, I I find that people like yourself, when we help others, that actually makes us feel pretty good inside, that we don't necessarily have to go to devices all the all the time. Uh, where we we can feel good, just like you said, being where the individuals are, at that you're not bringing in anything special. You're more of that vehicle to have that conversation, have that listening ear. Where do you think that listening ear came from? A listener, somebody that took information in and processed it before sharing, whether you're in school or family or colleagues.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think right now I'm sitting in a class, a two-week long class, called Combat Medical Ministry, and what we realized is that, believe it or not, I come from an addictive home my dad was a severe alcoholic and sometimes our own trauma and our own hurts and have-ups and shortcomings.

Speaker 2:

I'm a dyslexic by nature, so that brings sympathy. Raised in a broken addictive home, abusive home, brings the reality that life is not always fair and then I think all that is not. I came out of my mother's womb right A certain way, that God's designed me a certain way. But I think some of the things that we think are our roughest spots or our weakest parts is what can make a compassionate and honest and vulnerable individuals. And then when the people that people want to talk to, they want to talk to people that want to be real and that care enough to hear their story, talk to people that want to be real and that care enough to hear their story, and I think from there we can build a foundation of relationship and in a foundation relationship we can truly support one another excellent and you your travels in in the military have those.

Speaker 1:

I'm not. I don't want you to disclose anything you oh no, you're, you're not supposed to, but just as far as travels, did you notice or have you noticed anything on those particular travels, those particular spots where you end up now cleveland, tennessee are people similar, where, no matter where you travel in, in the sense of, okay, we're, like you said, coming out of the womb and, yeah, you know that that aspect or do you find that different parts of the country may have different, maybe, needs than others?

Speaker 2:

I think the social, economic is where we're going to find the most divergency from the human need of um, you know, the, the basic needs, do they have food, you know, are they safe? Do they have that? And that's when I feel that what people express or what they care about changes. But at the base, like when I first came in the military and, being from a small raised in Kentucky, went up to Ohio, being from small towns, from small towns, but when I first came to my first duty station in 07 in Fort Hood, when there was a young lady riding with me and we drove by this field and catcalls came back to her in like three or four different languages, I knew I was in a different world. But the way the military is a good picture of how people, when they come together, that that human aspect of who we are at the core, like is it connects us all.

Speaker 2:

Um, I was in iraq, uh, and some iraqis were doing transport of the, the financial system, when they were replacing all the currency and, um, we were just having a, a talk. Uh, some of them could speak, uh, english and some of them couldn't, but the ones that couldn't were communicating with hand signs or body language and stuff, and we were just having a human conversation. So I think at that base level, when their needs are met, when safety, security, food are met, I think at the human level we all, we all have this need to connect and the need to be in relationship and I think that's what I see in common through all the different. You know, one of the craziest things I've seen on my first deployment was you know when a convoy would stop and the Middle Eastern people that were riding the convoy and every you know on the Western side we'd get frustrated because what are we doing? Or whatever, and then they would just put a rug under their truck and pull out.

Speaker 2:

I don't even know where they got the hot water, but they pull out hot water and have like tea with each other. They'd use it for a time for community. So I think in some cultures community has stayed together more than the independence, isolation that we see in the Western, not because we don't want it Like we want that connection. We see through mental health right now that the connection is what a lot of people long. It's just the way our socioeconomic system works and our community works, that somehow that's been given away or we surrendered that. But other cultures haven't surrendered that part of what it means to be a community or what it means to live inside a family.

Speaker 1:

So uh, then you touched on the the mental health side of things. Uh, that's obviously a huge part of humanity that we all have physical health, we all have mental health. And your journey and experience, what has been say maybe like a broad perspective of when did you maybe start noticing that mental health was becoming something that really needed to be addressed, more than maybe prior? I don't know if there's a way to kind of parse that out of like okay, well, this thing or this, this particular event, or maybe it's always been that way yeah, like you know, I know my awareness, um with my masters and um and divinity.

Speaker 2:

I also was doing a co, um, uh master's degree in clinical counseling and so, as I, the first part that I've learned is my own self-reflection. What does it mean? What does family dynamics mean, their personality that's pulling them away? Maybe it's their distrust from something in their past, or maybe it's something else they're going through? My older brother suffers with schizophrenia and sometimes medications help. But medications sometimes, when the individual thinks they're okay and they stop taking the medications, it it it brings back these, these feelings and the emotions they have inside at an overwhelming level.

Speaker 2:

So I think I think my awareness of the need to make sure that this community feels supported while they're taking medication and not that that medication is not a sign of brokenness, but it's a sign of a willingness to get better and that's a, that's a strength and that's how we should encourage people to take care of their mental health is if these support system, these support means either medication or group counseling or or um 12 step communities, if these support means are not a sign of weakness but it's a sign of street, when you're willing to reach out above, beyond yourself and say that I care more about my health than I do about a stigma, or that are what somebody would label me, as you know.

Speaker 2:

So I don't know if it's ever changed, but I know our awareness of it has and I think it's a good thing, you know, and every time we bring awareness to the situation, I believe it's a good thing and at least it brings a sense of empathy to the helping community and even to family members if they're more aware of what you're going through.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I know it happens across all socioeconomic divisions or areas. I heard and I don't know how recent the fact was I was actually watching a Creed concert recently and the lead singer, scott and I think, still is going through things and yeah, he was talking at the show about them as a, as a band working with an organization, which is always good to have some notoriety and some dollars behind. But he had mentioned that individuals in the military that 20, around 20 people a day when they come out of the service are taking their lives and that was just alarming to hear that it was that much. And as having mental health challenges myself with depression and anxiety and that and mitigation and therapy, and you know there's good days and bad days, but when we hear those types of numbers, especially from our, our military, the people that are out there protecting us, it it's hard to really just bring that. That in. Uh, can you speak to maybe just like a high level of?

Speaker 2:

unfortunately, um, uh, I've had a rough uh, five months, uh, with, uh, with suicide. So what does that mean for a chaplain? Um, I tell you, some of the closest people I work with without, um, you know, uh, interfering with confidentiality situations with, um, one of my feelings I can talk about my feelings going through and working with clients that didn't make the ultimate decision to take their life Um, it felt for me as trying to grab sand, right, so you want so hard to grab the sand, but it keeps slipping through your hands and it just keeps slipping through your hands and you want to stop it and you can do anything, right, you do anything to stop it, but you just can't. And I think people that are struggling, they talk about this a pre-decision right On suicide. So, instead of, like, they talk about this a pre-decision right On suicide. So, instead of, like, we talk about AIDS and suicide prevention, and I think we need to start talking about suicidal awareness. For one, you know, some people have made that decision, unfortunately, to take their life, and I think this pre-decision, we need to start talking about building up our own self-worth and value and we make commitments to ourself that, no matter what the world looks like around us. We will not harm ourselves. It's easy, right? So I talk to people. It's easy to say I'm not going to go shoot somebody on the street, right, I'm not going to go home and smack my wife. These are red lines. I'm not going to do Right, I'm not going to just go out and shoot someone, okay. Well, I want people to start saying the same thing about themselves. Okay, I want to make the decision now that I will not harm myself, no matter how dark it gets, no matter myself, no matter how dark it gets, no matter how lonely I feel.

Speaker 2:

I believe that there's a power greater than myself to borrow from 12 steps that has a purpose and meaning for my life, and I might not always see it, but realizing that I'm not that power that created me, I'm not the one that placed me here on earth. There's somebody bigger than me that has. So there's a purpose in me that I might not see, but I know he has a purpose for me. So there's a purpose in me that I might not see, but I know he has a purpose for me. I know that power greater than myself has a purpose for me and I make a commitment not to short circuit, not to shortcut that purpose, and I let my life play out. Is it going to be pain and there's going to be hard times? Yeah, that's what life is right. There's good times and there are bad times. But I make a commitment myself not to shortcut my life and I let it play out and I make a commitment not to hurt myself. The same way, I'd make a commitment not to go hurt someone else.

Speaker 2:

And I think if we have the value, if we just have life value, that we value other people, if we can value ourself as much as we value somebody else's life, I think that would go a long way in preventing suicide.

Speaker 2:

If, literally, if I just valued my life the same way I value somebody else on the street, you know, I think that would go a long way.

Speaker 2:

And if I could say anything to people that have them, uh, intrusive thoughts that they don't belong there, that, um, it has no place there, uh, your creator didn't make you to sit around and listen to these thoughts to tell you you're not worthy. If you weren't worthy, you wouldn't be here today. And from this army chaplain, if I could do anything to grab you out of that dark place is to let you know there's a creator that cares and loves for you. And if you don't believe in a creator, I would ask that you reach out to a power that's external, from yourself. That's something bigger than you. You know that, something bigger than you had to create all this. So I'd ask you to reach out to that power and allow that to direct your life, that you can see what's in front of you, but you can't see tomorrow. And and you have the ability and power to go forward If you just make that commitment to not hurt yourself, not short circuit life.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's powerful. I mean. Thank you for the transparency and I think this is a good spot to cut this episode part one and come back for part two. So if you're watching and listening to this first episode with the chaplain, we can thank him for his service, thank him for his time coming to us to give us some insight into the military but into the chaplaincy, of what that is. And as we were just speaking about a very short period of time ago about mental health and suicide, I think we can maybe kick off the part two of our conversation and and then get to you know where, where we're at today and how not just our guests, but how we can be some of the torchbearers where we can help as individuals. So we're going to kick it back to the studio and we'll see you next week for part two.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. Really hope you enjoy the conversation that we had in part one of our conversation with Chaplain Yancey, who is an Army chaplain at the base near Cleveland, tennessee. It was a great conversation and one that we're glad to always be able to share experience of our military members. We thank Chaplain Yancey for his service, as well as all members of the military and then all veterans as well. Tune in next week for part two of our conversation and until next time. I am Justin Allen Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, and we hope that you will be a voice for you or somebody in need. Thank you.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Justin Alan Hayes

Host