Editor's Note: The following article first appeared in the Modesto Bee (CA) on November 23, 2002. Chuck Roots is a long-time Free Methodist pastor and chaplain.

The Call of Duty
Amy White, Modesto Bee staff writer

Marines are known for being tough. They often are the first to head into an attack, by air, land or sea.

Chuck Roots, pastor of Free Methodist Church in Ripon, has been there. As a 21-year-old Marine aviation electrician serving in Vietnam, he once came under fire during a late-night landing. The noise was deafening, the ground convulsed beneath him and he remembers being bounced around like a ball.

"Combat is terrifying," said Roots, whose reserve unit was called up recently for deployment to Kuwait.* "You can plan all you want, but the moment the bullets are flying, it at best is organized chaos."

Roots, 54, of Ripon, and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force to which he was assigned, began shipping out Friday. The I-MEF will coordinate the ground element of a potential invasion of Iraq.
Roots will accompany the I-MEF as a chaplain.

"(Marines) know that when push comes to shove, they will be called on to bring the fight to the enemy," he said. "They are oftentimes thinking about their own mortality — 'What happens after I die? Is there a heaven? Is there a hell? Does anybody know?'"

Roots, a military chaplain for nearly 20 years, will do his best to answer such questions. The Navy commander (the equivalent of a Marine lieutenant colonel) and chaplain is no longer in the Marines, which uses Navy chaplains, doctors, nurses and medics because it doesn't have its own.

"We often refer to it as 'the blue serving the green,'" Roots said, referring to Navy and Marine colors.

Roots also will minister to other chaplains. As deputy to the I-MEF head chaplain, Roots will be second in command, overseeing 45 to 60 chaplains of many faiths — from Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutheran to Baptist, Mormon, Christian Science, Jewish and Muslim.

Chaplains aren't "one size fits all," Roots explained. "We try to meet the spiritual needs of groups represented throughout the military."

The I-MEF unit is made up of 45,000 to 50,000 Marines, Roots said.

He pledged his life to the Lord as a young Marine in 1972. He was admittedly "wild" and "not necessarily a candidate for the ministry." He was reasonably happy with life, but felt something was missing.

"It's been described by one church theologian as a 'God-shaped vacuum inside of a man, and only God can fill it,'" Roots said. "There was that vacuum in me."

One night in Yokosuka, Japan — where he was playing football with a Navy-Marine Corps team — he went inside a Christian Servicemen's Center and heard an evangelist speaking on tape.
"The Lord used that to speak to my heart and my need," Roots said. "I knew right then and there I needed Christ in my life."

He spent four years on active duty in the Marines, then five years in the Marine Reserves. He attended college and worked in radio and TV broadcasting. He eventually felt pulled to the ministry, attended seminary and earned a doctorate in pastoral counseling. He has been pastor at Ripon's Free Methodist Church for four years.

When Roots was approached about becoming a military chaplain in the early 1980s, his wife, Isaura, was against it, he said, so he didn't pursue it.

"But she's a woman of prayer, and over the next six months, she committed (herself) to prayer," Roots said. "She announced to me one day that she had been praying about it and she believed that's what 'God wants us to do.'"

Roots attended chaplain school in Rhode Island and became a Navy chaplain. He served for nine years on active duty — including stints on ships in the Pacific Ocean and Persian Gulf — before moving to the reserves.

Roots hopes to do some hands-on ministering to Marines, but will deal mostly with other chaplains.

"(Chaplains) oftentimes are lone rangers," Roots said. "We are the only ones with that command. You sometimes feel disconnected. ... You don't always have a lot of interaction with other chaplains, and it can get a little lonely.

"Part of what I'm looking forward to in my new role is connecting with other chaplains, and letting them know they are not out there by themselves."

Living 24 hours a day with Marines is different from having a congregation whose members have their own lives most of the week, Roots said. The commonality is his effort to be a "ministerial presence" for military personnel and civilians.

The president of the Ripon Ministerial Council, Roots said his 120-member congregation had mixed feelings about his departure.

"Some people would like to tie me up and keep me in the basement," he said. "Others are very proud of the fact that I am going. It is not every church that has a pastor going off like this."
Derek Isaksen, a Clovis-area minister, will fill in for Roots, who likely will be gone at least a year.

He leaves behind his wife, two adult daughters and his 87-year-old mother, who live together in Ripon.

"It is probably toughest on (my mother)," Roots said. "She puts up a good front. She's watched the men in her life go off to war from World War II on."

"It's not easy," said Isaura Roots, 49, the pastor's wife of 26 years. "It's difficult because he's gone. But I believe in what he does, and he does a very good job. ... I pray that he'll be safe."
Roots plans to keep in e-mail contact with his family, he said.
Though he is potentially heading into a dangerous situation, Roots is not afraid, he added. Since becoming a Christian, he has lost his fear of death.

"There are tears, and I have no desire to leave my family, either temporarily or permanently," Roots said. "But I am to be obedient to the Lord and do what he calls me to do. If that should mean that something happens, that's OK, because that's his business. I'm in the business of being his servant, and carrying the message of hope in Christ to others, wherever that may be."

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* According to Roots, "… the article written about me in the Modesto Bee … said I was on my way to Kuwait. I am not aware that I am going to Kuwait any time soon. At least there has been no official notification of this.