Summer 2009 | Volume 67, No. 4

Justin Woods: Text-Driven Chaplaincy

by Keith Collier

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Justin Woods is a missionary on one of the most secure places in the country—a military base. Woods, an M.Div. and recent Th.M. graduate at Southwestern, serves as a reservist chaplain on Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he gives one weekend each month and two weeks each summer to preaching the Word and sharing the Gospel.

Woods’ primary responsibilities include visiting officers and airmen, checking up on families of deployed airmen, and preaching the Sunday morning chapel service. He is also in the process of creating multiple services at different times around the base to accommodate those who work during the scheduled chapel time.

After serving as a chaplain in the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets in college, Woods knew military chaplaincy was part of his call to ministry. Realizing he needed theological training to prepare for chaplaincy, Woods enrolled in Southwestern Seminary, which he credits with teaching him about expositional preaching.

“When I came here,” Woods says, “I was taught about the necessity of the superiority of the text and how that should infiltrate everything I do.”

Key to his development as a preacher at Southwestern was the process of exegeting the text and effectively communicating the meaning, which he does regularly in the base’s chapel services.

“I believe that whenever I open the Bible to teach, that I am not teaching my own ideas. I am teaching the inspired texts of God. I hide myself behind that in order to share the life-changing power of Christ.”

One of three chaplains serving 3,300 personnel on the base, Woods spends much of his ministry visiting with airmen while they work on C5 airplanes.

“It’s a ministry of the Word,” says Woods. “It’s just applied in different situations. I’m applying it as I walk around and visit people in their daily jobs. The way I go visit is wrought out of my convictions from the Scriptures.”

Woods also carries this ministry of the Word over into his counseling sessions, where he shares Scripture with individuals who find themselves in a variety of military and civilian life circumstances. He has the opportunity to address psychological trauma from combat situations, marital problems, theological questions, and general emotional concerns.

“I’m constantly dealing with people who have no biblical frame of reference,” says Woods.

With every person, he explains what Scripture says and applies its meaning to their situation.

“I believe that the answer to people’s problems is a relationship with Jesus Christ,” says Woods.

Having graduated with his Th.M. from Southwestern in May, Woods is looking for opportunities to serve in a local church in addition to his reserve chaplaincy.

Southwestern has a rich legacy of training military chaplains to take the life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ to life-threatening battlefields around the world. To learn more about this heritage, visit www.swbts.edu/chaplaincy.

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