Out of many, one: The formation of a community of faith in the sea services

The formation of a faith community is a concern for those in ministry and for the people in the faith community who desire to see both their faith and community grow. I hoped that the project would illustrate the enormous variety of religious expression present in the Sea Services through the sharing of reflections written by the community. I believed that these reflections would show that religious diversity is not something that chaplains bring with them into the military, but that it is something already present in the community. Religious diversity is not something that chaplains must embrace at the cost of their own spiritual well being. It is, however, something that every chaplain is charged with supporting and facilitating.; The first step in this project was presented in reflections that were written by members of the community. The second step was to ask chaplains to read the reflections and then participate in an active consideration of what they had read. Chaplains were asked to consider the impact the reflections had on their ministry. As is the case with their dealings with members of the wider community, it was hoped that this project would help chaplains realize that diversity exists not only in the community of faith, but with the Chaplain Corps as a whole. The third step was to interpret the dialogue, begun in the reflections and chaplains' discussions, to the wider Chaplain Corps and the Sea Service community in the form of a resource guide. This guide was published in the form of a website. It includes community reflections, chaplain observations, a glossary of terms, a bibliography, a prayer anthology, links to faith groups and more. My hope is that this professional project will be a useful tool to both lay members of the community and to Navy chaplains in understanding the diverse make-up of the faith community that is the Sea Services.