Military Wellness Collective
Military Wellness Collective is made up of four friends — two retired Marines (Joshua and Brian) turned church planters and their wives (Brittany and Kelli)— who have lived life both in uniform and on the home front. Together, we share real stories, hard-earned wisdom, and practical, biblical encouragement to help military members, and their families thrive in every season. Whether you’re navigating deployments, adjusting to life in a new town, or simply seeking hope in the middle of your military journey, our mission is to equip you with truth from God’s Word and tools for a healthy, resilient life.
Military Wellness Collective
Don't Go It Alone: Why Every Military Member Needs a Church
Military life demands resilience across all dimensions—physical, mental, and spiritual. Yet finding a church home amid constant relocations can leave even the most devout service members feeling adrift. How do you establish spiritual roots when your life is defined by transition?
This candid conversation tackles the often-overlooked challenge of finding a church community in military life. Our panel of military spouses and veterans shares hard-won wisdom from their collective decades of experience relocating between duty stations. They cut through surface-level advice to address the real struggles: evaluating churches from a distance, knowing what truly matters in a church beyond flashy programs, and making wise decisions that prioritize spiritual health for your entire family.
You'll discover practical strategies for church searching that go beyond Google, including specialized resources for finding doctrinally sound congregations near military installations. The group unpacks why attending church isn't optional—even during deployments—and how spiritual community serves as an anchor during military life's constant changes.
Whether you're a young service member leaving your family church for the first time or a seasoned military family preparing for your next PCS, this episode provides the roadmap you need for finding not just any church, but the right church for your spiritual growth. The relationships you'll build there might just be what sustains you through your toughest military challenges.
Ready to find your spiritual home in your military community? Listen now and take the first step toward building the support system you and your family need to thrive.
SHOW NOTES:
Our Churches - Praetorian Project
CHURCH FINDER - The Gospel Coalition
What Is a Healthy Church? (Volume 9Marks): Dever, Mark: 9781433588327: Amazon.com: Books
How do I Find a Church in my Military Community? - Praetorian Project
http://instagram.com/militarywellnesscollective
I'm Brittany Brown and I'm going to be today's host for y'all, and today we are going to be talking about finding a church in your military community. How to find a church, why? It's important all the things I guess. Let's start off with just asking the simple question is it important to be part of a local church in your military community?
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, why is it important?
Speaker 1:Does anybody want?
Speaker 2:to speak into that.
Speaker 1:Why is it important?
Speaker 3:Let me just start with Bible Hebrews, chapter 10. Hebrews is this massive letter, sermon. You know there's arguments about what it is, but it's just this massive theological thing. Who is Jesus? Jesus is better than the angels, jesus is better than the prophets, jesus is better than Moses, like. It is just this massive theological work. And you get to chapter 10, and the writer essentially says and do not neglect going to church. He literally says not neglect. Well, I'll start in verse 24, hebrews 10, 24. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. And so he's encouraging us. You have to be around one another, you have to be around other Christians, you have to meet regularly with other Christians. We don't get a pass on that when we're serving in the military.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really good. Also serving in the military. Statistically, you, as a believer, are not very many of you are there. I guess that was not the right way to say it. The percentage of you is very low in active duty military, and if you think you're going to thrive out there as a lone wolf, you're not the lone wolf. You're going to be eaten by the wolves. So you need to be part of a local community. It is first of all, like Brian said you don't get a pass. It is told that we need to do that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so yeah, and I mean I know we keep saying, yes, it's important, yes, we need to do this, but can we list off some of the reasons why people fall by the wayside? Because, quite honestly, we have to point out the ditches that people fall into, especially when they join the military? I'm thinking of the, the normal guy who, 18, graduates high school, joins the military, or 22, gets out of college, joins the military and now he's just off on his own, away from mom and dad for the first time. What are a lot of the things that keep him from jumping right back into another church? I'd love to hear your guys. But the big one that I keep seeing over and over and over again is that 18 year old guy, maybe 19, graduates high school, joins the military, goes away from his home for the first time. He was raised in a Christian home, raised in a church, but he's been in that church most of his life.
Speaker 4:He doesn't actually know how to look for a church he's never had to do it before he's never lived outside of his home before, so him showing up to this location, on this random base where it's it's literally gated, that is difficult to even get off the base. How does he like? That's a huge obstacle. There's a physical obstacle. There's the not knowing what to look for obstacle, and then there's the issue of just not even knowing what they don't know about finding a church.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's hit on that. So we know it's important. We're going to cover more reasons why we believe it is important to attend a local church and to be plugged in, not just pew sitting or chair sitting if you're at a church plant. So how does that young military service member guy or gal find a local church? What would be your top tips on how to find a healthy local church? And I say healthy because this is the Wellness Collective. We want to talk about health in that church as well. So how do we find a healthy local church?
Speaker 3:So I just wrote about this, but I'd love others' ideas and maybe we'll check off some of those and I'll share what I thought through on this. No ideas I have a thought here.
Speaker 1:So this kind of comes before the finding a local church. I hear from a lot of people if they're PCSing or coming, they're looking for their home first. Something that Joshua and I had begun doing was where are we going to go to church? Let's look for that first, and then we're going to pick where we're going to live based on that. So I just want to throw that out there Don't get it backwards, because the healthy church might be 45 minutes away from where you're going to live. Let's think my spiritual community first, and then where am I going to live.
Speaker 3:I literally wrote that in the second paragraph of this article we'll link to later.
Speaker 3:Please move this task of finding a local church up on your to-do list. So if you're, we're coming out of moving season right now in a lot of military communities, so if you're like just moved into a new community, it's too late for that. But if it's not too late for that, move it up. You know with what base you're going to Do the church search, pick a couple churches you're going to visit and then start looking for your housing if at all possible, because you don't, if you're like, oh man, the church we really believe God's leading us to is there, oh, but we just closed on a house or signed a lease or got base housing. That's an hour and a half away and that can be a real possibility in lots of these military communities. So it's good.
Speaker 4:I think we have two different scenarios. Actually, there's probably three different, four different scenarios, but two major ones is the guy who's showing up, who doesn't get to choose where he lives.
Speaker 1:That's true. And then you have the family moving from one base to another base.
Speaker 4:that has to like figure that out. So there's some forethought for one scenario and then there's just this reactive behavior on the other scenario. So I think we should walk through both, yeah that's really good.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So one of my first tips like is do you know a Christian who is going to church? So you get to your duty station, you're at your duty station and you're a Christian and you get to realize, oh, that guy seems like he's a Christian. Well, hey, do you have a church home in the area? Follow that guy to church. If you're a spouse and you're getting to know people where you're living or whatever the case is, oh, they seem like they're Christians. Well, ask, get to know them. Where are you going to church? You've now deepened a friendship immediately, created some community there and you follow them to church. Honestly, that's a great way to find a local church.
Speaker 4:As long as he's healthy. Right, let's not follow any random guys in any random buildings, but again, but somebody that you recognize them as a Christian.
Speaker 3:Like you're showing up, you're checking in it's week one, you're going around doing your check-in sheet, or you're the spouse and you're looking around and somebody brought you cookies and said, hey, we want to invite you to the neighborhood or whatever the case is, you're just going to. If you recognize someone by their fruit as a Christian and they are in a church, that's a good step of that being a healthy church. We want to look through some other things as well, but to me that's a good kind of first step. Another one is, similarly do you know somebody that was previously stationed there who had a Christian, who had a healthy church? Like ask them. I think sometimes we don't ask the question, we don't ask the obvious people like, hey, I'm moving to you know Lackland Air Force Base, what you know. You used to be stationed there, like five years ago, right, yeah, did you have a church home there? What was that Like? Have that conversation with people you know who used to be stationed there.
Speaker 1:We actually had that happen when we were stationed in North Carolina the first time. We had some friends that moved here and we were PCSing in about six months and they came from the Army base that we were going to and coming from a Marine Corps base to an Army base. That was very different and we loved this couple. They were just precious. They talked about the pastor and the pastor's wife and this, their family dynamic, and they loved them and they kept telling us you got to try this church. And we were like, okay, and honestly, that was the only church we tried. When we got there we thought, oh, we'll just try this for our friends, the Maybes that was their last name We'll just, we'll try it, you know, because they kept raving about it and we, you know, because they kept raving about it and we loved it and god grew us a ton in that place. So yes to that. Like make those connections.
Speaker 4:You're pcseing, moving around, or I don't know what it's like to live in the barracks I know you do, babe so like moving from play space yeah, there's this weird dynamic that happens kind of around a lot of families around our country that meet for Thanksgiving and Christmas and they go oh we're not talking about politics or religion, and they just keep that as like a normal thing around their table.
Speaker 4:That ought not be, especially the religion part, especially in the military. When you are trying to find your way through and you're walking through a whole bunch of different stuff, this is a perfect time and place to have those conversations and, yeah, a lot of times we're apprehensive because we're nervous about what the person's going to say. But, quite honestly, it is one of the main pillars of every branch of service has spirituality as one of the wellness factors, and so we can't just go around and act like you know, oh, it's a government thing, we can't talk about a religion. That's not the case and we need to be talking about it more often and make it more of a regular part of the workplace.
Speaker 3:We're actually going to talk about spiritual readiness in our next episode. Man, we're just like teeing this stuff up and Killing it yeah, killing it To attack it from a slightly different direction as well.
Speaker 3:If you are a Christian in a military community who has a healthy local church and you have, like, new Christians moving next door to you or in the barracks with you or at your workspace, invite them to church. Hey, I go to church here. I've been here for five minutes longer than you. We tried this church and this church and this church and these were good and healthy and we landed at this one. Just help them do some of that stuff so we can help one another in this.
Speaker 1:So that's a big one for me. If you're really wondering, because we keep mentioning healthy church, Mark Dever and Nine Marks wrote a fantastic book what is a healthy church? I highly recommend picking that up. It goes through the tenets of what is a healthy local church, Like what is the theology? You know, what do they believe about God? What do they believe about the Bible, the gospel, community outreach, missional strategies like all those things. So that's a lot right now.
Speaker 3:And that's a short book, super short. What is a healthy church? And there's even one page.
Speaker 1:I think they have a smaller one too.
Speaker 3:They probably even have a smaller version but look for what is a healthy church, mark Dever, and we'll drop a link in the notes. But there's a one pager in the version I've looked at most recently that says what should I look for in a church? One page what should I look for in a church?
Speaker 1:Yeah, pick that up. That's what we're talking about, about a healthy church. All of us have read that book. We know what it talks about. I do wanna say this really quick if you have older kids so we've talked a lot to like younger families If you're an older family in the military and you're listening to this, we found this as our kids started to become teenagers and now as church planters, we see this a lot.
Speaker 1:This might hurt your feelings. Do not look for a church based off of your teenager's preference or what you feel the programs are that they are going to have, unless it's a healthy church. Don't just be looking for the programs that that church can provide to you. You are a consumer at that point and church life is never meant to be consumeristic. It's to be participatory, it's to be communal.
Speaker 1:We actually had this happen when we started attending Pillar Church of Jacksonville on our second tour. There was two families that had teenagers. There weren't many there, we had a couple. But the theology, the doctrine, everything was exactly what we were looking for. Theology, the doctrine, everything was exactly what we were looking for, and Joshua and I thankful for older mentors in that life stage. When we brought that to them.
Speaker 1:They said well, if you don't join that church, then no other parents with teenagers are going to join that church. And so we said you know what? This is where God's calling us. We're going to plug in and, amazing, over the next couple of years, more teenagers came and they actually were able to have a youth group. So that might not always be the situation, but your children at that age need depth as well. They don't just need candy and basketball. While those things are good, don't make that your main way to choose a church. I don't want to step on toes, but we see that a lot. You'll compromise on what you believe, thinking you're helping your teenagers, when really you're not. You're telling them to compromise and none of us want to do that.
Speaker 2:Kelly, yeah, I am, oh, go ahead. Oh sorry, I have. We have a similar. It's not really based on the kids, but just an experience of when we were PCSing and moving to churches. We had the first few times we did not research or you know do much, we just kind of went to the big church in town or whatever. And then so the first time we actually like listened to podcasts of the preaching and read their statement of faith and stuff on their website, we showed up and it was out of my comfort zone.
Speaker 2:It was a small church plant and I remember it was out of my comfort zone. It was a small church plant and I remember it was hard. So I would just encourage even stepping out of what you're used to or your comfort zone as far as, like, what church experience you've had. It may look different but when you're looking for, you know, a Bible preaching church and the things that are important, it may look different but, man, that was like the healthiest church at that point. That are important it may look different but man, that was like the healthiest church at that point.
Speaker 3:That we had been a part of. So I'm hearing you guys saying you're looking for the doctrine the gospel rightly preached. That's where you want to start and be a real driving focus of your church search, not immediately ministering to what I think are my felt needs.
Speaker 4:Okay, yes, I love it. Yeah, and can I add to the stepping on toes that Brittany was talking about? I'll throw out some more toes to be stepped on. I'll throw out some more toes to be stepped on. Some of us are moving around the country in the military and we have spouses and our spouses even and not just kids, but even our spouses were thinking okay, I'm moving to this area, I'm going to be deployed a few times. She wants to just plug into and feels good about, instead of one that is solid, theologically, preaches the gospel, does all the right things, and I've even heard some guys in our community even mention even that Like, hey, well, this one she linked up with a lot of the ladies and so we know it's not the best church, but we're going to have her go there because she's going to be there more and I'm going to be gone a lot and it's like hey guys, right is right.
Speaker 4:You need to find and lead your family well, even when you're leading and then being deployed for a period of time.
Speaker 1:And to the wives you need to say I trust your leadership time. And to the wives you need to say I trust your leadership, like I'll follow you and trust that I can plug in here, even if it's going to be hard and I might have to do more work, that's a good thing.
Speaker 3:And do it together Like do the church searching together, have those conversations. Hey, you know, neighbor so-and-so is going to this church and he says, hey, guy I was working with is going to this church, right, so you, hey, guy I was working with is going to this church, right, so you can have some of those conversations. I think at some point especially if we're talking about moving, or you know you're sitting there and you know you're listening to this on a Tuesday and you're like, all right, sweet, I'm going to look for a church for this coming Sunday. At some point you are going to take it to the web, right? At some point you're going to go online and you're going to search. Let me help a little bit. Let's not just Google churches near me, all right, we get a report every month of how many people have searched churches near me or pillar church from Google, and it honestly breaks my heart the number of people that are literally just searching churches near me. That can be a little dangerous, especially when we're talking about finding the right doctrine and finding godly and biblical preaching, and so shameless plug.
Speaker 3:First website I would recommend Praetoriumprojectorg slash churches. The network we're a part of is a family of multiplying churches in military communities worldwide, and so if you look at our churches, there's not a lot depending on where you're at. We are 16 churches right now Growing, but we're growing Two new ones this year. So 16 churches. So low probability depending on where you are, but shameless plug there. Ninemarksorg you mentioned what is a healthy church, mark Dever, and so they have a church search. Ninemarksorg slash church search. And then the Gospel Coalition is a little broader church search, but they have a church search as well, gospel Coalition, slash churches.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I've been asked a few times because we have a lot of people that move and move away and move to places that I've never been before, and when I help them through the church search aspect, that's exactly the flow. I go down, I know whether there's a Praetorian Project church there or not, because I know all 16 churches. But then I go to that next step and I go, okay, I'm going to get a list from Nine Marks and then I'm going to get a list from Gospel Coalition. I go, okay, I'm going to get a list from Nine Marks and then I'm going to get a list from Gospel Coalition and then if there's a bunch on there, I take, okay, if this church is on both of those lists, it's probably one you should try out and check out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then what are?
Speaker 4:you doing, just narrowing it down for them and then following up when they go and they visit, right.
Speaker 3:but even before they visit. You're looking at some church websites.
Speaker 4:Oh, for sure.
Speaker 3:You're perusing around. What are you looking at on the church websites?
Speaker 4:Oh, I go straight to the statement of beliefs. Statement of beliefs, and then where are you going? And then, right after statement of beliefs, honestly, okay, this may be different than what you what you're good, I don't know what you're going to say.
Speaker 3:I go on their social media because here's the thing, and I'm going to qualify this you don't want social media. I know, that's funny.
Speaker 1:We learn the hard way.
Speaker 4:I know Insta chat, faceit, tiktok or anything. I don't do any of it. But if there's a link to a social media, I pull that up right away, because we've been burned by church websites in the past because the website looks like it's one type of church.
Speaker 4:And then you walk through the doors and it is not that type of church. So I go on some of their social media to see real pictures of real people and to see what's actually going on there, so that you kind of have a visual of what it looks like. But where do you go next?
Speaker 3:When you're helping people, yeah. So I go to sermons. I want to listen to a sermon or two and I may not listen to the whole thing, or I may put it on double speed if I'm helping somebody else. If it was me looking for a church, I haven't looked for a church in 12 plus years. But you know, when I was in that like listen to sermons what brought us to the really awkward situation of Kelly sitting in a middle school gym on a plastic kid chair, not a kid.
Speaker 3:On a plastic kid's chair. What led us there was I looked at a web—I did a church search similar to what we're talking about here now. Many years ago, and podcasting people putting sermons online was actually a new thing and I was like people are putting their sermons online.
Speaker 3:I can listen to sermons. I'd listened to like three months of sermons on my commute to work and I was like, hey, this is the first church we're going to try out from the preaching and we walk in and there's like 40 people in a elementary school cafeteria worshiping Jesus, preaching the Bible. The church was like four or five years old and Kelly is like this is awful, we had just come from a 800-person. Very put-together older church.
Speaker 2:I was used to bigger church experience.
Speaker 3:And so Kelly's like this is awful.
Speaker 2:I was thinking this is amazing, this is refreshing, and so anyway, and that was one thing too, where, as you were doing the research, I was— I don't know, just I was letting you lead, but I was kind of nervous and skeptical. But I'm thankful just to let that process work itself out and trusting your leadership, because it was really good.
Speaker 1:It's funny y'all had that experience, because we had that same experience when we moved to North Carolina our second time.
Speaker 1:We had seen Pillar Church of Jacksonville a website. We had seen Pillar Church of Jacksonville a website, but then when we looked at it and then it was part of this network and every church was named Pillar, we got really skeptical A little bit of our background. We came out of a very legalistic, cultish denomination, so anyway, it made us very leery. So for the first month we didn't try it because all the churches were named the same. But then I started on my runs listening to sermons and I was like, wait, this doesn't it sounds pretty decent. And so then we started searching the church and it came up on the Gospel Coalition Nine Marks and we were like, okay, this can't be like what we came out of. And we ended up going in Same thing walked into a dingy building where it was very dark, but the most amazing church experience.
Speaker 4:So yeah, Can I tell a little story on how that? Because we went through three really different church well, four or more we were. We first. We knew where we were going to live because we already owned a house there, but we didn't know what church we were going to be going to.
Speaker 4:We were willing to drive right. So we're moving back to our house. We go and visit some churches and we hear the preaching and our kids, even at like eight years old, are like this guy is not preaching and being accurate about what the Bible says. So we're like okay.
Speaker 1:Did he just contradiction preaching and being accurate about what the Bible says? So we're like okay, Did he just?
Speaker 4:contradiction film. So we're like, okay, this isn't the place, Kids relax, we're not coming back. And then we tried this other church, and this is also a thing not to look for in a church. There was a church across a lake from where we were living and we were thinking we could canoe to church. This would be great.
Speaker 2:Right, it does sound amazing and we were thinking we could canoe to church.
Speaker 4:This would be great. We could just like go across, jump out. But then we visited and we were like, okay, this is not the church for us. But then, after visiting Pillar Church of Jacksonville and then one other church in town, we were really kind of torn between the two churches and what it came down to was this. And what it came down to was this the other church.
Speaker 4:Theologically, we could not agree with something to where I could not continue on and be inmed in some sort of ministry in the future. We were looking at the other church and the kids. Actually they had a playground, they had all these things for kids and they all wanted to go there and I had to break their hearts and just be like, hey, I'm sorry, but we can't go to that church because for the long-term health of our family and what God desires in us, this is not going to be the place. So we ended up going to Pillar Church of Jacksville because we could affirm everything that the church believed theologically. And so and I look back on that time and come what, seven, eight years later, becoming one of the pastors there and then church planting, being sent from that church to plant another church none of that would have happened from that one decision so those decisions you make about what church to join is super important.
Speaker 3:Can I underline two things you just said. One is you talked about as you're growing. If somebody's listening to this and you're a little older in the faith and you feel called to teach and or grow into pastoral ministry, we love that. That's what we're trying to do as pastors and so that's great. To think that level of not just can I sit under this preaching, but can I affirm the doctrine to the point where I would be able to preach and teach or just teach a community group or a small group or whatever else. So as you get a little older in the faith, you might even need to go a little next level in that.
Speaker 3:The other thing I want to underline we've said it a couple different ways, but we see it so often, that's why we keep saying it is you don't want to make this decision based on the feelings, thoughts, preferences of your children. What your children need spiritually is a spiritually thriving mom and dad. That's what they need first and foremost. They need a spiritually thriving mom and dad, and so go to a place where you can spiritually thrive.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 4:Really good. One more thing yeah, I know you're looking to wrap things up here, but I just want to mention that we didn't touch on the actual visiting of churches quite yet which is the most painful experience ever.
Speaker 4:And being in the military, you're going to move around every couple of years. And every couple of years you do all the prep work, you check the websites, you listen to sermons, you show up. Sometimes it's seamless and sometimes you just show up, you know where you're gonna go. You end up in that church. You show up at a cafeteria in an elementary school and you're like this is horrible. You're like this is awesome and you jump in and it's fine. Other times you struggle and you're like, okay, I'm going to visit this church, I'm going to visit this one and this one and this one. And then you try. What I would recommend is trying not just Sunday mornings If they have other services.
Speaker 4:Try other services. If they have community groups, life groups, bible studies, show up to those and see what's going on there and really actually attend all the different things that they do. That way you get the full picture of what's happening, because there's sometimes the Sunday morning gathering is a like really well scripted put together thing, but then everything else is a hot mess, or vice versa.
Speaker 4:So you really just want to try them all out, but then making that determination I liken it to. So we've also looked for houses a few times and we've. You know, when you look on a house online and you're like, yeah, I could live there, but I don't know if it's like my forever home, that kind of thing. But then you walk in the house and you're just like, yeah, this isn't the place that I want to live. Maybe the layout, maybe it's the colors, maybe it's the neighborhood there's things you can't pick up online.
Speaker 4:But then there's when you're searching for a home and you open the front door and you walk in and you're like wow yeah, I just feel like, like it's not a feeling, but this is home and I believe the Holy Spirit has a has a way of doing that with churches as well, you can really walk If you're, if you're in tune with the Holy Spirit, if you prayed up, if you've, if you're where you're, if you're walking with the Lord, and then you walk into where the Lord wants you. It's evident for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in a two-week period you could attend two Sunday morning worship gatherings a home group, small group, life group, sunday school class, whatever they do, maybe a women's Bible study, maybe a men's breakfast, something like that.
Speaker 1:Like you could do all that in a two-week period and really get a sense of that church. That's so good, guys. Thank you so much for all of that. We're going to wrap up this week's episode. We thank you for joining us. If you have things that you want us to talk about here on the Military Wellness Collective, you can find us on Instagram at the Military Wellness Collective and you can shoot us a message or comment on one of the posts. Let us know what you want to hear about. Also, some of the resources that were mentioned in today's episode will be below in our podcast show notes, so you can find those there and if you have questions, just reach out. We thank you for joining us.