Let's step back and ask why a chaplain's off-the-book skills are so vital in the first place.

The simple answer: in a crisis, one person can make all the difference. And that person is very often the police chaplain.

Oklahoma City

Following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, police chaplains like Jack Poe played an integral role in helping survivors and their families carry the trauma and grief of the attack. Through counseling, memorial services, and the plain work of comforting the affected, they offered support that nothing official could replace.

What made Poe able to do that wasn't a title. It was a lifetime of preparation. He had spent years learning, carefully observing, and documenting how things work. On the day he was tested, he could step up and take charge — because he had quietly built, over a career, exactly the capacity that day demanded. The qualities he brought to the crisis were cultivated long before anyone knew they'd be needed.

That is social capital deployed at the worst possible hour. The account he'd been paying into for decades, withdrawn in a single terrible week.

A history of being the indispensable person

Poe is not an exception. Again and again, police chaplains have been the ones who made the difference when everything came apart.

The Civil Rights Movement (1950s–60s). Chaplains worked to bridge gaps and build understanding between law enforcement and protesters, promoting peaceful dialogue and offering spiritual guidance in a time of deep division.

Columbine (1999). After the massacre in Colorado, chaplains worked alongside law enforcement to offer spiritual and emotional support to victims, families, and the first responders who carried what they had seen.

9/11 (2001). In the aftermath of the attacks, police chaplains provided emotional and spiritual support to first responders and shattered communities — offering comfort, organizing vigils, conducting memorial services, and walking people through an almost impossible recovery.

Hurricane Katrina (2005). Chaplains were on the front lines, offering comfort and counsel to officers and survivors alike as communities struggled through overwhelming devastation.

The Boston Marathon bombing (2013). Chaplains were present to bring solace and support, conducting memorial services and helping draw a stunned community back together.

In every one of these, it wasn't only a chaplain's skill as a spiritual leader that made the difference. It was the trust they had already earned within their community. The impact of chaplains during critical incidents is nearly always in play, often unseen, and almost always underappreciated.

The lesson for young chaplains

If you're early in this work, take the lesson these moments teach.

Be a lifelong learner. The world is a vast classroom. Approach each day with an open mind, eager to absorb and grow.

Find mentors — ideally an older, more experienced chaplain. Chaplain Dave Fair was forever introducing other chaplains as his mentor; right up to the end he stayed humble about his own deep experience and open to learning from others. When you find someone like that, keep in touch. Watch them. Listen. Steer clear of anyone with too high an opinion of themselves, short on self-awareness or a sense of humor. Look for the authentic ones — the ones a little surprised you picked them out.

Prepare for the day you'll be tested. No one will formally ask you to step up. Events will simply emerge and place you in the eye of the storm. It will happen. The only question is whether you're ready.

A good place to start is your resource guide — preferably written down in a notebook or binder, not dependent on a charged and connected device. Your personal guide is the product of years of note-taking, corrections, and annotations, kept for your eyes only. Writing it down has a powerful effect on your ability to make critical decisions on the spot.

Jack Poe was ready. The work of this whole series is making sure that, when your day comes, you are too.