Photo by Neal Embry.
Sgt. Randall Jones serves as a chaplain and officer for the Vestavia Hills Police Department. In addition to Jones, there are 11 other chaplains currently serving employees of the city of Vestavia Hills.
It’s not uncommon to see city fire departments or police departments use chaplain services in times of crisis or other needs in their employees’ lives.
However, the city of Vestavia Hills is unique in that its chaplains serve all city employees, not just first responders.
“We wanted a city-wide program,” said Sgt. Randall Jones, chaplain and officer with the Vestavia Hills Police Department.
For a while, it was just Jones, who’s also an ordained deacon at Hunter Street Baptist Church, serving the police department, and Don Williamson serving the fire department. Then the city decided to branch out and add more deacons, contacting different churches to ask if anyone would be willing to serve.
A few years later and the city now has, in addition to Jones, 11 chaplains, after two recently joined. All of the chaplains go around and rotate services to different departments within the city, Jones said.
“We’ve had all kinds of positive reactions to it,” Jones said.
City leadership has been helpful as well, Jones said, as they’ve welcomed the work of the chaplains and helped with funding in the past few years.
Every chaplain receives cross training from both the fire and police training academies, Jones said, and they understand what can happen once they accept the position.
“They know it may be 2 a.m. when they get called out,” Jones said.
There is always a primary and secondary chaplain on call, with chaplains rotating each week, Jones said.
On Nov. 1, 2017, tragedy struck the Vestavia Hills Police Department and thrust the chaplains into duty, after officer Bobby Hancock took his own life near the police department.
“God put our guys at the right place at the right time,” Jones said.
Jones and other chaplains were in a quarterly meeting at the department and were able to rush to the scene, comfort the family and help out in any way that was needed. Jones was the main contact for the family and was able to comfort them, despite being impacted by Hancock’s death himself as one of the officer’s good friends.
“Anybody can be strong with the family when you have to be,” Jones said, but when he was alone, “… I was crying like everyone else.”
In the past few years, there have been other deaths in city departments or in the families of those city employees, Jones said, and so multiple departments have gotten to see the chaplains in action.
The chaplains can often be found hanging out with the group of employees they are assigned to, eating lunch with them and getting to know them, Jones said.
Chaplains will make hospital visits, meet a new baby, write note cards or help in the wake of family tragedies. In those moments, chaplains are trained to stay as long as need be, as well as meet the religious needs of the family, Jones said.
A chaplain isn’t a preacher, Jones said, and is there simply to allow someone to grieve or work through a situation.
“Listen twice as much as you speak,” Jones said. “A lot of people just need to talk.”
While the chaplains are currently all Methodist or Baptist, Jones said they are trained to serve other faiths as well, and if the need arises to add chaplains of another faith, that’s something the city might look into adding.
Jones said he’s glad to be a part of the city’s corps of chaplains.
“It’s an awesome [and] unique program,” Jones said. “It’s a blessing to be a part of this.”
