BRUNSWICK, Ohio – Buck Wilford grew up in an Assembly of God church and accepted Christ at age 14. Soon, he sensed a call to ministry. But it would be almost 25 years before he pastored a church, and he would travel the world in the meantime. He would say it was all part of God’s plan.
A former Army Airborne Ranger and Green Beret, Wilford now pastors Brunswick Community Church, which he planted in 2012, and works full-time as a chaplain in a Cleveland-area hospital.
Four years after his conversion, Army recruiters visited Wilford’s high school. At the time, he wasn’t interested in going to school when he graduated, so he decided to visit the recruiting center.
“They said, ‘Just go down and check out what it’s like. You don’t have to sign up,’” Wilford remembered. “But that’s where you sign up when you go into that station.”
When he entered the recruiting station, he wanted to be a chaplain’s assistant or construction worker.
Neither position was available, so Wilford said, “’Well, give me infantry then. Give me the best you got.’ That’s how I got the Airborne Ranger contract.”
He says he felt sad about his decision until an unexpected encounter with an African pastor in downtown Cleveland changed his focus.
“I saw this guy in his African dress, and he was preaching,” Wilford recalled. “He said, ‘Sometimes you got to go as far as you can go to go no more, then you know God has something else for you.’”
Wilford realized the military was his “something else,” and he committed to it.
“I ended up staying for 20 years. It’s good advice from that African guy,” he said.
At 19 years old, he and his unit were sent to Somalia.
“If you’ve ever seen the movie ‘Black Hawk Down,’ I was part of that firefight,” he said. “I was just this young guy, just a little over a year in the Army, over there in Africa with some terrible stuff going on.”
Wilford said an experience like the 15-hour battle he endured “changes you forever.”
After Somalia, he started Ranger School.
“Ranger School is very tough,” he said. “You sleep maybe one hour a night. You have maybe one meal a day. You lose 30 pounds each phase. They really stress you out and try to make it like combat.”
During six months in Ranger School, separated from Christian influence, Wilford’s faith faltered.
“I backslid for a long time in the Army, and I still went to church, but I knew that I was hypocritical, and coming from an Assemblies of God background, I thought I’d lost my salvation,” he said. “I always thought one day I’m going to make myself right with God, but the day wasn’t coming.”
During years away from the Lord, Wilford became a sergeant in the Special Forces, and he made a critical decision.
“I was going to read my Bible from back to front again, like I did back when I was a young guy in high school,” he said. “And I read my Bible, and it put me in that place to submit and humble myself before God, and I totally changed my life back around.”
He enrolled in seminary at Liberty University and returned to living his Christian life boldly.
“I was really a warrior for Christ in those five years,” he said. “So the first couple years, and then the last five years. In the meantime, I wasted some time.”
During a class assignment for his M.Div., he made a life-changing realization – he hadn’t lost and then regained his salvation. He’d been saved long ago.
“… God changed my life when I was a young teenager, totally filled me up,” he said. “Instead of trying to be good on the outside, it filled me up on the inside. It was just me backsliding, and that’s what caused me to drift.”
Wilford recalled how the Lord was with him during his dangerous assignments in places like Bosnia and Kosovo, where his life was always in danger.
“And now that I look back, I think it was God’s grace, every bit of the way, that kept me safe, kept me through it all, and brought me back to the right place,” he said.
He has stayed in the right place ever since, finishing his 20 years of service while taking 31 classes to complete his M.Div. in three and a half years. He retired from the Army one month after he graduated from Liberty University.
“I was looking to be a pastor,” he said. “I couldn’t find anything.”
Again, an unexpected encounter with Mark Jones, a consultant with the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio, pointed him in the right direction.
“[Jones] said the ‘Special Forces’ way in the Church is to be a church planter,” Wilford recalled. “And I thought, ‘I want to be special forces too in the Church.’
“So I hooked up with him, and I planted the church, and I started it from scratch in 2012.”
Looking back, Wilford continues to see God’s hand in the story of his life, recognizing how his Special Forces training and experience prepared him for his role as a pastor.
“That time in Special Forces, you see really crazy scenarios, and we run into that in ministry. I am comfortable in those crazy areas. I don’t panic. I don’t get upset, and I’m able to stay calm,” he said.
“I think sometimes people in those scenarios need somebody to be calm, to be guiding, to be comforting, to be listening, to understand them, to pray for them, and to have the base always in Jesus Christ and the Gospel. It’s a beautiful place. You’re able to share the truth with them and help them move forward, get out of the troubles, and see that there’s real hope in life. That’s something so special.”
This article originally appeared in Ohio Baptist Messenger.
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