Former Shawville resident Paul Ellis was recently elected the vice-president of the International Conference of Police Chaplains (ICPC), an organization that provides guidance, education and support to more than 2,300 chaplains from across the world.

Ellis, a second-generation chaplain, began his . . .

ministry in Canada. “I left Shawville to attend the Northwest Bible College. I did that up until 2008 when I retired from pastoring and went into police chaplaincy,” said Ellis.

Ellis’ father was a chaplain for the Montreal police and fire departments back in the 60s while he was a pastor in Montreal.

“I just thought that all pastors were involved in chaplaincy outside the church, in the community,” said Ellis.

“I was raised in Shawville, and even though I moved away in 1974, I still consider it my hometown,” Ellis told The Equity.

After he graduated from bible college Ellis went to Auburn Washington as a youth pastor “one of my board members there was the fire chief. I said to him, ‘do you have a chaplain, and he said, What’s that? I told him, and he said, we do now.’”

That was when Ellis began his chaplaincy until he came back to Canada to serve as a chaplain with the RCMP in British Columbia, and as pastors moved around a lot, he found his way back to the US once again.

In 2011 he left Washington to move to Arizona, where he became the area representative for the ICPC, then two years later served as the regional director.

“I oversaw six states in the southwest corner of the nation. So California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. This last summer at our conference in South Carolina, they elected me as the vice president of the International Conference of Police Chaplains.”

When asked what the chaplaincy entailed, Ellis answered, “Well first of all it takes a lot more training, there’s an academy that you go through because you’re dealing with a whole different set of circumstances.”

A chaplain offers support to fire fighters and law enforcement officers who deal with traumatic experiences on a daily basis. “In normal conditions citizens generally run away from problematic and dangerous situations, but these service men and women head straight into it,” Ellis explained.

Firefighters are a little easier to deal with law enforcement officers, according to Ellis who said “they are usually more open to the public, whereas law enforcement officers tend to be more reserved and restricted as to who they let into their lives because they deal with so much in society. The circumstances they face are typically more intense as well.”

Part of what Ellis does is critical incident stress management debriefing. The aim is to protect the individuals from going into PTSD, which is by definition, a one time occurrence that puts somebody into a post traumatic stress disorder, a dysfunctional state.

“Police officers and firefighters are dealing with stress multiple times a day, so they may go from a homicide to a suicide to a baby death to a fatal accident. And so we call that cumulative career traumatic stress,” Ellis said, “These can infiltrate one’s mind, cause sleep depravity, cause dysfunction and create relationship problems.”

Chaplains help with critical incident stress management, and that psychological first aid should be done within the first eight hours after the event, according to Ellis who explained, “what it does is it releases the information from the right cortex of the brain, so that the information flow happens. The problem begins when that information gets stuck and it starts spinning its proverbial wheels in the brain, and doesn’t get released. So that’s why we want to provide our assistance.”

“We have so many first responders that go to Jim Beam and Jack Daniels for their support, which is the wrong doctor,” added Ellis.

The chaplains work in conjunction with other organizations programs and services that offer help and support for first responders, they will often ride along with officers and provide follow-up services for them and their families who are also dealing with the second hand trauma.

“We also try to make ourselves available, walking the corridors of the department so that those officers at any time day or night, can stop us and say, ‘Hey, Chaplain, I just need to talk and vent.’ That trust factor is so crucial,” said Ellis.

When asked how it made him feel to be able to provide this support to first responders, Ellis replied, “It’s great, I love doing it, I find it to be effective ministry because I get to pray with people, if they desire that prayer, counsel them, encourage them, I’m with them for weddings and funerals.”

Ellis also works with disaster responses across America dealing with the aftermath of tornadoes, hurricanes, shootings, mass shootings, or school shootings. Though it is not a paid position Ellis said he enjoys it, finds it very rewarding and intends to go on doing this work for as long as he possibly can.

When asked what is next for Ellis, he replied,”Well I’m vice president right now and in 2023 the president will be open. We’re a team that is thrilled to be working with the current president, who is doing a phenomenal job, so I guess I’ll be getting big shoes to fill.”

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