More and more deacons are finding themselves serving as police chaplains — and an Illinois newspaper has a case in point:

When police respond to a serious accident or a terrible crime, who responds to the resulting grief?

Often, that job falls to a police chaplain.

Shock and grief were in abundance on the afternoon of Nov. 23 when a truck hit a Nicor Gas worker operating a back hoe on Leverenz Road. The machine was flipped, pinning the worker beneath it. He died on the scene.

Amid the confusion was a small circle of calm and order, thanks in part to Tom Ross, a deacon at Naperville’s St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church and a volunteer chaplain for the Naperville Police Department.

“I just happened to be the one,” Ross says of being called by police social worker Mike Hoffman that afternoon. “Mike put out a call and found me first.”

Ross is one of six chaplains from various denominations who are available to the Naperville Police Department. An 18-year member of the International Conference of Police Chaplains, Ross first became interested in chaplaincy because of his sons.

“By 1990, two of my sons were first responders — a fireman and a policeman,” he says. “Having them in the family, you come to understand some of the struggles they go through. It’s a different type of position when you put on a bulletproof vest and walk out to your job.”

The majority of a chaplain’s job involves counseling such officers. First, though, you have to win their trust.

Jim Woods, a volunteer chaplain with the Naperville Police Department since 1991, says this comes with spending time in the officers’ world — which often means riding along during shifts in their squad cars.

“You don’t just become a chaplain and instantly they trust you,” says Woods. “It happens over years.”

For more on what these chaplains do, visit the link.

And keep these guys in your prayers. They need ’em.