the mission

The Sons Of Thunder Signal Corps Ministry Mission is to guide and inspire people in Native and rural communities to train and equip themselves as traditional and pastoral first responders. These critical roles are a hallmark of a thriving community and culture.

Emergency preparedness, broad and multi-scenario aid response and pastoral care in support of the community and church is part of the calling I have for the Signal Corps Ministry. Adding pastoral care along with the skill sets of many types of first responders, supported with wide ranging types of radio communications use can build up our communities with the traditional interdependence that is part of our heritage. Having a community-based aid/emergency response corps that is competently trained and qualified, volunteer, and faith-based I think could give a really important sense of cultural self-determination, self-reliance, self-responsibility, accountability, and functional mutual aid that almost every outside bureaucracy, government program and policy has stripped from native peoples’ cultures.

In some ways the Signal Crops draws on the tradition of native secret societies and warrior societies. There is a strong and sacred instinct in our people, held in the highest regard, that certain members of a band/tribe/moiety/nation underwent initiation and trials to develop their spiritual calling to serve the people. This was bound and kept by tradition, the continuity of leadership, and the spiritual life in the culture. These selected members were counted on to protect and preserve the people through life, to the death. I think the components of Christian morals, faith, service, and love, are in these traditions. If anyone who is called can help others discover Christ in their own life, that He knew us before the beginning of the world and that He is at work by any means He chooses among all nations of the earth, then accepting Christ among the Native Nations is not a adoption of something foreign but a revival of our cultural inheritance.

To this end Amateur Radio communications provides a foundational cornerstone to our infrastructure and collective skill set. Amateur radio stations operate independently of outside agencies or technology providers (internet, cell phone providers, satellites), and greatly contribute to the essential sovereignty and self-determination needed by community and The People.

The Signal Corps Ministry is a radio communication network of first responder chaplains that can provide full spectrum emergency and everyday communication assistance; who can reach out to the remote and socially isolated members and ensure their ongoing connectivity with services, aid, and the local church, the Body of Christ. Collectively these combined skills and resources can create a far more effective system of mutual aid that is completely dedicated to and operated by the community it serves.