Ben Vegors
Ben Vegors has lived with a clear focus: to serve Christ in ministry. From combat in World War II to shepherding churches and counseling veterans, Ben’s unwavering faith has touched many lives.
“Ben’s pulse is knowing the Word and allowing it to continue to impact his life,” Michelle Peel, Multnomah University’s Alumni Relations Director, said. “He exemplifies living a life of ministry and a heart to finish strong.”
Ben became a Christian while attending a Bible camp as a boy, and grew up in a single-parent Christian home during the Great Depression. When World War II broke out, Ben joined the Air Force as a tail gunner on a B-24—the most dangerous position on the plane.
After one bombing raid, enemy fire shot out two engines on Ben’s plane. Chased by German fighters and fearing they were going down, Ben’s crew put on parachutes even though they were flying too low to bail out. Terrified, Ben prayed, saying he would spend his life serving God if he lived. Unexpectedly, the German fighters left, and the crippled plane managed to cross the English Channel back to safety. God protected Ben through the rest of the war: he flew thirty combat missions without a scratch. The crews of the few missions he missed never returned.
“So many times the Lord delivered me—it was just like a habit by the end of the war,” Ben said. “It strengthened my faith. I believed that He had some purpose for my life.”
True to his prayer, Ben attended Multnomah School of the Bible after the war to get equipped for full-time ministry. There he met his wife, Betty, and graduated in 1949. For more than twenty years, they pastored churches in Oregon and then moved to Walla Walla, Washington. Ben and Betty had two sons, David and Peter.
In the 1980s, Ben sent Bibles to persecuted churches in Eastern Europe without knowing if they ever made it past government censors. He then met the head of European Baptist Fellowship, who offered him the opportunity to go behind the Iron Curtain. For the next eleven years, Ben saved up money and spent his annual three-week vacation preaching in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. Ben still corresponds with the churches he visited and gives toward the work there.
Over the decades, Ben transitioned from full-time pastor to full-time chaplain. For the last forty years, he has served as chaplain at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Walla Walla. He began by taking night calls at the Chief Chaplain’s request. Now, Ben spends fifty hours a week providing spiritual counseling to veterans. At eighty-nine, he is the oldest full-time chaplain in the United States.
“I love the work with veterans,” Ben said. “I find it so rewarding, being able to feed them and help them along. I look at it as the most fulfilling part of my life.”
Ben’s duties include visiting patients daily, checking up on local veterans in nursing homes, heading up a Sunday chapel service, and leading a substance abuse recovery and a spiritual recovery class.
“It’s hard to miss Ben’s faith,” said Dr. Robert Johnson, psychiatrist at the VA. “I’ve never seen him vary from that promise and that dedication. He has tremendous command of God’s word and a facility with language. But at the same time, when you’re talking with him about spiritual things, it doesn’t sound canned. It’s from the heart.”
As chaplain, Ben interviews every new patient and has found that a veteran’s struggle with substance abuse usually begins when he stops going to church. Dr. Johnson said Ben masters being both non-judgmental toward patients while encouraging them to have a meaningful relationship with God. Ben has seen many veterans he worked with commit their lives to Christ, but said he can’t claim credit.
“In every case, it hasn’t been something I’ve said; it was either their mothers praying for them, or somebody gave them a tract, or they’d listened to Billy Graham and thought he was crazy. And when they hit rock bottom, they come to Christ,” Ben said. “It’s the Lord’s work, and I just happen to be here when they were open to the Lord and came to Him.”
Dr. Johnson attributes Ben’s effectiveness to his faith demonstrated and developed during trials. “He struggles with things, which I see as significant to people of faith. They struggle with things that hurt them, but always come to know a deeper sense of God’s purpose.”
Ben has struggled through combat, the death of friends, financial uncertainty, and the death of his son, David. In 2010, Betty passed away, but Ben has never lost sight of God’s purpose for him. Although he is almost three decades past retirement age, Ben has no plans to stop his ministry. He says he will continue to follow Hezekiah’s example in 2 Chronicles 31:21. “It says that in every work he began, in the service of the house of God and in the law and in the commandments to seek his God, he did it with all his heart and prospered,” Ben said. “I believe that’s what I’m to do until my dying day.”