Jared Dean has gotten used to people’s surprise when they discover he is both a pastor and a police officer. He readily admits balancing a full-time police officer job and part-time pastoral position is challenging. But, he says, the two professions are more similar than different.
“Being a police officer and a pastor are very complementary,” he said. “They might be two sides of the same coin.”
From the patrol car, he sees the effects of sin and the gift and limitations of earthly justice. From the pulpit, he speaks about how the death and resurrection of Jesus provides forgiveness and satisfies divine justice.
Dean has been a part-time assistant pastor at Liberty Church PCA in Owings Mills, Maryland, since 2023, after graduating from Metro Baltimore Seminary, a Reformed seminary started by Chapelgate Presbyterian Church in Marriottsville, Maryland, just west of Baltimore.
Dean grew up at Chapelgate, calling himself a “stereotypical church kid.” He professed faith in Christ during elementary school, was active in the youth group, attended Chapelgate Christian Academy for middle and high school, and spent two summers during high school working at a Christian Service Brigade camp in West Virginia.
But police work drove him to discern a call to ministry — a call that began growing in the Marines and bloomed during a crisis of faith with the police force.
Boot Camp as a “Crash Course” in Ministry
The first vocational calling Dean sensed was not to serve the church, but to serve his country. It happened in 2001, during his freshman year of high school. As Dean and his classmates watched the planes crash into the World Trade Center on September 11, the wickedness in the world was clear to him.
The resulting military conflict in Iraq inspired Dean to join the Marines.
“It was just something I felt called to,” he explained. He served with the Marine Corps Reserve for eight years.
He studied criminal justice in college and spent the summer after his freshman year at Marine Corps boot camp. Soon, he unwittingly found himself in charge of his platoon’s spiritual care.
A drill instructor walked into the barracks and asked the recruits to identify their religion. Dean, who was standing at the front, raised his hand when the instructor asked which trainees were Protestant.
The instructor turned to Dean and announced, “Good, you’re the Protestant lay leader for our platoon.”
For Dean, boot camp became a “crash course” in ministry. He led prayer and Bible studies nearly every night for 13 weeks.
Dean married his wife in September 2008, during his final year of college, as the recession ravaged the economy. But with police forces freezing hiring, his chances of becoming an officer were declining. Days after his honeymoon, he took the police force’s entrance test. In December 2008, he left school to enter the police academy and join the Howard County Police Department, just west of Baltimore. He’s been with the force since 2009.
A Crisis of Faith
Dean’s crisis of faith — and call to ministry — came years later.
In 2015, Dean was the first officer on the scene for five separate suicides in the span of two weeks. He saw people end their lives.
The pain wore on him. He began doing something that would have seemed unfathomable to him as a child, memorizing Scripture and catechisms. He doubted the existence and goodness of God.
“I knew those answers in my head, but I was hitting this point where [I thought], ‘Man, I’m seeing this stuff in real life that’s happening, and I don’t know how to square the two,’” he said.
Dean wondered if God was real, and if so, why he seemed to ignore the pain Dean saw every day at work. The questions persisted for years, until one day Dean found freedom in reading Exodus 20.
As he read how God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, he remembered God’s promise to Abraham that he would deliver his descendants from slavery. The faithfulness of God leaped off the page and into Dean’s heart.
“I felt like I got punched in the gut,” Dean said. “That’s when I really became truly convinced God is real.”
He wanted to tell others about what he found. He enrolled at Metro Baltimore Seminary. For three years, his patrol car became his study hall. He read books and wrote papers while he waited for calls from dispatch, cleaning up his schoolwork to respond to calls. Now, he often contacts parishioners from his patrol car.
It’s an appropriate setting for pastoral work. Police work reminds him of people’s need for the gospel and his pastoral training helps him care for colleagues who are struggling under the weight of police work. Dean has been his department’s chaplain since 2022.
There is little rest for police officers, Dean said.
“It’s like you’re constantly on [military] deployment for 20 years, and it really takes its toll on guys, but they rarely ever let you know that.” Many become atheists as a result, Dean said.
“Every single one of them is going to tell you, ‘The world really messed up,’” Dean said. “But as a Christian and as a pastor, I know why it is like that, and I know the solution to it. I know Christ has come to redeem it. That’s what, obviously, most police officers aren’t thinking about when they go to an awful scene, or they go to a domestic violence call, or a fight, or a homicide.”
Dean encourages pastors to be patient when getting to know first responders. Most will not share how their jobs impact them. Joining them on a ride-along may be helpful.
“They just need a minister who’s present,” he said.
Police work has helped Dean to be present with his own congregation. It helps him take decisive action when needed and also helps him listen to people’s stories with care and without surprise.
“Honestly, there’s probably not much a congregant could tell me that I would be surprised about just because I’ve seen a lot of it at work as a cop already.”