Chaplain (COL) Doug Castle serves as the Deputy IMCOM Chaplain for Mobilizations.
Before serving as a Army chaplain, he was a public school science teacher and basketball coach, a high school principal for a private Christian school, a respiratory therapist, a Young Life leader, a Presbyterian youth pastor, a hospital chaplain, and a North American Baptist associate pastor. He then became Senior Pastor of a large non-denominational church in St. Joseph, Missouri for 4 years before applying for an Army commission.
He entered the U.S. Army with a direct commission as a captain in 1987, serving as the OPFOR Chaplain at the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, California. In 1990, he moved to Fort Wainwright, Alaska, as the 4/9 Infantry Battalion Chaplain.
Requesting to be released from active duty in order to plant a church, he served as an associate pastor of a 3,000 member church in Kansas City before he and Donna became the founders of Horizon Church in Northwest Arkansas. Chaplain Castle returned to the Army Chaplaincy by serving as the 917th Corps Support Group Chaplain in Kansas City, the 19th Theater Support Command Chaplain in Des Moines and Taegu, Korea, and the 89th Regional Readiness Command Chaplain in Wichita, Kansas.
In 1992 he was mobilized as the USASOC Operations Chaplain at Ft. Bragg and the JSOC Rear-Detachment Chaplain. He served in Iraq with JSOC and then became the first Special Operations Command, Pacific (SOCPAC) Chaplain in Hawaii. He later served as the Special Operations Command, Central (SOCCENT) Chaplain at MacDill AFB and in Qatar, Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Africa before being selected to attend the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Following his year at the War College, he served with the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) at MacDill AFB. He returned to the civilian world as Director of his endorsing agency, the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches, before returning to active duty as the Executive Chaplain at Fort Carson for two years before serving again in Qatar as the Camp As Sayliyah Installation Chaplain.
He has earned a Bachelor of Science in Education degree from the University of Missouri, a Master of Divinity degree from Midwestern Baptist Seminary in Kansas City, and a Master of Strategic Studies degree from the Army War College.
Chaplain Castle’s commander at SOCPAC sent him, at the age of 51, to Ft. Benning to earn a basic parachutist’s badge. He flew to Georgia with many friends praying. God answers prayer, and in Chaplain Castle’s office is a plaque with his wings and the inscription: “God’s Grace was Sufficient!”
Chaplain Castle is married to the former Donna Barthels of Florissant, Missouri. They have three children – Rebecca, married and living in Rhode Island with her husband and two small children; Zachariah, a 2006 graduate of West Point serving as an Infantry captain in Iraq, married with a small daughter; and Daniel, a 2009 graduate of the Air Force Academy, currently earning a Master’s Degree at Colorado State. The Castle’s home-schooled their children.