Women in Ministry Profile
Girlhood in war-torn Lebanon shaped Army chaplain’s call to ministry
On the day the Rev. Benjamin Weir was taken hostage in Beirut, Lebanon, in May 1984, the Rev. Lucy Der-Garabedian was sitting in a classroom at the Near East School of Theology (NEST) awaiting the arrival of her Christian education instructor, Carol Weir.
Carol Weir, who was always punctual, never appeared that day.
Abducted by a terrorist group while he and his wife, Carol, were on their way to NEST, Benjamin Weir would spend 16 months in captivity before his eventual release.
For Der-Garabedian, Benjamin Weir’s kidnapping and the catastrophic events of the Lebanese Civil War — especially the death of her older brother at age 20 — would change the course of the young theology student’s life. In 1986, the profound loss of her brother, a soldier in the Lebanese army, awakened in her a call to service that would take her years to fully act upon and wholly discern.
“I have always had a passion for soldiers,” Der-Garabedian said.
Eventually receiving her master’s degree in Christian Education from NEST, Der-Garabedian sought the assistance of Ted Siverns — a professor sent by the Presbyterian Church of Canada to teach at NEST — and his wife, Betty, to help her to emigrate from Lebanon to the United States.
Upon settling in the States in 1989, she enrolled at the former Presbyterian School of Christian Education, now Union-PSCE, in Richmond, Virginia, where she received a second master’s degree and later an M.Div.
Ordained by the Presbytery of Lake Huron in 1993, it was while Der-Garabedian was serving as pastor of Fairgrove Presbyterian Church in Michigan that a friend who was a reservist chaplain rekindled her passion for the military. Citing her considerable language skills — she is fluent in Arabic, Armenian, Turkish and English — Der-Garabedian’s friend questioned her as to why she had not ever joined the chaplaincy.
“I am a female,” Der-Garabedian recalled telling him. “To which my friend said, ‘We have female chaplains in the Army.’ I didn’t know that was a possibility.”
Read more about Der-Garabedian’s story.
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