New Centenary Chaplain brings her own life’s journey to campus service
SHREVEPORT, LA - The new Chaplain at Centenary College of Louisiana knows about journeys. Faith journeys. Career journeys. Life journeys.
The Rev. Lindy Broderick knows that journeys sometimes take unexpected turns, and she wants Centenary students to embrace their journey, including the turns and the eventual destination.
Rev. Broderick believes students are “in a time of their lives when the whole world is at their feet.” Helping students discover their “spiritual component” is a part of their Centenary experience. She also expects to partner with Centenary faculty and staff as they continue on their personal and professional journeys.
Centenary President Dr. Christopher Holoman is excited to welcome Rev. Broderick. “Lindy Broderick brings the College a wealth of skills and experience. She will be an invaluable support to the entire Centenary community, and an indispensable resource to our students in this time of discovering their skill, their passions, and their calling.”
Rev. Broderick says her call to serve Centenary College was wholly (holy?) unexpected: “God is the God of surprises,” adding that, “all along my journey, I set out to do what I thought I was called to do.”
“I have been wrestling with God my whole life,” she says. “But the places where I have found the most joy are places I did not choose myself.”
In addition to the Chaplaincy, Broderick will also oversee the College’s Christian Leadership Center (CLC), a co-curricular program for theological training and leadership development. The Center helps students integrate faith with their career path through interdenominational dialogue, discussion of peace and justice issues, and the meaning of Christian discipleship.
Both roles will take advantage of Rev. Broderick’s own life journey that has taken her from advertising and sales to regional tourism and, eventually, to ordained ministry. Along her journey, Rev. Broderick says she felt a “nagging,” pulling her towards the church. “After college I wandered,” she remembers, before returning to her United Methodist roots by way of Broadmoor UMC in Shreveport.
Rev. Broderick spent more than three decades promoting the Shreveport area, first at the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourism Bureau and then 30 years at the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce. It was here she realized the intersection of career and faith, something that she hopes to share with the Centenary campus in her role as chaplain.
“There was an eagerness in business leaders that wanted to embrace their faith in the workplace,” she recalls.
While at the chamber she finally answered the call to ministry and completed studies from Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL, ironically with the assistance of a distance learning classroom at Centenary’s CLC. With a smile she admits “It’s God’s grace that he finally got through to me.”
After ordination in June 2015, Rev. Broderick continued her work at the chamber, founding a “faith at work” luncheon series as a place to discuss meaning, purpose, ethics, and other faith challenges in the workplace. Since leaving the chamber, she has served a three-church charge in Natchitoches Parish (Oak Grove, Provencal, and Weaver United Methodist churches).
At Centenary, Rev. Broderick hopes to create “spaces” – literal and metaphorical – where students and others can consider questions of their own spirituality, and “connect to the source of their being.” She wants to be a reminder that “God calls us into the world, and God’s gifts are useful in many different ways. People who wait for some dramatic call to serve “may be missing opportunities.”
Rev. Broderick also served in a number of community leadership roles. She served as chair of the Independence Bowl Foundation, the Air Force Global Strike Command Civic Leader Program, and the Board of the American Chamber of Commerce Executives. She also helped found both the I-69 Mid-Continent Highway Coalition and the I-49 North Coalition. In 2001 the Shreveport Times named Broderick one of the Ten Leaders of the New Century.
A Bossier City native, Broderick earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Louisiana Tech University, in addition to her studies at Garrett Theological Seminary.