Photo Credit: Bassam Nader
Bassam Nader often chuckles when asked how he came to know the Lord. His Arabic name, Middle Eastern accent, and darker features lead many to assume that he must be a Muslim convert. But this question often opens the door for Nader to provide a short, gracious history of Presbyterianism in Lebanon, his home country.
The retired Lebanese chemist might not look like most ruling elders at Christ Community Church in suburban Carmel, Indiana, but he finds that his unique backstory has shaped him into a man who is passionate about discipling professional men, young and old.
Arranged by God
Nader comes from a long line of Presbyterians. One of his ancestors converted from the Eastern Orthodox Church to Presbyterianism sometime after British and American Presbyterian missionaries came to Lebanon in the first part of the 19th century and established missions, hospitals, and educational institutions.
Although he grew up in an evangelical Christian home, a near-drowning experience in the Mediterranean Sea as a young boy led Nader to accept Christ personally. Over time he sensed that his family and other Protestant Lebanese families were subtly discriminated against because of their beliefs.
“The Catholics hated us. The Orthodox hated us. The Muslims hated us,” he said. “We would get discriminated against in government jobs and elsewhere. You get used to that, used to getting labeled,‘These are the Protestants.’ ”
Yet like most Protestant families in this context, Nader’s close-knit family, which included his parents and six siblings, lived quiet lives centered on the principles of 1 Thessalonians 4:11 of working hard, studying, and “minding their own business.” Nader grew in love for the Lord through his teen years and early adulthood.
Nader earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1974 from the American University of Beirut. While pursuing his master’s degree at AUB, he met his future wife, Randa.
Randa came from a devoutly Catholic, Palestinian family. Her physician father was born and raised in Nazareth; her mother in Bethlehem. As Nader continued getting to know Randa, he shared the gospel with her and Randa was very receptive.
He proposed in August of 1976.
“Since we’re from the Middle East, people always ask if it was an arranged marriage,” he said. “And I say, ‘Of course it was arranged! By God.’”
America Bound
During the mid-1970s, Lebanon devolved from its identity as a mecca of education, tourism, and business into chaos. The peaceful and prosperous home that Nader had always known descended into a civil war.
With Lebanon no longer a safe place to pursue a career or begin a marriage, Bassam and Randa’s families urged them to flee to the United States. They connected with one of their UAB professors who had escaped to New York City and now taught at Fordham University in the Bronx. With a U.S. contact, the Naders decided to move to New York where they could teach and study at Fordham.
On September 13, 1976, the couple bid their families farewell and traveled over the mountains of Lebanon, through multiple roadblocks and militia checkpoints, to Damascus, Syria, and then to Amman, Jordan. They applied for visas at the American embassy and received student visas on the spot.
“Tell me about God’s provision!” Nader exclaims.
They landed in New York City with their few possessions and $200 on September 16, 1976. The couple settled into an apartment in the Bronx with another Lebanese student.
Bassam and Randa each made $360 a month as teaching assistants at Fordham. Their crime-ridden neighborhood was also full of drug addicts.
“We were living in the slum. But the Lord protected us,” he says.
For the next three years the Naders continued their education while the situation in Lebanon deteriorated. The couple completed their doctoral degrees at Fordham and secured post-doctoral positions with prominent professors at University of Wisconsin Madison. Bassam would be conducting advanced research in the department of chemistry on the synthesis of the anti-cancer drug Doxorubicin, while Randa would pursue related research in pharmacology.
The change from the Bronx to the Upper Midwest was a welcome one for the Naders.
“Going from the Bronx to Madison was like going from hell to heaven,” Nader explains.
A Proud Man Meets Grace
After three years in Wisconsin, and after having received their green cards, Nader was offered a job at the exclusive Central Research Department of the Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan.
Conducting cutting-edge research “got to my head,” he says. “I turned into a very proud, arrogant man, full of myself.”
After relocating to Michigan in 1982, Nader began to realize that things were going badly in his heart. He went to church only out of rote habit, and he had grown very angry about the political instability and conflict in Lebanon.
His dreams of achieving professional glory and accolades did not materialize, and instead he encountered a major relational setback with his manager. A growing sense of emptiness and meaninglessness plunged Nader into a severe depression.
Around this time, a fellow scientist from Dow sensed Nader’s discouragement and invited him to join a small group of Christian men. Nader had never heard of such gatherings, but he was moved by what he saw.
“These men loved each other, they were sincere, they prayed for each other. They were different from all those scientists I knew in the workplace.”
This same friend later invited him to a weekend men’s retreat. The whole weekend, he was served by other men and reminded of Christ’s love and grace.
“I went in as a loner scientist, arrogant and full of myself, and was just blown away by the grace of God. I came out three days later, a different man.”
A man who loved the fellowship of other Christian men and was passionate about men’s discipleship.
“I was a man who had finally come back home to Christ! If that wasn’t the work of God’s Holy Spirit, I don’t know what is!”
From that point forward Nader surrendered his career to the Lord.
“When I realized that God is the ultimate chemist, I gave my career to him,” Nader explains. “My life verse became, and still is, Colossians 3:23, ‘Whatever you do, do with all your heart, as working for the Lord and not for men.’ ”
Made for Discipleship
During those years in the early 1980s, he and Randa and their growing family of four daughters became involved in a PCUSA church. Nader joined the session and began leading the church’s evangelism effort.
He and Randa both received their U.S. citizenship on January 25, 1988.
After a few years of observing the PCUSA’s increasing liberalism, Nader (who had been tuning in to D. James Kennedy’s “The Coral Ridge Hour” tv program) and other elders at their church decided in 1991 to leave the PCUSA and start a PCA church plant.
For the next three years, the Naders poured themselves into the church plant, showing up early and staying late to help with set up and tear down.
“We loved that church,” he says of the congregation that has since closed. “It was hard labor, but it was joyous labor,” he says.
In 1994, Nader had a job transfer to Dow AgroSciences, the agrochemical division of Dow, and the family relocated to Indianapolis, Indiana.
On their second Sunday in Indianapolis, the Naders visited Christ Community Church in Carmel, Indiana, and they never left. Over the past three decades, both Bassam and Randa have given themselves to discipling men and women at Christ Community.
“The Lord has graciously given us a gift of hospitality, especially towards newcomers,” he says.
Nader has started countless men’s groups and found ways to reach out to men who seem on the edge of the community, men who often feel like the world is against them.
“I could sense the plight of American Christian men. They’re attacked and spoken about negatively,” Nader says, explaining that he was deeply impacted by Nancy Pearcey’s book “The Toxic War on Masculinity.”
He wants to build up these men to be the kind of men that Christ wants them to be — men who pour out their lives for their wives and families and the kingdom of God. He has discovered that a good relational bridge to men who are new to the church is inviting them to do a short study with him on how to be a Christian in the workplace. Because men are vocationally and professionally-oriented, Nader says, the study is a good place to connect and build trust. As they continue developing a relationship, Nader often continues discipleship with resources from Ligonier Ministries and Man in the Mirror.
Nader believes you can gauge the health of the church by the health of the men’s ministry. What he has seen over the years is that as men stay connected to each other through Christ-centered discipleship, the church and its marriages flourish.
“I tell them to love their wives, and to tell them daily that they are beautiful in their eyes. I tell them to pray with their wives daily.”
50 Years
In 2026, Bassam and Randa are celebrating their 50th year in the U.S. Both are now retired and enjoy spending their days with their growing family, which now includes four sons-in-law and six grandchildren; they also regularly disciple and shepherd the men and women at Christ Community.
Every Sunday, Nader stands at the doors of the church as a greeter. He says he intentionally learns the names of all the congregants and connects with men, takes them out for coffee, and makes sure they are connected to discipleship in the church, even maintaining a spreadsheet of all the men in the church and how they are being discipled.
“For these 42 years, the Lord has used me to go after men. Praise the Lord, if I can say I have excelled in leading men’s ministry. All for the glory of God!”