During the commissioning service held at Oakwood University, Thandiwe Chiwaya is presented with her certificate by Lake Region Executive Secretary Abraham Henry.
Debbie Michel
December 11, 2025The ceremony in Alabama marked a brief pause from her regular post in Illinois, where she currently serves as a staff chaplain at the Navy’s only bootcamp in Great Lakes. Returning to the location where she first trained as a young recruit is a full-circle moment in her journey.
Chiwaya enlisted in the Navy at 18, arriving in Illinois for boot camp with no idea that ministry would one day shape her career. It wasn’t until years later—after deploying, becoming a career counselor and meeting Adventist chaplains—that the stirrings of a call to ministry grew louder.
At the time, she resisted. “I just felt so unusable,” she said. “It wasn’t me looking to tell God no; I just didn’t believe that I was good enough. But God makes us good enough.”
Her turning point came when Sabbath conflicts began surfacing during deployment, something she had never experienced in her first decade of service. “I realized God was trying to get my attention,” she said. With encouragement from a chaplain, she finally said yes.
What followed was a two-and-a-half-year journey to seminary. She began studies at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University in 2011, moving through the program part-time while navigating military transitions. When she finished in 2018, Adventist Chaplaincy Ministries endorsed her, and the Navy accepted her as an active-duty chaplain.
After Andrews, Chiwaya received her first assignment. Expecting a ship on one of the coasts, she prayed as her detailer prepared to read her orders. Instead, he told her she wasn’t going far at all. She would return to Great Lakes as a staff chaplain.
The placement felt providential.
“It gave me the opportunity to learn my craft before I actually had to execute it,” she said.
At Great Lakes, Chiwaya provides counseling and religious support for staff and thousands of recruits. She oversees Seventh-day Adventist services with support from Shalem and Gurnee churches, preaches periodically at Protestant worship, and teaches classes on Navy core values, suicide prevention and character development.
As she reflects on her commissioning, Chiwaya returns often to Psalm 33:16–19, a passage she clung to throughout her journey. “His call is an equipping call,” she said. “I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to trust Him.”
Her childhood memories reinforce that trust. At seven, kneeling beside her grandmother at Jamaica Seventh-day Adventist Church in Queens, she prayed her first spontaneous prayer. Soon after, still painfully shy, she was asked to give the children’s story at her large home church. The only story she could find was one titled, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a pastor.” She delivered it, never imagining it would one day reflect her own life.
For Chiwaya, the commissioning service at Oakwood wasn’t just ceremonial. It marked the moment her decades-long call became visible to others.
“When I started seminary, commissioning seemed so impossible and so far away,” she said. “But God opens doors. And He brought me all the way back to where my journey began—so I could help shape the journeys of others.”
Debbie Michel is editor of the Lake Union Herald.
