Throughout the 2023-24 academic year, Lancaster Bible College | Capital Seminary & Graduate School will celebrate our 90th anniversary! Here, we introduce our community to “90 Faces of LBC” each week. Keep up with all the news and events of our 90th year, read stories and more at lbc.edu/90.
Betsy Swartz | ‘God Is Still Good’
After earning her bachelors and masters degrees in Violin Performance, Betsy Swartz, LBC Systems Engineer, had dreams of pursuing a full-time career playing classical music. And she did it. For 10 years, Betsy played professionally while also teaching various students.
“I had really fallen in love with it,” Betsy said of music. “I never liked to be out in front, but in the group, I loved the experience of all the different instruments coming together, making an artistic whole, with all those different people.”
However, a decade into her career, Betsy came to the realization that it wouldn’t be a sustainable source of income. In 2000, she took a leap of faith and completed a set of Microsoft certification classes and transitioned careers to Information Technology, which had always been another interest. Fortunately, IT technicians were in high demand at the time, and Betsy was able to learn many other aspects of the industry on the job.
“I had a lot of questions about whether that was the right thing to do or not,” Betsy admitted. “Was I just giving up? But I felt like I enjoyed the musical experiences more when I didn’t have to rely on them for pay. I could pick the ones that I loved to do instead of looking at which one paid the most.”
For the next 20 years, Betsy worked in the corporate IT world, honing her skills and gaining more training and certifications along the way. She continued to play music and currently performs locally with the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra, Allegro Orchestra Lancaster and the Reading Symphony Orchestra.
In December 2020, God led Betsy to Lancaster Bible College, where she now serves in the Information Systems Department handling the care and maintenance of the college’s servers, user account policies, Microsoft cloud applications and more.
“I enjoy a certain amount of troubleshooting,” she explained. “I like being able to solve problems and tinker with things and get them to work. I enjoy when I can help someone. That makes me very happy.”
For Betsy, the atmosphere at LBC was a breath of fresh air, as was the purpose she felt through her role. “I enjoy the culture here and just being able to still do IT, but for our mission, and more overtly for the Lord [than in the Classical music or corporate world],” she said. “I wanted to work more definitively for purposes that I felt were God’s purposes.”
Looking back now, Betsy sees the Lord’s hand in bringing her to LBC when He did. Betsy married her husband, Steven, just six months before beginning her time at LBC. Earlier this year, Steven passed away unexpectedly.
Throughout what has been the toughest year of her life, Betsy’s colleagues have stood beside her and lifted her up when she needed it the most.
“It was really meaningful to be here,” she expressed. “Colleagues really care about my well-being—it didn’t feel like some corporate hierarchy. It felt real. It felt like genuine people coming to give me as much help as they could.
“What I most want on this earth is my Steven, and I won’t have him in this life with me anymore,” she continued. “However, I’m surrounded by people who have the same hope I do—that this is not all there is. There’s a purpose—God is still good.”