C. Lee Eby, 85, of Nashville, Tennessee, passed away 10 March 2022. He was a retired missionary and minister, pioneering the Church of the Nazarene’s work in Papua New Guinea.

Charles Lee Eby was born 5 May 1936, in Miami, Florida, to Enos and Ruth (Sommers) Eby. His father worked for the city of Miami in the public works department, and his family were founding members of Miami First Church of the Nazarene. 

Lee felt called to be a missionary when he was 12 years old. He left Miami at age 18 to attend Trevecca Nazarene College (TNC) in Nashville, Tennessee, where he met a girl from Kentucky, Carol Anne, with a similar calling. They were married on 10 June 1958, the same day Lee graduated from Trevecca. 

In the fall, the newly married couple moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to attend Nazarene Theological Seminary where Lee would complete a Master of Divinity. He was ordained as an elder in the Church of the Nazarene in Joplin, Missouri, in 1960 along with Nina and Moody Gunter. 

After seminary, the young couple moved to Arlington, Texas, where Lee pastored for the next two years. In 1963, they were assigned to the Territory of Papua and New Guinea in the South Pacific as missionaries for the Church of the Nazarene along with a 20-month-old son and a 3-month-old daughter.

Lee’s assignment on the mission field was to establish a Bible school to train indigenous pastors. For the next 20 years, he did so faithfully as the principal and wore many different hats as the work demanded and developed. Today, that Bible school has grown into Melanesia Nazarene Bible College. During the last two years of his missionary service, Lee also held the role of Field Director.

Upon return to the USA in 1982, Lee and Carol Anne moved to Nashville, Tennessee, so that she could take up a teaching position in the English Department of TNC. Lee held positions on staff at College Hill Church (now Trevecca Community), served as executive director of Cornerstone Ministries (an inner-city ministry in the Vine Hill area), and worked in administration at Trevecca Towers Retirement Center. He also taught missiology and linguistics as an adjunct professor at TNC. 

From 1985 to 2003, he was the executive director of World Relief Nashville. He was an active member of Trevecca Community Church and the Round Table Sunday School class. He was responsible for displaying the flags of many nations during Faith Promise Sunday as well as changing the weekly “missions flag” as a reminder to the congregation to pray for a different country each week. 

Unable to “retire” in his retirement, he volunteered at Ten Thousand Villages, a fair-trade store in Green Hills. He also taught citizenship classes through the Nashville Public Library to many of those who would have arrived as refugees or immigrants and sought U.S. citizenship.

He is survived by his wife of almost 64 years, Carol Anne (Asbury) Eby; four children, Mark Asbury Eby, Lee Ann (Theo) Dekker, Timothy Ray (Michelle) Eby, and Melanie Marie Eby; 10 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren, with one on the way.