NPWL and PFR Announce The 2009 Lydia Scholar: Megan Handley

Sunday, 07 June 2009 22:15

Each year since 1989, the Network of Presbyterian Women in Leadership’s Lydia Scholarship has been awarded to female seminarians who exhibit vibrant faith in Jesus Christ and who desire to serve Christ through ordained ministry in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). NPWL is pleased to announce the winner of the 2009 Lydia Scholarship: Megan Handley.

Megan is enrolled at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA, having previously received a BA in Government from Cornell University. After college Megan spent a year in South Africa and has worked with various non-profit agencies. She also worked as a Legislative Director for a bi-partisan think-tank and for the Chicago Botanic Garden. Megan is a member of First Presbyterian Church, Hollywood, CA, and an inquirer for ordination in the Presbytery of the Pacific.

Megan has a compelling faith journey, beginning with baptism as an infant. “I cannot explain my tumultuous rejection of and return to Christianity apart from that early promise and the steadfast prayers of my family and church community.”

In the eighth grade Megan began a nine-year journey away from her family, the church, and Jesus Christ. Megan arrived in South Africa “expecting to find…that Christianity in the African context was a colonial, Western-imposed form of social control.” Instead she discovered “African Christianity has a rich history of empowering communities to liberation” and that the church and its missions are often the only places people can obtain services in communities “gripped by poverty and government corruption.” She “made peace with Christianity” at that time, no longer resenting it but not yet ready to embrace it.

After some personal struggles, God opened her heart once again. “All the fruitless years of over-thinking and intellectualizing God fell away…Within a few months Jesus captured my heart completely.” As the daughter of a pastor, her call to ministry was initially met with a “huge and overwhelming rush of fear.” But after much prayer, “fear, doubt, and seeming insanity were transformed into a deeper faith, an unimagined joy, and absolute certainty that I was being called to ministry.”

“The brokenness of the church does not shake my faith or sense of call; it inspires me to discover my own role in the church’s healing…As an apostolic community, the church has so much to offer: as a moral authority whose purpose crosses political and geographic lines; as a coalition with a grassroots base to pursuing mercy and justice; and as an international institution with members and resources throughout the world. By participating in God’s mission, we have the capacity to draw people to the light of Jesus Christ, and we give credibility to God’s transformative purpose in the world.”

The Network of Presbyterian Women in Leadership is a component ministry of Presbyterians for Renewal—mobilizing leaders of congregations within the PC(USA) to be biblically faithful and missionally minded in their service to Jesus Christ. For more information on the Network, visit NPWL on the web, www.npwl.org. For more information on the other ministries that are Presbyterians for Renewal (PFR) visit www.pfrenewal.org.