Lake Fellow in Parish Ministry

317-726-5428 | AThorne@SecondChurch.org

A Midwesterner at heart, Audrey is excited to return to the Midwest for the Lake Fellows Residency. After spending some formative years in the suburbs of Chicago, her family moved to Michigan where she lived until her high school graduation. She returned to Chicago to pursue a BA in Bible and Theology at Moody Bible Institute, graduating in 2015. After a few years of working in the church, she knew she wanted to pursue more theological education, but a clear call to ministry hadn’t formed quite yet. She began attending Princeton Theological Seminary, where she earned her MATS (Master of Arts in Theological Studies) with a focus on women in the history of Christianity. She wrote her Master’s thesis on the life and work of Charlotte von Kirschbaum.

During the summer of 2018, Audrey completed a field education placement at Tokyo Union Church in Japan. This short, three-month internship began to shift her sense of call. As a pastor’s kid, she had always felt called to serve the church but did not think God would call her to pastoral ministry. As she began to step into what felt like the huge shoes of a pastor, she was shocked by how much she loved it. After graduating with her MATS in 2019, she returned to Japan to work full-time as the Youth and Children’s Ministry Director at Tokyo Union Church. The pandemic changed everything, and Audrey’s role at TUC broadened to include pastoral care, preaching, and worship leadership. God’s greatest surprise was that in a time of so much change, hardship, and personal and communal grief, God clarified Audrey’s sense of call to pastoral ministry.

After three hard and wonderful years in Japan, Audrey returned to Princeton Theological Seminary in 2022 to complete her MDiv and pursue ordination in the PCUSA. She is so thankful for all the people who have loved her into being, and she looks forward to coming to know and love the congregation of Second Presbyterian Church.