Rebecca Johnson Buckley of Oakland, California, has received the 2006 Lydia Scholarship, given by the Network of Presbyterian Women in Leadership (NPWL) to a woman in seminary who plans to go into pastoral ministry.

Rebecca was born and raised in Northern California.  She was active in youth programs at Union Presbyterian Church of Los Altos as a junior and senior high school student, returning to serve as a summer youth intern as a college student.

At the University of California, Berkeley, Rebecca studied Linguistics and Mass Communications, becoming involved in Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship and First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley.  She spent summers working in northern Germany and interning in the Philippines.  After completing her degree, she pursued her interests in language, culture, and people, earning a Master's in Teaching English as a Second Language at San Francisco State University.

For twenty years, Rebecca taught English language skills to college-bound international students at a number of schools, including California State University, Hayward, and Saint Mary's College of California. During this time she also served on the staff at First Berkeley in the area of Mission Outreach.

Currently, Rebecca is studying full-time toward a Master of Divinity degree at Fuller Theological Seminary, Northern California Extension, with the goal of ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA).  She is a single mom with two daughters, Melissa, 14, and Christina, 10.

The congregation of First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California, has been influential and encouraging for Rebecca-first during her college years as she pursued a double major in Linguistics, Mass Communication, with added studies in Anthropology. She says, "I felt at home ... and greatly benefited from Earl Palmer's imaginative and engaging preaching." Later, she returned to Berkeley for a Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) and participated in the church's ministry to graduate students, led by Pastor Mark Labberton.

Years of traveling, teaching, and working with international students brought "delight, enjoyment, challenge and growth." Moving back to the Bay area during a tight job market led her back First Pres and an opening in the Mission Department. "It appealed to me because of the intersection of faith and cross-cultural communication," she said. Rebecca also taught ESL at two local colleges, but leading prayers in worship, encouraging mission partners in service, and developing pathways for the "people in the pews" to grow in understanding and serve God's world-all those opportunities tested her skills and gifts for ministry. "A personal sense of God's call began to form around the image in Genesis 24," she recalls, "when Rebekah, at the well, draws water and shares it freely."

She began her coursework toward an M.Div. through Fuller's Northern California extension in 1998, but family circumstances soon put seminary on hold. Again, God used First Presbyterian to open the next step in her journey. While they were searching for a Pastor for Mission Outreach, she said, "I enjoyed a wonderfully rich season as Interim Director of Mission Outreach: building community, developing leaders, instilling vision, and strengthening partnerships for local and international mission involvement. This was a significant time to re-test my gifts and calling for ministry in a challenging and wide-ranging role."

In fact, Rebecca's exploration of issues of race, ethnicity and faith with the church staff and congregation has focused her future studies. The roots of this interest may have sprung from her own family: her father's ancestry is Azorean and Madeiran; her mother's, Scandinavian and British. In seminary Rebecca wants to formulate biblical responses as she explores many questions: When does ethnic identity cross the line into idolatry? What are the origins of ethnic stratification in the U.S., and how do U.S. churches reflect or reject that stratification? How did first-century Christian congregations struggle with issues of ethnicity and privilege? What resources, discussion topics, and community experiences will help people dismantle internal walls of prejudice and grow into connection with ethnically different others? How can we foster growth and transformation around ethnic differences at individual, community, and structural levels?

These words concluded Rebecca's scholarship application: "Wherever we are in the journey, we can draw strength and inspiration from the vision of God in Revelation, where a great multitude of ‘every tribe and tongue, people and nation' worship the Lamb together (Rev 7:9-10). By God's grace, I pray that my service to God might help move the church closer to this vision."