Leaver stories: Jon and Lydia Holder

After completing an arts degree at Falmouth University, Lydia Rudge felt the tug of a possible call toward Christian ministry.

Exploring this call, she spent two years working with adults with learning difficulties through a charity and seven months exploring chaplaincy in a school in Kenya before participating in a New Wine Discipleship Year in London at Christ Church W4. It was her first experience in an Anglican church. At the end of that year, she began a year-and-half-long ordination process, full of questions about her calling to priestly ministry.

Lydia began her ordination training at Trinity in 2016 and whilst here met fellow ordinand Jon Holder. Jon came to Trinity after serving for eight years as a youth and community worker on a small estate in Oxford. The youth group grew from a social club to a more overtly Christian group, and then developed further into a church plant on the estate, with Jon as its community pastor.

The couple began dating and were married at college in 2018. Jon finished his programme in 2018 but held off getting ordained so they could begin their curacies together when Lydia finished in 2019.

This summer, the couple will be ordained into the Diocese of London and begin their curacies at Christ Church W4, as resource church curates.

‘As well as learning to think critically and theologically, Trinity has given me opportunities to lead and engage in various creative ways,’ Lydia says. ‘We leave Trinity together having established a high value for community life and Christ centred spiritual rhythms; we hope these will form a foundation for our future ministry, individually and as a couple.’

Posted July 2019