Candler students come from many backgrounds and places, but they share common goals: to discern their vocation more clearly and to gain education, insight, and practical skills for creative and faithful ministry wherever God calls them. This diversity—and commonality—gives students new perspectives and inspiration for their roles as leaders in church and society.
Sara Toering discovered Candler just before her senior year in high school while attending a summer academy run by the school’s Youth Theological Initiative. An intensive program that focuses on questions of justice and faith, the academy sparked Toering’s passion for using scholarship to help others.
Since then she has earned two Emory degrees as a Woodruff Fellow in both theology and law, traveled to Ghana to study politics and religion, served as an HIV counselor and chaplain in Atlanta Metro Women’s Prison, and spent a year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Brooklyn, New York, advocating for tenants and educating people on housing rights.
Now Toering works as a litigator with the Atlanta law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. She participates in the firm’s pro bono efforts involving death penalty cases and serves on the faculty of the National Institute of Church Finance and Administration at Emory, teaching programs on legal and tax issues in the church. Toering does all this while serving as a resident volunteer at the Open Door Community, an Atlanta-based Christian ministry for prisoners and homeless people.
Your support will enable the generous acts of those who use their talents to create a better world for people in all walks of life.
