Fellows at Work

In my experience in the Fellows Program thus far, I have seen "the convergence of faith, life, work, and culture" come to a head in my work at the Center on Faith in Communities.  The Center on Faith in Communities, directed by Dr. Amy Sherman, is a branch of the Sagamore Institute, an Indianapolis-based policy research think tank.  My job at CFIC entails assisting Dr. Sherman in her work to "inspire, educate, equip, and resource the Christian community for the work of mercy and justice among the poor."  Day-to-day, this can mean many different things.  From conducting primary and secondary research to writing book reviews, I have been fortunate enough to collaborate with Dr. Sherman on many stimulating and worthwhile projects.  One of the projects that Dr. Sherman has graciously let me participate in is the process of writing her book called Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good, to be released by InterVarsity Press later this year.  I have contributed to many things in this process, large and small, from formatting footnotes to writing the first appendix.  Getting to see the book-writing process has been fascinating and informative, but I have most enjoyed learning from the actually content of the book.  Dr. Sherman’s book does for pastors what the Fellows Program does for young adults.  It challenges pastors to preach on vocational stewardship from the pulpit, encouraging their congregation to capitalize on their gifts for the sake of God’s kingdom and to integrate faith, work, and culture.  The book has bolstered what I have been learning through our seminary classes, through discussions and stimulation from our Fellows community, and through our volunteer work at Trinity Presbyterian Church. As I was working on prospects for next year, I realized how truly different this job-search has been from my experience this same time last year. I am looking at vocation and faith in a totally new light, understanding that the dualist divide between the sacred and secular is a deceptive lie from the evil one.  God has had profound amounts of grace with me and is continuing to lead me toward his heart through my faith and work.  Please be praying that all 14 of us will be led by God to understand how he wants us to be transformed and how he wants us to transform his world through our vocations.

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In case you are interested, Dr. Sherman has recently written an article published in Crosswalk Magazine to whet people’s appetites on topics, issues, and stories addressed in the book.  You can access the article here.

--Sally Carlson, Chesapeake, Virginia

"Establish the Work of Our Hands"

^“Let yourwork be shown to your servants,and your glorious power to their children. Let thefavorof the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!”

~Psalm 90:16-17~

A few weekends ago all the Fellows packed up the infamous and unreliable Trinity bus (insert saga of the Lexington Bus Breakdown) and headed to Eagle’s Landing Retreat Center near Roanoke, Virginia for the annual Fellows Initiative Retreat on Social Justice. We found ourselves in the beautiful mountains of Virginia, unpacking our belongings in quaint, log cabin-style accommodations, and ready for a weekend of fellowship, learning, and fun. Seventy Fellows gathered in total, representing programs from Falls Church, MeClean Presbyterian, Raleigh, Charlotte, Kinston, and Knoxville.

Gideon Strauss, President of the Center for Public Justice, prepared several “conversations” on his walk as a believer in pursuit of biblical justice. As a native South African speaking both English and Afrikaans, he found himself serving as an interpreter for the Truth and Reconciliation Committee after the fall of apartheid in South Africa in the late 1990s. These experiences provided Gideon with deep insight into the brokenness of humanity and the pain, heartbreak, and rage that God’s people experience in the face of great injustices. Left to his own devices, the weight of these emotions would have crushed his soul and his marriage. Gideon found that the only adequate response to the brokenness was to pray through the Psalms, expressing these deep emotions in the safety of the hand of the Lord. He invited us to do the same and to consider what it would look like for us to act justly in our everyday lives; including the clothes we wear, the food we buy, and our politics.

As a group of seventy, we each entered the weekend with a different understanding of justice and its relevance to our lives. What does the call to do justice in Micah 6:8 really mean? Is it only for my cousin who serves as a missionary in Uganda, my friend who teaches at an inner city school, or my neighbor who runs the soup kitchen at our church? What does it look like for us as twenty-something Fellows and for the businessmen, lawyers and museum curators that we may become? Gideon avoided any speculation and provided us with a biblical framework for understanding the call to do justice. He suggested that the call to do justice is a thread in the fabric of the biblical narrative. It is not optional, but rather, essential and interwoven, it is part of what it is to be human. What a bold statement! Throughout the weekend we heard from Gideon about ways that we could begin to “do justice” and had great discussions around our tables with the other Fellows.

The weekend was filled with great food, fresh mountain air, an Ultimate Frisbee tournament victory for the Trinity Fellows, and much laughter. We returned to Charlottesville grateful for each other and aware of the friendships that the Lord has established. Conversations on the ideas Gideon presented still linger and can be traced in g-mail threads that relate articles about justice to one another and uncover areas of injustice that we participate in by nature of our consumerism. I think we will continue to see the fruit of these discussions in years to come and each in our own spheres of influence. For now, we will pray and ask God to establish the work of our hands and open our eyes to the world around us.

--Ally Jaggard, East Stroudsburg Pennsylvania

You Make Beautiful Things

"If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty."  – Rainer Maria Rilke  

Ordinary

Walking into the Doran house on Monday nights for Roundtable always brings a smile to my face. Before I even reach my hand out to turn the doorknob I can already hear laughter and chatter from within and smell something delicious cooking in the oven. Each week we gather there together, the 15 Fellows, Katherine, Greg, Dennis & his family, to share in life. Reclaiming the act of sitting down to meal together is a powerful reminder of one of the primary aims of the Fellows Program; exploring the ways in which our lives matter. How often do we arrive at the end of a given day wondering to ourselves, “What did I do today? Will it have any lasting importance?” The dust covering the lenses through which we see the world makes it so hard sometimes for us to see the answers to these questions. One work day gives way to the next, a blur of spreadsheets, legal documents and phone calls. Yet somehow over the course of the past two months, through prayer and earnest conversation, we have just begun to wipe the dust from one another’s eyes enough to catch a glimpse of God’s work unfurling in our daily lives.

Hope

God created Adam from the very dust of the earth, should it come as any surprise that he can make beautiful things from of the dust of our lives? One of the first things we did together as a Fellows class was to share our testimonies; how God has been shaping each of us throughout our twenty-some years. It was such a privilege to hear how God’s hands have been conforming each of my friends to look more and more like Him. Some of our stories are loud; God has moved mightily to deliver us from tough situations and convict us, changing lives in short order.

The stuff of day-to-day life is quieter, admittedly, but the changes I’ve witnessed in the past two months can still be heard. Several fellows have taken steps to glorify God with the ways in which they spend their money, a middle school student has found sweet certainty of her salvation, and dozens of conversations have been sparked by the idea of a program designed to acknowledge God’s sovereignty in every area of our lives. Friends, the gospel is at work here. We’re not the same people we were yesterday or last year. God is making all things new.

-Erin Sheets--Mechanicsville, VA

Meet the 2011 Fellows

Please click on each picture to read more about each Fellow. We're excited about this coming year and are looking forward to sharing with you about what the Lord does this year. [gallery]

Transform '09 Conference

Mixed feelings filled the old white bus as it carried the fifteen Fellows away from Charlottesville at the beginning of yet another precious weekend. Just weeks earlier Dennis pitched the idea of attending this conference, which was not on our schedule, and would bump our total number of ‘scheduled away’ weekends from five, to six in three months. But Dennis had us sold on the line-up of speakers at this conference, as he personally vouched for their life-changing potential. Thus, we found ourselves on our way; slightly bummed we were missing the Halloween festivities at home, yet eagerly anticipating how accurate Dennis’ ‘life-changing’ claim really was.The conference, hosted by McLean Presbyterian Church, located just outside D.C., was called “Transform ‘09”. Paige Benton Brown, Katherine Leary, and Os Guinness were lined up to speak on the transformational perspective of the kingdom. We Fellows were all excited about Os Guinness, having just read his book “The Call” as part of our summer reading. Katherine Leary we knew not only to be on staff at Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC, but also as the aunt of our very own Rachel Leary! Finally, Paige Benton Brown we knew the least of, other than that she is a former RUF intern at UVA and had significant “life-changing” potential (quote: Dennis Doran). We arrived on Friday night at McLean Presbyterian after having settled our things at our hosts’ house and making a delicious stop for some Italian subs. Quickly settling in our seats, we did our best to prepare ourselves as Paige Benton Brown began her talk. Paige began by defining “kingdom”: the term of the conference. The kingdom of God she said, is the presence of the future, a reality for the whole world, the hub of the entire New Testament. The gospel of the kingdom is not just forgiveness of sins, but also renewal and TRANSFORMATION of sin. This has serious implications for the way we are called to live out our lives, both as the church and kingdom citizens. It means we must not limit our work to the church but also maintain the church/world distinction. It means seeking renewal “as far as the curse is found”. Paige encouraged the audience not to so comfortably identify with the “conservative Christian” title, for the Christian role on earth at this moment in history is not to conserve, but to transform. Paige referred to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 to describe exactly HOW God’s children are to participate in this transformation. She explained that what is expected of us is proportional to what ‘talents’ have been given us, and that it is not okay to just play it safe and bury our talents. We must be bold and risk-taking in employing our talents, trusting that God has given us our gifts for a reason and that even in employing our gifts, He is there guiding us. God is always doing the work and He is using us broken sinners simply because He loves us. Therefore, we need not pray for God to use us; He will use us. We need to pray that we may be useful in Him using us. The following morning Katherine Leary of Redeemer Presbyterian church in New York City, spoke to us about kingdom transformational work, through her personal story. She spoke of her various experiences in the corporate world as well as her current role as Director of the Center for Faith and Work. Katherine encouraged us by way of her story to carry over the transformational kingdom perspective to the workplace, so that hearts may be transformed. Transformed hearts will transform communities; transformed communities will ultimately transform the world. Finally Dr. Os Guinness closed out the evening by sharing a message with us from Acts 13:36. The verse reads “After David served the purpose of God in his own generation, he fell asleep”. From this verse, Dr. Guinness took the meaning of calling for David and allowed us to apply it to our lives. He emphasized the importance of service in calling; how we need to ensure we are serving the purpose of God like David did, and that he did so “in his own generation”, meaning his calling was for him and him alone. Similarly, God’s call for each one of us is specific to each one of us. Finally, Dr. Guinness encouraged us that if we trust God in this, we will ‘fall asleep’ in peace and trust that we have completed God’s work. Being left slightly stunned, tired, ‘transformed’ and with MUCH to digest, the Fellows once again loaded the ‘ol white bus and began the trek home that Reformation (aka Halloween) night. On the way home several Fellows personally attested to the life-changing capacities of the conference, which Dennis had so fervently claimed just a few weeks earlier. A confident buzz filled the bus that night, confirming that it was all worth another precious weekend away.

MODGNIK!!! (try reading that backwards)

by: Emily Mims We could not have asked for a more gorgeous  weekend at Rockbridge Alum Springs.  It was 70 degrees, and the sun shone brightly on the leaves that were just barely beginning to change from green to red.  All across Young Life's camp in Goshen, VA, middle school kids ran and played and just enjoyed the beautiful weather and property.  If one had looked closer last weekend, though, they would have also noticed 15 Trinity Fellows running and playing and just getting to enjoy life at Rockbridge.

Last weekend, we fellows found ourselves headed to Rockbridge (a YL camp property near Lexington), to participate in the annual youth retreat called MODGNIK (named about 10 years ago by our very own Dennis Doran).  One of the incredible, intentional components of our program is that we get to be involved in the lives of the youth at Trinity Pres. by joining their D-(discipleship) groups, cooking pancakes for them on Sunday mornings, and building relationships with the kids.  Each of us is assigned a specific class and gender to focus on (for example, I get to be with the 6th grade girls)—for each grade between 6^th and 12^th.  So last weekend, half of us were in cabins with the middle school campers, and the other half were "ropes wranglers"--heading up the ropes course, climbing wall, swing and zip-line at the camp.  There were almost 400 middle school campers who came from Trinity and several other churches in Virginia.

Some of my favorite moments throughout the weekend happened when I got to watch the other fellows serving the middle-schoolers with smiles on their faces.  I loved watching Erin help a sixth grade girl struggle to put sheets on her top bunk bed.  It was fun to see Peter surrounded by a swarm of kids wanting to get on the big swing.  Rachel and Andrew tag-teamed the climbing pole, jovially calling out commands to the kids as they climbed.  I enjoyed seeing Mallory sit patiently at the bottom of the zip-line all afternoon to help the kids get off their ride.  And I think we all formed deeper connections with one another as we served the middle schoolers alongside each other.

All in all, it was a long, crazy, fun-packed weekend.  We all worked tirelessly to serve the middle schoolers, let alone just keep up with them. :)  But it was also filled with fun for us and just the privilege of getting to be on the front lines of youth ministry.  The speaker talked about Heaven all weekend, and I can’t forget one sixth grader’s comment to me as we walked across a green field, "I feel like this is a little bit like how Heaven is."  What a joy it is to see a young girl processing the beauty of God's creation, the fullness of Christian community, and the peace of feeling safe and loved---and then attributing that to our Father in Heaven!

I couldn't help but agree with her...and I honestly do hope that MODGNIK was a small taste of the eternal joy God has in store for us.

Some fun pictures Becca took with the 8th grade girls this weekend:

[gallery]

Thoughts from a New Fellow by Rachel Leary

In the months following my acceptance into the Fellows Program I found it nearly impossible to explain to friends and family exactly what I would be doing starting September 1^st , 2009. For simplicity sake I would often tell people I had an internship with a church, where I would be working with the youth group and taking some Seminary classes.  I always walked away slightly dissatisfied, wishing that we could talk for few more minutes, wishing that I could share with them my ever-increasing joy and excitement for the upcoming nine months in Trinity’s Fellows Program. It’s not that the Fellows Program is vague or disorganized. It’s quite the opposite; the individual pieces of the program, including both church and local community involvement, as well as opportunities for personal growth are knit together into an intricate 9-month fabric of life experiences that cannot be compared to any other post-graduate opportunities in the country. If I had a few more minutes to talk about the upcoming program I would start by describing the workplace experience. For the first three days of the workweek Fellows are placed in an internship in a local business in the Charlottesville community. Besides the opportunity for practical workplace experience, these internships are meant to help Fellows explore their own God-given abilities and passions. Take, for my example, my classmate Emily Mims, a recent graduate of Davidson College, who has the most incredible heart for children and for service. This year she is working with the “I Have a Dream” Foundation at the local Albemarle High School, where those God-given passions will continue to develop as she is in the process of changing kids lives through the work of the Foundation. Out of my class of 15 Fellows, I know that each and every one of us views our internship as an incredible opportunity.

If time allowed, I would also share that Thursday and Friday mornings our Fellows class takes Seminary classes through the Charlottesville’s Center for Christian Study. For most of us, myself included, this is the first time that we have ever studied our faith in such an academic setting. Despite the fact that many former Fellows have been called to various forms of vocational ministry or further Seminary study, our classes are not solely intended as ministry training. The classes are forcing us to engage our faith and understanding of the God in a new way, particularly by exploring the relationship between our head knowledge and the heart knowledge. Already, in just two weeks of class, my personal faith in God has been enriched by our intellectual exploration of church history and the doctrine of the trinity. These academic pursuits are not something that only young people need to participate in- believers of any age and any stage of their faith would experience a deepening of faith this type of rigorous study.

Perhaps the highlight of the week is the two hours that we spend at Johnson Elementary School on Thursday afternoon. The Fellows, along with dozens of university and community volunteers, work with Charlottesville’s Abundant Life Ministries in an after-school tutoring program. Proportionally, we spend such a short time with Abundant Life, but it is potentially one of the most powerful experiences fo the week. Two weeks ago I met Anicea, a third-grade at Johnson, who loving accepted me into her world, begging me with her attention and her eyes to pour out some genuine love. Not only do I have the opportunity to help Anicea with her multiplication tables and her reading skills, but I can demonstrate the love of Christ to her simply by showing up every week and giving of myself.

If I could steal a few more minutes of my listener’s time, I would attempt to explain that ways that the relationships in and around the Fellows Program have the biggest impact on a Fellow’s experience. Host families open up their homes to complete strangers, generously caring for our physical needs, but also inviting us into the intimate community of their families. Mentors from Trinity’s congregation volunteer their time and wisdom to invest in our lives, with the purpose of seeing us come to a deeper and richer understanding of our Lord Jesus Christ. Trinity’s youth group welcomes the Fellows with open arms, allowing us to jump into the lives of dozens of middle and high-school kids and grow in Christ-like friendship with them.  As a church, Trinity welcomes us into the lives of their people, loving us in a way that only Christ can and teaching us the beauty of broken, but redeemed church community.

Do you see why it’s impossible to explain the Fellows program in a sentence or two? Even after explaining the rundown of our weekly activities, it would be hard to describe the full experience of the program, because it’s the relationship between the parts that constructs the whole. Everything that I am learning in class is speaking into the way that I approach my job and my relationships all the people I encounter daily. My job is teaching me things about the secular work world that can contribute to Christian community. And being loved by this new family of Fellows, host families, mentors, and the community of Trinity Presbyterian is transforming and renewing my life so that I may better glorify God in everything that I do.

Fellows Farewell

by Matt Kleberg I’m not very good, even after nine months, at describing precisely what the Trinity Fellows Program is.

If I were to explain the Trinity Fellows Program on a professional resume it would probably look something like “a leadership development program coupling marketplace experience, volunteerism, and graduate studies focused on professional and personal development.” But that seems prickly- too impersonal. Describing it to distant cousins in Texas, the Fellows Program might sound like a bizarre combination of going to class, working a job, living with a family, volunteering at the church, and spending nearly every waking moment with twelve other young and restless souls. But that seems random and does no justice to the richness and intention of the program’s many facets.

The difficulty in describing the Fellows Program is that no simple description rightly captures the uniqueness and breadth of the Fellows experience.

So as the 2009 Fellows prepare to move on to whatever comes next, and the 2010 Fellows eagerly await the beginning of their program, I would like to pause and reflect on the year.

As our pastors here at Trinity have walked the church through Hebrews this year, we have come to identify with a picture of pilgrimage. As pilgrims in the wilderness, we find rest in the hope we have in Christ, in the Kingdom that is to come and is, in part, already here.  I am both humbled and emboldened by the notion that God chooses to invite such leaky vessels as myself to partake in the expansion of that Kingdom, and I am grateful to have experienced glimpses of the Kingdom during this Fellows year.  Those glimpses came from our families, classes, jobs, etc.

We discussed in our classes and various seminars the implications faith has on work and vocation. The cultural mandate in Genesis calls man to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, and to subdue it. From the very beginning scripture instructs people to work and to make culture- to teach, to practice medicine and law, to paint and play the trombone, to build bridges and develop better crops.  For Christians, this call to cultivate the earth makes no distinction between traditionally “secular” jobs and “ministry” jobs. Rather, we declare that the Christian can be a minister of Christ in nearly any work, participating in God’s work of redeeming all things.  What a beautiful image we see in Revelation 21, where every tear is wiped away and the new city of Jerusalem established in earth.

Not only did the Fellows benefit from such discussion in class, but we also had the privilege of putting education into practice in our jobs.  We contemplated the nature of God’s vocational calling on our lives and strived to be disciplined workers in our marketplace settings.

We spent a week in New Orleans joining hands with the local church, in its effort to rebuild a broken community. We heard from brothers and sisters like Amy Sherman and Dr. John Perkins who have devoted their lives to showing mercy and seeking justice for the oppressed. We also spent a week in New York discussing what role art plays in communicating truth and beauty.

Family has been an integral element of the Fellows year. Nine months ago a bunch of recent college graduates parked their cars in front of a bunch of Trinity family homes and unloaded all their belongings. At that moment, whether we realized it or not, we became a member of families who had decided to love and care for us before they even knew us.  These host families welcomed us into their lives, sharing the nice and neat parts along with the nitty and gritty.

Living in a home, spending intimate time with the other Fellows, and involving ourselves in the local church have all shaped an understanding of Christian community that goes beyond an affinity group.  The Kingdom is no affinity group, but rather a gathering of every tribe, every nation, every race.

The Trinity community has blessed the Fellows in innumerable ways-  many of you have invested in the program by mentoring and teaching us, by giving us shelter or jobs, or by sending your kids to youth group.

It truly is a comprehensive experience.

I have come to grasp a fuller understanding of what it means to be stewards of Creation, agents of redemption, and image-bearers of God.

Parable of talents

Worldview, engaging culture, biblical foundation

Now let us love mercy for the needy and justice for the oppressed and let us bear truth and see beauty and let our hearts grow for creation and creating and Christ is in all and Christ is all amen.