Reflections on the Year

I am so thankful for the year I have been able to spend in the Fellows Program. We were asked to share expectations of the year on our first retreat and I shared that I wanted God to shatter my view of community. I never expected for God to give me the community that I have encountered here in the Fellows program. Each of us comes from very different walks of life, but we each have a desire to learn more who God is and how we can represent Him to the world. I have had the privilege of seeing how God has taken 14 very different people and knit us together in such a beautiful way! I came to the Fellows program with somewhat of a broken view of community and through Greg’s teaching, my classes and simply living life with these wonderful people, I have learned that every person has dignity as a human, but as Christians we have the opportunity to celebrate that dignity. When person is loved for who God made them to be instead of loved for who someone wants them to be, they are able to flourish. I have experienced personally and witnessed firsthand this flourishing this year.

The Fellows program has pushed me to think about the world in a different way. I have grown in my love for the local church and its involvement in the world around us. Through learning a biblical perspective on our role as Christians in John Cunningham’s class to learning about how to engage culture as a Christian in Wade Bradshaw’s class, I feel like my faith can no longer be compartmentalized and I look forward to opportunities in the future to be involved in my community and the world around me.

I have seen my view of work change as I have been an intern in an office and I feel like I have come into a realization of what my gifts are. While they might not be with working in a business setting, almost every facet of the program has affirmed that I need to be working with people whose dignity is not celebrated and restore it to them in whatever way possible. God has given me a vision for counseling possibly in the future and I am so thankful to have had so many opportunities to figure out why this is a good fit for me.

Through living with a host family I have seen radical hospitality take on an entirely different meaning. Craig and Lisa Wood took me in as a Fellow this year, but I have also had the privilege of meeting many other people who have stayed at their house over the course of the year because they view their home as a place for God to make people feel welcome. They have exemplified and demonstrated hospitality in a way that I have never seen before and I plan to take many of the things I have learned from them to my future home!

Over all my experience in the Fellows Program has been very positive and I am very glad I decided to do the program. While it has not been easy in the least, I consider all the hard moments very beneficial because of all the things that I have learned and am taking away from this year.

--Sarah Powell, James Madison University '12

Reflections on the Year

 

A few weekends ago Trinity’s Youth Group, along with the numerous leaders and a crew of daring parents, embarked on a journey down to the wintry sands of Virginia Beach.  Having been thoroughly exhausted each Sunday evening this year because of the two hour Oasis/Wired D-Group sessions, the idea of spending two days at a beach with my rambunctious renegades that some people call 6^th graders was unsettling to put it mildly.  Not to mention, that inevitable departure date just happened to fall on the Ides of March: I do not believe in superstition, but the Soothsayer’s fateful words from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar were ringing in my ears the week prior.  All that is to say, my mind constructed a wildly fearsome weekend involving sleepless nights, grueling wrestling matches, and frigid Atlantic waters.  Upon reflection, I realized that my fears came true, but in the way that prayers are answered.  God flipped my anxieties on their head; He made beautiful what I found unappealing; His presence at Beach Weekend was amazing and gracious.

It all began with the bus ride.  Colin Davis (my co-leader) and I learned we were in charge of five kids.  Neither of us lives by Machiavelli’s principle “it is safer to be feared than loved.”  It is not that we choose to be loved- simply our methods of discipline do not stand the test of rebellious middle school boys.  Therefore, we must feign affection as we are tackled to the ground rather than relegate the insurgents to a time-out.  A three-hour bus ride, a giant bucket of Dum-Dum lollypops, and boys who have been sitting through school all day eagerly anticipating this vacation seemed like a deadly combination for the defenses of Colin and me.  Keep in mind these deep-seated conceptions of 6^th Grade Devotion Group when I paint the next scene.

James (a kid I normally associate with the helicopter game where I grab his arms and spin him around until I get dizzily sick, and then launch him away as if I were performing the Olympic hammer throw) sat down next to me midway through the bus ride and asked, “What do you want to talk about?”  These exact words were the start of every bunk bed pillow talk with my little brother as we grew up together.  I had not heard the innocent, loving words in ten years.  James did not ask me a question regarding an earlier prayer request; James did not have a planned conversation with an agenda; James did not talk about himself.  He selflessly inquired what it was that me, the 22 year-old leader, would want to talk about with him, the 12 year-old disciple.

Queue the brain racking sequence!  I remembered what it was like to be in the 6^th Grade.  Certainly chaos was fun: cafeteria food fights, finger jousting, the shouting game, etc.  But also I did have deep friendships; I was pretty darn sure that I would marry Jessie Miller; I had realized that marriages were not always destined for constant and perfect harmony; I worried about the way that I acknowledged friends in the hallway; I had lost my grandfather, Papa, and my dog, Tucker.  Despite these mature feelings, my dominant form of communication, especially with older guys, was friendly combat.  I realized that amidst the games of musical chairs, shoe relay races, capture the flag, dodge ball, dodge frisbee, and helicopter spinning, James and I had become near and dear friends.  I had just viewed our relationship (and that with all of my D-Group boys) through a faulty cultural lens that situated me as the giver, and them as the receiver.  Not to mention, my work was in vain.  To me, it was a task of the Fellows Program: an hour in the morning, and two in the evening, then Sunday is finished.  It is easy to wear yourself out when you think that you are the center of everything.  God had been working in me through these kids all year and I was blind to it- talk about grace!

Back to the bus ride: After my middle school recollections I realized that James is not a ball of energy that I am to entertain for three hours a week.  He is my brother.  He pours into me, as I try to pour into him.  We grow together in our knowledge of God, and our love for Him and each other.  I had intentions of praising Beach Weekend (most notably Susie Marotta’s sweet potato biscuits), but I suppose this is more of a reflection on Youth Group as a whole: that all the wrestling outside in the grass to retrieve the keep-away ball does lead to a greater wrestling match: one that allows friends to reach in and lend a hand in our walk with our Lord.  I hope that I am teaching my kids something, whether it is through the study of Scripture, or knockout on the basketball court.  I know however that the kids are teaching me how to love.

As parents arrived at Trinity to pick up their children, James walked up to me with his sister and dad.  “A hug?” he asked as if it was a request that needed granting.  It is funny to me that 6^th Graders feel welcome to climb all over me, but a hug requires permission.  Needless to say, it warmed my heart.  I had to fight back a few tears as I opened my arms.

And a little child shall lead them, indeed.

--Woody Granger, University of Virginia '12

In anticipation of the Fellows Reunion

As we look forward to being reunited with all of the Trinity Fellows from over the years, it is always entertaining to look back at some of the fun that has been had... Video 1

Video 2

The Fellows Program will celebrate ten years with a reunion June 7–9, 2013. Please mark your calendar as we wish for the whole church to be involved in this reunion weekend. Contact Dennis Doran at fellows@trinitycville.org or 434.825.9866 for more information.

A Fellows Reunion: Now and Then

Post by: Kaitlyn Amos, Class of 2012 Recently, the women from my year as a Trinity Fellow gathered for a reunion. We were eager both to catch up and to process through our nine months of intentional life together.

Accompanied by spurts of laughter, the evening progressed from easy exchange and culinary collaboration to deep reflection and mutual encouragement. It was not encouragement to be received lightly, as if we should just fill the air with pleasant words. Rather, it was affirmation weathered and refined by a slowly approached trust, a trust that (only in retrospect) seemed to mark our year as a community of believers at Trinity Presbyterian Church.

Though we did not have the complete group from our Fellows year, this reunion itself mirrored the deep sense of community we experienced during that time. We cooked together, we ate together, and we candidly shared our celebrations and struggles. As we sat and chatted, the familiar moments slowed down in disregard of the rushed pace of life, ever at our heels.

I recognized this mysterious time-pause as one of the most unexpected characteristics of our Fellows year. For what could easily become a year of frenetic service to the church and Charlottesville community, as well as a time of “drinking from a firehose of ideas,” somehow transformed into full moments of Kingdom significance.

Whether listening to others share their testimonies, taking notes at a theology seminar, wrestling with life at the weekly Roundtable and Family Night dinners or tutoring at Abundant Life, ordinary hours were suddenly sacred as transcendent ideas became tangible and particular at the kitchen table and in other in-between spaces. With each new relationship, we felt welcomed into the infinite fold of support from the church, and we quickly found ourselves welcoming others in alongside.

Between tastes of our prepared food and drink, we began to center around the question of the evening: “What has been forming you?” Though difficult to answer in the here-and-now, the question prompted more reflection on our Fellows year.

As Fellows, we were formed by the regular rhythms of weekly meals and discussion times, by Bible studies, tutoring, classes and our work in the marketplace. Yet our routine was wonderfully interrupted at times, and we were plunged outside the comfort of regularity and into life-changing interactions with people from all walks of life. While in New York, we got to personally meet a local author of a novel about sex trafficking accompanied by an International Justice Mission representative. We helped put on a local arts forum at The Haven, listening to wide-ranging lectures on art and its purpose of showing forth the beauty of the Creator God. And we spent a weekend with other national fellows within The Fellows Initiative, collaborating about our participation in biblical justice.

It was within this jazz-like flow of the Fellows year that unexpected moments of pause ushered us into a greater paradigm—a paradigm that saw Christ as the center and redeemer of all things. Our time, our service, our story were all informed by a larger story at work—the story of our Fellows class, the story of Trinity Presbyterian, of Charlottesville, of the Church and of the Kingdom of God. Ultimately, the Grand Narrative became a thread weaving cohesion and purpose for our time now and during our Trinity Fellows year. Thank you, Trinity Church, for having a deep vision for forming young leaders in this way—it is a ministry that has changed the lives of many involved and it is our hope that it continues to play its part in deepening our love of Christ and His church.

So to you new Fellows, Trinity’s 10th class, welcome in: May the Lord grant you grace to be as present as possible in these days to come, so as not to miss the aroma of the Presence who is in and of and over all things—Jesus Christ. May you learn to participate deeply and fully in the work around you, ultimately receiving more than you can give back. As I was reminded recently, the Lord is with you.

The Fellows Program will celebrate ten years with a reunion June 7–9, 2013. Please mark your calendar as we wish for the whole church to be involved in this reunion weekend. Contact Dennis Doran at fellows@trinitycville.org or 434.825.9866 for more information.

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Originally published September 23, 2012, in Trinity Life

Fellows Run Richmond

Post by: Katie Brazeal As Fellows, business is a way of life. We are told upfront that we will be busy in the program, and that proves to be true. Between work, classes, families, mentors and more, our time is in high demand. However, that doesn't mean that there is absolutely no time to have a fun, out-of-program Fellows bonding experience.

On Saturday, November 10th, four of the girls ran the Richmond 8k. Now, I said that we had time for the bonding experience, but I never mentioned time to train! Regardless, we had a wonderful time carb-loading Friday night, waking up before the crack of dawn on Saturday, dragging our bodies 5 miles through the streets of Richmond, and stuffing our faces with a omelets and biscuits post-race.

Did I forget to mention our pit stop by Krispy Kreme the night before the race?

Proud Finishers: Sarah, Heidi, Katie and Amie

Finding Ourselves in Orange

Post by: Katie Brazeal, 6 & ISTP As defined by Webster, a personality is "the complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual or a nation or group; especially: the totality of an individual's behavioral and emotional characteristics."

God gave each of us unique personalities and character traits. They are such a blessing. Through our personalities, we interact with creation and with God Himself. Even still, our personalities, if misunderstood, can also be our biggest downfall. Everyone has a different view of the world and a different opinion on how things should be done. This stems from our dominant preferences and values. Not grasping these differences can leave us worn out and frustrated. However, beginning to see beauty in the individual can open our eyes to a whole new world.

The second weekend in October, Dennis took all sixteen fellows out to the Pent Farm in Orange, Virginia, to find ourselves.

John Cunningham, no stranger to the Fellows Program, joined us on Saturday morning to work through the Enneagram with us. The Enneagram, a traditionally verbal assessment rooted in the spirituality of the desert fathers, is a personality indicator derived from the seven deadly sins with the addition of deceit and fear. It breaks down into nine different personality types. All nine are found in every person, but every person has a default number. Even still, two people of the same number can look entirely different; it depends on how the qualities associated with that number manifest themselves in the individual.

1. The Reformer
2. The Helper
3. The Motivator
4. The Romantic
5. The Thinker
6. The Skeptic
7. The Enthusiast
8. The Leader
9. The Peacemaker

We discovered that all nine are beautifully represented within our Fellows’ class.

In addition to John, we had another special guest for the weekend: Beth Martin. Beth is the Associate Director of Career Education and Counseling at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., and she joined us primarily to work through the MBTI assessment. But on Friday night, she did an activity with us that helped us discover some of our priorities in life.

She gave each of us 100 cards to start with. Each card was printed with a value. Examples included: achieving excellence, being safe, controlling my own life, owning a fine home, using my mind, etc. We were first asked to create three piles with the 100 cards: most valued, medium valued, least valued. From there, we discarded the bottom two piles and solely worked with the “most valued.” We were asked to choose a top ten from this category, and eventually, we narrowed that down to a top three. Through this narrowing down process, we were divided into pairs and asked to talk our partner through the ranking of our values: why we have them, what they mean, where they came from, etc. In the end, all sixteen of us shared our top three with the group. It was very interesting to hear the values people hold and why they feel that way. While a lot of us shared the same goals, it was informative to see how and where people varied.

On Saturday afternoon, Beth gave us the full MBTI run down along with the test results from an assessment we had taken individually prior to the retreat. There was a lot of anticipation preceding this time, but we were strongly encouraged not to put too much stock into “our letters” alone.

There are 16 possible personalities through this assessment. Each personality is a combination of four of the following letters:

E- Extrovert; I- Introvert

S- Sensing; N- Intuition

T-Thinking; F-Feeling

J-Judging; P- Preserving

While learning your own personality preferences and the preferences of others does shed much new light on situations and interactions, the four letters with which you associate should not form a box that you must crawl into and stay in the rest of your life. Your letters are meant to be a freeing association by which you understand yourself better and see areas of great potential. All personalities are useful and necessary. Learning to embrace your talents is a good first step to success.

Coming to recognize some of the unique characteristics of your own and others' personalities can be a wonderful tool to building better relationships... something the Fellows program is helping to teach each of us to do!

A peek into the weekend through pictures: 

The Heart of the Host Family

Post by: Kyle O'Donnell When our Fellows program director told me that the Fellows live with host families from the church, I must admit that it wasn’t the arrangement I expected. I envisioned something more like a fraternity house or perhaps a dormitory, which housed the Fellows and many of their gatherings. Imagine a Presbyterian spin-off of The Real World, sans the cameras – that’s honestly the idea I had going into the application process.

As hilarious, fun and dramatic as that situation might have been, I thoroughly understand why the church has chosen not to do that for the Trinity Fellows. Besides obvious logistical reasons, cloistering the Fellows away from the larger cross-generational community would diminish the depth of our involvement in the body of Christ and potentially fail to adequately and realistically prepare the Trinity Fellows for the way things are in the broader church. Living with a host family, however, has been, even in this short period of time, incredibly rewarding and a realizably excellent way to fulfill part of the Marketplace Fellows mission statement: Marketplace fellows are embraced by the local congregation of Trinity Presbyterian Church and experience the fullness of life in the local church.

I have received the embrace literally from many members of the congregation, but especially from my host family.  My host family, along with fifteen other families from the congregation this year (plus many others over the past decade), has opened up their home, their resources, and their personal family life to a complete stranger. In their home I am not a mere boarder.  I share in many of their daily and intimate experiences – meals, recreation, prayer, chores, conversation – but because of the fullness of the program, I am not able to be constantly present in every moment of their lives. As unconventional as this situation may appear for a recent college graduate who is used to living on his/her own, I have experienced nothing but charitable embrace and warm hospitality.

That embrace is manifested in multiple ways, but most of all, I realize it on Sunday mornings, when I am welcomed by my host parents and their sons to stand and receive communion with them. These moments of sharing the Lord’s Supper together have embodied the fullness of the life in the local church that we, Fellows and Christians in general, are called to experience. Just as God has shared his table with us in His love, so too our host families share their tables with us, and I can think of few more beautiful acts of Christian love. Thus we see that host families are more than just hosts. They are Christians sharing with their neighbors; brothers and sisters welcoming each other to walk together in faith.

For all of this Christ-like hospitality I have experienced, I want to thank my host family and all the host families for inviting us into their lives and supporting us freely in our walk with Christ.  Just as Priscilla and Aquila submitted to the call to host the church in their home in 1 Corinthians, they too have graciously sacrificed to host the church in their homes. Their actions mean more than they may know, and help in more ways than I think we may realize at this time of our lives. I only hope that this time may be as much of a blessing to the host families as it is for the Trinity Fellows.

To the Mountains & Modgnik we go

Post by: Katie Brazeal As Fellows, one of our responsibilities is to be involved in Trinity Presbyterian Church’s youth group. Each fellow is assigned to a different age group and gender. For example, I have the opportunity to spend this year with the 10^th grade girls.

Normally this role is played out on Sundays. Sunday morning during the Sunday school hour we have Student Breakfast with the kids. This entails feeding them cereal (and pancakes once a month!) and studying the Bible together. On Sunday evenings, we come back together with the kids for D-Groups. At this time, we play games, eat dinner together, and once again dig into the Bible.

As wonderful as Sundays are, we had an even more wonderful experience with the kids over the last weekend in September: FALL RETREATS!

MODGNIK • Modgnik is the middle-school retreat (6^th-8^th grades) held at Rockbridge, a YoungLife camp about an hour and a half outside of Charlottesville.

In the words of Elizabeth Sumrall, the 8^th grade girls’ Fellow…

MODGNIK (Kingdom spelled backwards) is a gathering of over 600 middle schoolers and their leaders from over 20 churches around area.  The three day long retreat offers an awesome combination of teaching time, small groups, and plenty of fun and recreation!  Before we went, we had heard that Rockbridge was awesome, and it certainly lived up to those claims. Surrounded by mountains, the camp offers virtually every activity you can dream of - rock wall, thriller swing, water slides, basketball courts, volleyball courts and a ropes course in the woods.

It was so amazing to see the leaders building close relationships with their kids - going on crazy swing rides, swimming, and playing soccer. Early mornings (and I do mean early; some of our kids were up as early as 6:30 a.m.) and late evenings were special times for hanging out in our cabins with our individual D-Groups. The boys spent their times having pillow fights while the girls had nail painting parties and signed t-shirts.

In addition to the fun and games was the incredible group teaching times. Shawn Slate, the RUF minister at UVa, was the weekend speaker.  He spoke from Revelation and in the most amazing way made what is usually considered to be a very hard book of the Bible very real and relevant to middle schoolers.  He encouraged them to see Revelation as a story that God wants to draw them into, a story that He wants them to be excited to be a part of.  Slate challenged them to see the picture Revelation paints of Jesus and to learn what it means to fall in love with Him.

At the end of the day, that is what this is all really about. The goal of student ministry is to help the kids to love Jesus more. I know that the hope of all of the Fellows is that this fantastically fun weekend was a tool to build bridges into these students lives that will enable them to learn more about what that really looks like in the weeks and months to come.

MOUNTAIN WEEKEND • Mountain Weekend (or Mountain Day as some of the kids were fondly referring to it as because we were gone for a grand total of 24 hours) is the fall retreat for the high schoolers, 9^th-12^th grades.

In comparison to Rockbridge, we were roughing it on Mountain Weekend. We camped on a farm about 20 minutes outside of Charlottesville. We slept in tents, used the restroom in port-a-potties, and cooked our food over a fire. (Okay, that last part is an exaggeration. We actually had a lot of delicious home cooked food.) Regardless we were out in the elements, all of them: hot sunshine, cold rain and everything in between.

The kids played a variety of games throughout the weekend. We started off the fun with a “speed-dating” (also referred to as speed-friendship) game to break the ice. Then there were some very competitive rounds of the appropriately named Ball Game. In the dark, we played Body Body, an interactive version of Mafia. Not to be overshadowed by the games, we had a square dance called by the weekend speaker, John Gayle. This was complete with flannel, boots and live music!

And although the weekend truly was fun-filled thanks to the games and fanfare, we also had some wonderful times of worship and learning, which was indeed the reason we were there. John Gayle spoke to the kids (and counselors) about our relationship with God and what that should look like. He gave examples of successes and failures from the Bible. In our D-Group time, the 10^th grade girls specifically worked through what the Lord is doing currently in their lives and why he had brought them on Mountain Weekend.

Overall, I believe that the retreats were a huge success! It gave us as Fellows the needed opportunity to spend quality time with our kids and to simply get to know them. It is exciting to look at the year ahead and to think of all the Lord will accomplish!

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To see the video the Fellows made for the youth group to get them excited about the retreats, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgDy1Y5nJq4