Cultivating Gratitude

Each week during the 2015-2016 Fellows year, we will feature reflections from the Fellows class of 2016. This week's reflection comes from Brittany Fan (Blacksburg, VA - UVA).

Sunrise in Deltaville, VA. Photo by Brittany Fan. 

Last Thursday, during our seminary course titled “Issues in Contemporary Culture,” Dr. Wade Bradshaw taught us about the importance of gratitude. He suggested that our knowledge and belief of the Gospel necessitates the cultivation of gratitude within our hearts. We have an endless supply of things to be grateful for, yet we often find ourselves anxious, frustrated, or prideful, rather than humbling ourselves in thankfulness to our Lord, and by extension, thankfulness for His creation and for the people around us who bear His image.

That same night, our Fellows class departed for Deltaville, VA for the Fellows testimony retreat. Having been told by Dennis, our Fellows director, that we were going to one of the most beautiful places on earth, I went in brimming with excitement not only to hear others’ stories, but also to be surrounded by the outflow of God’s creative work.

Despite our late arrival in Deltaville and our even later bedtime, I woke up with the sunrise on Friday morning. As a morning person, I knew that any effort to return to sleep was likely to be futile, so I embarked upon a wandering journey to explore this unfamiliar and supposedly beautiful place.

And beautiful it was. As an artist, much of my work stems from gratitude and awe of creation. The outdoors have always been a source of nourishment for my soul. Each experience in nature brings with it a new sense of joy, and on this particular morning, that joy came from something unexpected—something so insignificant in the greater scheme of the landscape and yet still so magnificent in its own scale.

That morning, my personal cultivation of gratitude was rooted in the contemplation of spider webs.

In looking at these beautifully spun, dew-lined threads, my mind quickly went to a passage in Luke 12. “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all His glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!” Spiders create these intricate weavings daily. It is their given task within their small realm of reality; a task done purely for survival and function, yet that culminates in beauty. If the Lord can make this small, mundane task a manifestation of His glory, how much more potential does He provide for us as humans, the bearers of His image? We have the capacity to create and to cultivate as stewards of all creation, and the ability to participate in good, fruitful work that goes beyond what is necessary to fulfill our own personal, fundamental needs.

As strange as it may sound, the spider webs reminded me of God’s desire to use us even in our broken and flawed states, and the fact that he gives us power to manifest His glory in unexpected ways. It also humbles me to consider that, like the spiders, we are limited as fallen humans in the scope of that power. But in our weakness and finitude, we are not to give up, but rather do our work diligently in whatever place and task the Lord has called us to. What a gift and privilege that is.

This year, we as Fellows will explore this very notion of work and vocation so that we may better grasp what it means to follow God’s calling in every aspect of our lives. We will have the opportunity to do so within a community that is characterized by rich vulnerability, Christ-like love, and the collective desire to seek and glorify God. We are moreover blessed with the support of countless mentors, job hosts, host families, friends, and a beautiful Church body that seeks to love us and cultivate within us a deep love for the world. In a way, the Fellows community is a beautifully spun web, another manifestation of God’s goodness and a wonderful illustration of building God’s Kingdom.

What a multitude of things to be thankful for. And to think, it all began with staring at spider webs in a field. If we simply take a moment to look at the world around us, we can discover so many reminders of our Lord’s faithful presence. I am grateful for those spiders, for their toil, and for our ability to enjoy their work and other expressions of our Father’s creativity. I am grateful for grasses in the fields, for the sparrows in the sky, and for God’s ever-greater desire to clothe us and tend to us as well. I am grateful for the fifteen young men and women that I have the joy of walking alongside this year, and for the generations of community members who make it all possible. I am grateful for God’s grace to us and His desire to see His Kingdom flourish. From the smallest of creatures to the grandest of God’s visions, I see so many opportunities ahead to express gratitude in our daily walk with the Lord. Praise be to our good, good Father. 

Photos from Friday morning:

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As a visual artist, Brittany received five arts grants while at UVA, shows work in local coffee shops, sells paintings and cards through a Charlottesville retailer, and has upcoming art exhibition with New City Arts this fall. Using painting, photography, and graphic design, she has supported organizations such as International Justice Mission and Soddo Hospital in Ethiopia.

Brittany also loves to teach and work with children, and has done therapy for infants affected by Down Syndrome, taught in elementary schools and summer programs, and directed a daycare volunteer program while in college. She served on the executive board of UVA’s College Council, interned at the Center for Christian Study, led as InterVarsity’s Creative Director, and has invested in areas such as education, disaster relief, and housing in lower income neighborhoods and developing countries. More than anything else, she desires to use her gifts and passions to help the world better flourish. 

Here in the Wilderness

Each week during the 2015-2016 Fellows year, this blog will feature reflections from the Fellows class of 2016. This week's reflection comes from Ryan Haynes (Fredricksburg, VA - UVA).

Via Ferrata at Nelson Rocks, WV.  Photo by Brittany Fan. 

We have officially survived three weeks of the Trinity Fellows Program.  From orientation sessions to lake-side lunches, from climbing rock faces to Rockbridge Alum Springs, from host family dinners to learning at the Thursday theology classes; this is only a taste of where we have been in the past three weeks, and a foretaste of the remaining year that awaits us.  

There are so many expectations for this transitional, yet formative year: find your identity, find your calling, find your passions, find life-long friends, find community, find a job at the very least.  Of all of the things that we will undoubtedly find this year, I have been struck more in these first three weeks by what I cannot run away from.  Whether in West Virginia, the law offices of Jenkins & Jenkins, the McCarthy home, or the stillness of Trinity outside of Sunday mornings, I have been constantly aware of the love that not only surrounds us, but the Love that lives in us.  

It has been pointed out to me by the prophets of the Bible and men much wiser than myself that our lives as Christians will be spent waiting in the wilderness.  Waiting.  This is all too true when I look down the road to a life that I can hardly envision, and I wait.  Yet just as the reality of the wilderness surrounds me, the goodness of the Lord draws nearer still.  In this season of "in between" that I am slowing learning is not just a season, but a state of being as a follower of Jesus, I wait on life.  I can be prayerful, forward-thinking, and proactive as I strive for the life planned for me, but ultimately I wait.  I wait on a career.  I wait on marriage, and a family.  I wait on interviews and job opportunities.  I wait to be changed.  But even more, I wait eagerly for the hope of glory.  And what better place to see the splendor of the Lord than in the heart of the wilderness.  

As we have run from place to place these first three weeks, we have always been met at our destination by God himself who anxiously waits to pour out his love for us and reveal his love in us.  Even more so have I discovered that we do not wait alone in the wilderness.  For we are surrounded by both a great cloud of witnesses, and Emmanuel, God with us.  Waiting in the wilderness, we have the choice to adhere to fear, or to abide in Christ.  But Christ is your life, as so often you will hear at Trinity.  Why, then, would we let fear dictate our lives?  Why would we let fear keep us from the fullness of the measure of Christ that is available to us right here and right now?  Even here in the wilderness we cannot escape - why would we ever want to? - the love that Jesus gave for us when he said, "This is my body given for you" and "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." So while we wait in eager expectation for the year ahead or the years to follow, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, that we might eat and be satisfied in him and him alone.

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While at UVa, Ryan discovered a passion for teaching and mentoring high school students and team-building through Young Life, a national youth mentoring and youth ministry organization. He has been involved in youth mentorship and leadership development programs and sees this as a key part of his vocational calling. Ryan is currently discerning further education in sports administration or business management. He is also contemplating seminary and is using his Fellows year to discern between a career in business and vocational ministry. He has worked as a trail riding guide and served at both Lake Champion Camp and Saranac Village in New York, Young Life youth camps and conference centers. 

The Trinity Fellows Program: Ministry, Mentorship, and Mission

A year ago this week, I graduated from college—qualified, credentialed, and confused. 
I remember the flood of well-meaning encouragement from friends and family: the opportunities were endless; the world was my oyster; I could do anything I wanted. Each sentiment felt more hollow than the last, because beneath all the excitement and potential lurked an almost paralyzing uncertainty. I had learned in my campus ministry that my life was meant for more than the American dream, and I believed it deeply. I knew I was meant to serve God and others with my vocation. I knew I was meant to be deeply involved in the life of a local church. But life after college was something entirely new, and I had no idea how to actually do any of this. And for the first time in my life, there was no obvious next step.

Enter the Trinity Fellows Program. This ministry is designed to help recent college graduates transition well by immersing them in professional experience, vocational discernment, theological formation, intergenerational community, one-on-one mentoring, thoughtful self-assessment, strategic relationship-building, and community service, all in the context of deep participation in the life of a local church. The goal of the Fellows Program is to equip young men and women to better love and serve their churches, their communities, and the world by teaching them to orient their education, gifts, influence, resources, and hearts toward the church’s work of sharing in God’s renewal of all things.

For me, finding this program was like discovering buried treasure. I learned to think of my vocation as an extension of my Christian walk and of the original biblical purpose of work. I came to understand my own gifts, skills, and personality traits and how to use them for the glory of God. I worked and studied under wise and godly role models in both the church and the workplace. I was invited to witness and participate in the daily life of a loving and healthy Christian family with young kids. I had the privilege of getting to know a fifth-grader from the community through Abundant Life’s tutoring program. I have spent hours in conversation with six-year-olds and seventy-year-olds and everyone in between. And along the way, I found some of the deepest friendships I’ve ever had. This year has redirected my vocation, reestablished my community, and rekindled my love for the church—it has truly been one of the richest of my life.

The Fellows Program knows what every young adult ministry and theology-of-vocation curriculum knows—that my experience of vocational confusion is all too common among young Christians. Even those of us who had transformative experiences in campus ministries, as I did, often leave college without a clear sense of how to faithfully navigate life after college. The unique insight of this program, however, is that the kind of wisdom young adults need to transition out of college well is not simply taught—it must be modeled, embodied, and practiced in community. Graduates like me aren’t confused because our churches or small groups or campus ministries failed us—it’s just that as we enter a new phase of life, we need new mentors to walk alongside us, new examples of of mature faithfulness to study and imitate, and new communities in which to reflect, process, and serve.

And as I looked around the crowded room at the Fellows’ closing banquet last week, I was struck, as I have been so many times this year, by how generously this church has responded to that need. Host families, mentors, Bible study leaders, teachers, employers, and friends were all present—a great cloud of witnesses to the good work God began in each of this year’s fourteen Fellows. The work of the Fellows ministry is not merely the work of the program director and ministry team; it truly is the work of an entire church body, a community giving generously of their time, their resources, their homes, and their wisdom. As one who has been loved, served, challenged, encouraged, and sharpened by the Trinity Fellows community, I want to say to everyone involved, from the bottom of my heart: thank you.

This fall, Trinity will welcome its thirteenth class of Fellows. Each member of the class is at a critical juncture in life. What they will learn from our church community will stick with them for the rest of their lives. If you have a gift or a resource that God has put on your heart to share—a spare room, an internship, an hour a week in conversation—please consider becoming part of the Fellows community. This new class of Fellows will need host families, employers (part-time), and friends to welcome them to a new home in Charlottesville and invite them to a new mission: the pursuit of God’s renewal of all things.

-Sam Speers (Fellows '15)

Consummation: What Your Parents Never Told You

     A year in The Fellows Program is a year of learning.  Not all of that learning takes place in a classroom (or a church multipurpose room).  In fact, most of this learning happens through the experience of living in community, learning how to love one another through difficulties and figuring out what it means to be an adult.  However, much of what I will carry with me after the program was learned in our seminary classes at the feet of phenomenal professors.  

     Most notably, I have learned to understand the world through the lens of this paradigm: Creation, Fall, Redemption and Consummation.  In Creation, God created a good world.  The Fall tainted all the goodness planted by God, but the good is still there.  As Christians, we are called to look around us and seek out beauty, goodness and truth, and to reclaim them for God’s original creational purposes.  This is the mentality that can guide Christians through the difficult and complicated issues that we cannot avoid in our culture today.  The appropriate response to racial disparities, gay rights, environmental stewardship, gender stereotypes and every other challenging issue can be addressed through this paradigm.

     It sounds hard right?  It is.  Fortunately, there is one who has gone before us to show us the way.  Through his life, death and resurrection, Jesus has begun his work of Redemption and placed the world back on its right trajectory (toward Consummation).  Now, there are lots of interesting things to say about Consummation, but I will limit myself to the following point.  The best part of the Consummation is that we can begin to live it out RIGHT NOW!  As we live and work and love in this world that God has given us, we participate in preparing the new heavens and the new earth that God always intended.  

     The biggest thing that I have learned from this year is that my work and life matter.  I can participate right now in God’s plan for eternity and so can you!  

-Peter Frank (Fellows '15) 

A Day in the (Abundant) Life

      The bell rings.  A sea of bobbing backpacks floods the cafeteria. Some students run up to give hugs to their tutors, some clump together like penguins huddled in the cold, while others pace about the room. The noise finally settles, and tutors and their students make their way through the maze of the Walker Upper Elementary hallways to their classrooms. Papers spill out of backpacks, the search for the elusive and always missing pencil begins, students wrack their brains to remember which general won the Battle of Gettysburg, and tutors keep their composure while frantically trying to remember all the steps of long division.  Throughout the hour of homework, shoulders periodically slump down in frustration, and there is the occasional tear shed over the never-ending worksheet. However, it also wouldn’t be a true tutoring day without the bouts of laughter peppered throughout hour, the words of encouragement to finish one more math problem, and the triumphant smile of the successful student.   

      Each day of tutoring with Charlottesville Abundant Life Ministries in their after-school programs is an adventure.  While it is exciting to see the academic growth of each student and the tangible results of test scores reflecting their hard work, , I have been encouraged even more deeply by the relationships I see built between tutors and students. For many of the students, their tutor is more than just another teacher figure.  They are also a friend, mentor and someone with the capacity to speak deep truth and inspiration into their lives.  Having a “cool” college student who is willing to show up consistently, encourage and love them through a melt down over mixed fractions, or even get excited with them about the parts of a plant cell, means more to a student than they may ever admit.   All this to say, I am grateful for Abundant Life, for friendships with kids so different from me, and for the opportunity to witness growth in the lives of so many students.

- Rebecca Lee (Fellows '15) 

Where is the LOVE?

           On February 14th of this year, we celebrated our culture’s commercialized day of love. There are a lot of people that resent Valentine’s Day and I can say that in the past, I have been one of these critics. This year, however, my perception of this so-called celebration changed, and I was reminded of a truer, more beautiful love.

            A couple days before February 14th, the lady Fellows received an invitation to meet the gentlemen Fellows in the Trinity Church parking lot at 5:15pm on Valentine’s Day evening, dressed to impress. We were expecting a simple spaghetti dinner at the church—a small, yet incredibly kind gesture, just to show they remembered us. What we got was so much more!

February 14th, 2015 6:00pm:

            Two handsomely dressed Fellows men chauffeured us to the Stamper’s lake house.  We arrived to luminaries lighting our way to the door, lights strung across the ceilings, a beautiful table with white linens and candlesticks, and hand-made place settings for all. There were flowers for each of us with a name plate the men had made themselves, fancy printed menus that the guys had cleverly composed, and a beautiful spread of cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. We were served a delicious three-course meal including Caprese salad, steak, salmon, and German chocolate cake with raspberry sorbet, all planned and prepared by the Fellows men. Dinner was followed by an evening of swing dancing, laughter, and walks down memory lane with some old classic hits. It was like one of those sweet, heart-warming scenes out of a movie.

            Chivalry is not dead, people! We were blown away! When I think about it, it wasn’t that they put together such a fabulous evening. It wasn’t that it was so elaborate and perfect that we could not have imagined better. While these things are true, I think the real reason we were so overwhelmed by the guy’s incredible acts of service was because, in that moment, we truly felt LOVED.

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We love because He first loved us.”

1 John 4:10-12, 19

         One particular point came to mind in reading this passage. God’s exceptional love is made complete through the love that His children have for one another. If we love others with the love God demonstrated through sending Jesus, we glorify Him and accomplish His purposes of going to the cross. Jesus died and rose again to defeat sin, but He walked among us to show us what true love looks like. Love establishes a reverent posture towards Him and His creation. Vertical: His love for us, horizontal: our love for one another, THE CROSS: Complete.

         The joy we felt coming away from this beautiful evening was a response to that complete and perfect love that the Lord desires for us to find in community. Because He first loved us, we are able to love each other, and that is a love worth celebrating. Commercialized love is fleeting, but I doubt that any of us will forget the way that our incredible brothers loved us so thoughtfully and tangibly that night.

-Mary Kathryn Sawyer (Fellows '15) 

A Refreshing Refocus

As an ecclesial fellow I have a slightly different experience from the rest of my Fellows class. My job is with the church’s student ministry and I work full time rather than part time. Prior to becoming a Trinity Fellow I worked in the corporate world for two and half years. As much as I enjoyed client facing opportunities, pencil skirts, and quick turn around pitches for new business, Trinity Fellows has given me the opportunity to explore my passion for youth ministry as a vocation. Here we have over 100 students attending youth group and a plethora of quality leaders. My role is to pursue and equip leaders and students the best I can. Seeing Jesus move in these students’ lives is a gift, and being behind the scenes has been a pleasure.

A lovely perk of this internship is that each year the student ministry team ventures to Nashville for a Youth Leader Training Conference through Reformed Youth Ministries. This is a five-day conference focused on cultivating community with youth leaders around a shared philosophy of ministry.

You may be wondering: what on earth would you do for 5 entire days? Well, quite a bit! The schedule was jammed packed with reflection, teaching, and relationship building. I shared meals with youth ministry staff from all over (California, Texas, Maryland, Missouri, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee…the list goes on) where we encouraged one another with successes, failures, and dreams for the families within our churches.  I was part of a prayer group in which we prayed for each other’s ministries, churches, students, struggles, and for Jesus in the midst of it.  This training was a time to recalibrate, cast vision, share stories, connect, learn, and reflect.

Ultimately, after a week of youth ministry training I am walking away very encouraged and with a lot to meditate with. I am thankful to the Fellows for giving me the opportunity to build a foundation for my theology and my approach to youth ministry. In five days, I am refreshed and excited to see how to take all I’ve learned and incorporate it into our youth program!

“Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say, Rejoice. ”  Philippians 4:4

-- Kathy Giese (Fellows '15) 

MODGNIK

A few weekends ago I had the privilege of leading a group of sixth graders on a retreat known as Modgnik. I felt silly when having a conversation a few days later with Dennis Doran, the Fellows Program director at Trinity, that the “Modgnik” is just “Kingdom” spelled backwards. (I hope you were as blown away by that news as I was.) The retreat took place at a Young Life camp called Rockbridge just about 15 minutes outside of Lexington, Virginia. I would be remiss not to say that this camp was absolutely gorgeous. Modgnik was designed as a retreat to provide middle school kids with an opportunity for an amazingly fun weekend, but most importantly, as a place where the Gospel could be presented to them in a clear manner. We spent the weekend playing basketball, a getting scraped up in a crazy game called “octoball,” and blobbing kids into the Rockbridge’s lake. The most important time, however, was spent listening to the Gospel laid out clearly and concisely. On Saturday night, our speaker used the story of the Prodigal Son in Matthew 12 to effectively express to the kids the love the Father has for all people. I got to talk about this parable with a few of the sixth graders later that night. So many people have heard this story, the son asks his father for his inheritance, and then goes off to lead a very dark life. The son finally realizes he could return to his father if only to work for him. We then see the beauty of the father running ridiculously to embrace his son. He brings the son back into his house, and throws him a grand party. Jesus is expressing how much God loves his creation. We also know that the older brother in the story was not too happy about what transpired. Some of the guys I was talking with seemed to agree, saying, “I would be mad.” The sentiment of these sixth graders makes sense. It is a reaction many of us would have. Why is it fair for the son to be treated this way? Why would the father welcome him after all he did? I got to express to them what so quickly came to my mind, what God has spoken into my life through His word and His people: we should rejoice when someone, who does not seem to deserve God, receives Him as savior because I never deserved Him either.

Leading and teaching these kids has forced me to think about and face questions I do not have an answer to sometimes. But in an instance like this, it was another opportunity for God to speak His Gospel into my life as well as preach the Gospel to these young men.

-Luke McCann (Fellows '15)