The Charlotte Fellows has provided me with rich experiences relationally, spiritually, and vocationally. This program has helped me grow in so many ways, so as it is nearing the end I wanted to share some of my takeaways that I hope to hold onto and continue to embrace in this next chapter:
A few weeks ago, we joined the Greenville Fellows for a presentation by Rich Rardin. He shared how many stories in the Bible are told through a three-step pattern: transaction, transition, and transformation.
In our seminary class last week we talked about the role Christians have in culture to bring God’s kingdom to earth. In our book To Change the World, by James Davison Hunter, it explains the author’s opinion as to how cultures change: from the top down. Institutional power comes from the social networks of elite groups of people who have the credibility and power to create change. It has been interesting to learn about the disproportionate cultural power institutions have.
It’s hard to believe half of the fellows year is already past. Coming back to Charlotte post Christmas break, the first thing we did was go on a retreat at Emerald Isle. The focus: Sabbath. The retreat provided sweet time together, polar plunges (different levels of enthusiasm about this), lots of cooking, games, and best of all: rest in the Lord. The time spent in Emerald Isle was much needed after a full first semester and busy holiday season. It was a time to refocus, refresh and be renewed by God.
Back in October, the Charlotte Fellows and the Davidson Fellows participated in Barnabas Basic Training, a day-long seminar about how to have deeper conversations and love others better. My understanding of dignity and depravity became so much richer through this course. I learned more about how God made us in our dignity to have desires and longings, yet we live in a fallen world where our own depravity and disappointment is very real. We were made for relationships, yet often try to live life on our own.
Among other things, the Charlotte Fellows program trains Christian leaders to take up strategic places in the marketplace to do good work for the kingdom. This is an aspect of the Christian life that doesn’t get a lot of attention in the church, and it’s a problem the Fellows program seeks to remedy. But as well-intentioned as it may be, this push can fail in two ways.
When I decided to do the Charlotte Fellows Program, the part I was most anxious about was living with a host family. In college, I was incredibly blessed with a rich community, and for that I am forever thankful. But because of it the transition after college was much harder; the people who I’d done life with for the past four years were scattered across the country. (Things people don’t tell you—leaving college and your people is HARD!!!)
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