Sharing stories of impact.
Does the Gospel Matter at Work?
We are almost filled up on spots for women for the 2018-2019 year, and we are looking for more men to experience the Charlotte Fellows program! To focus in on our male applicants, we asked three men connected with the Fellows program how they have been transformed by the Gospel in their work. Enjoy!
We are almost filled up on spots for women for the 2018-2019 year, and we are looking for more men to experience the Charlotte Fellows program! To focus in on our male applicants, we asked three men connected with the Fellows program how they have been transformed by the Gospel in their work. Enjoy!
When we see our lives and capabilities as gifts, we are freed to give them back and serve. The Fellows Program helped me see this and just how much the Gospel enables me to care and work for my community. To do this, I have to recognize the gifts that I have to offer and then understand the community’s needs.
Having now spent time in the secular workforce, I’ve found that it's all too easy to get swept away by the money-making power of the marketplace and instead pursue my own dreams and ambitions. Keeping the Gospel at the forefront of my mind allows me to remember Christ’s grace when sinful longings arise and gives me the desire to look outside myself, the desire to serve others where God places me.
Bobby MacNaughton
Land Acquisition and Development at LGI Homes
Charlotte Fellow ‘15
When I moved to Charlotte from New York in January 2017, I felt called and challenged by the Lord to start my own investment and small business advisory firm. Everyone, including my family and closest friends, had a lot of questions about my business plan, potential advisory clients, and future investments. I had very few answers, but I knew God had given me specific gifts to connect with others, analyze a wide range of investments, and advise leaders on ways to grow their businesses. I just had to step out and trust Him.
The biggest area of growth for me was learning to trust Him fully in the results and outcomes of my time and work. This happened particularly when a number of perceived good investment opportunities did not pan out. In many cases, He is teaching me the value of patience, surrender, and joy in Him versus the temporary satisfaction of finding a deal or closing one. Other times, He saves me from bad deals or partnerships. God’s word gives me peace in this work journey as it says in Ephesians 2: “We are God’s handiwork." God has a plan for our work that he has prepared in advance for us to do.
Matt Hultquist
Founder of Hillandale Advisors, Charlotte
Member at Hope Community Church
Through the Fellows program, I interned at Brookstone Schools as their IT support. After the program ended, my boss offered me to come on full-time as the first afterschool manager and build out their afterschool programming from the ground up. It has been one of the hardest tasks that I have faced. The job had so much visibility and potential for public error. I had never realized how I had centered my life around hiding my faults and presenting a good face. There was no place to hide. Either I had to carry the weight of burying my failures or come clean with my mistakes and move past them. “Walk face forward into your failure” was the phrase that kept resonating in my head.
The Gospel had already taught me that I needed to come clean with Christ each day and let His grace renew me. My job has become a practice ground to go through those steps in real life and see that grace “happen to me" in the flesh. After a couple years of admitting fault, asking for forgiveness, and receiving grace in the workplace, this practice now flows backwards into my relationship with Christ and allows me to experience His grace in a way that seems far more real.
Eric Maust
Afterschool Manager at Brookstone Schools
Charlotte Fellow ‘16
Are you a young professional looking to reconnect your work with your faith? You can find out next steps for the Charlotte Fellows program by reaching out to our director, Connice Dyar, at connicedyar@mac.com.
You can also reach out to Matt Hultquist at matt@hillandaleadvisors.com or Eric Maust eric.maust@brookstoneschools.org.
A New Year, An Old Truth
Growing up, I watched cartoons every Saturday morning. My favorite was The Jetsons. With a flying car and a robot to do everything, it seemed like they had the good life on demand. At the time, 2018 was a lifetime away, and yet, here we are with more robots than we realize and our needs met at the touch of a button.
From The Jetsons to the twenty-first century, our lives and professions have advanced at an alarming rate. Yet one aspect of our daily lives remains unchanged.
Growing up, I watched cartoons every Saturday morning. My favorite was The Jetsons. With a flying car and a robot to do everything, it seemed like they had the good life on demand. At the time, 2018 was a lifetime away, and yet, here we are with more robots than we realize and our needs met at the touch of a button.
From The Jetsons to the twenty-first century, our lives and professions have advanced at an alarming rate. Yet one aspect of our daily lives remains unchanged. We may be living in “the future”, but our human nature has remained unchanged. We are still broken and searching, in need of that one thing that makes our lives free, purposeful, and more abundant―relationships.
And the ultimate relationship we were made for is the one with our Creator God.
All the artificial intelligence, the most brilliant computers, and our advanced knowledge will never discover another way to know God or experience grace than through a relationship with Jesus. The words of the apostle John are still true: "Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life.” (I Jn 5:12)
“We must cling to the truth when the world around us screams loudly in our ears.”
As we go into the second half of our Fellows year, we will be tempted to believe the lie that life can be found in the perfect job, the best relationship, or that instagramable apartment―not in the Creator God. We must cling to the truth when the world around us screams loudly in our ears. Jesus did the same when he was tempted in the desert in the Gospel of Matthew. (Mt 4:1-17)
Using God’s truth to navigate this world is not very “Jetson-like". It’s not robotic, or computer generated, or in video form. It doesn’t follow a checklist. It comes to us in the form of a relationship with Jesus, the Living Word. So if you want to know how to pray for the Fellows and myself in the upcoming months, pray God’s Word over us. Pray God’s Word for us.
We have several full months ahead of us. Pray with us as we walk into the second half of our program:
We have our Highlands Ability Battery weekend coming up in early February. Pray for insight into each Fellow’s individual gifts and passions.
We head to Chattanooga to volunteer with Hope for the Inner City at end of February.
The Fellows continue with professional development seminars, Roundtable discussions with members of the community, and investments in their church placement.
The Board and I are interviewing and putting together next year’s class. It’s going to be a busy Spring!
Want to learn more about the Fellows program in Charlotte or get involved? Reach out! I’d love to grab coffee and chat.
Thank you to all of you who pray and support us in so many ways. We are very thankful! As Paul David Tripp says, “We have not been left to secure our own future because God is grace has secured an end to our story more glorious than we can grasp.”
In Grace,
Connice