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.

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.