It has been such a gift to get involved with the Charlotte Fellows program this year as the Program Coordinator. I loved my experience as a fellow and it’s been a different kind of gift to be on the other side of things and watch God work in the lives of this year’s class.
On Thursday nights, as part of our weekly schedule, we have roundtable. Roundtable is where we get to sit with different people and hear their stories; how God is working in, around, and through them. These individuals and couples often take us back to their childhood up to the present day and share highlights, struggles, themes, and lessons learned. These have truly been some of my favorite nights of the year. I am learning a lot about how we don’t know people until we have heard their stories and I am learning to never make assumptions of what someone's story is.
A big truth that is nestled into much of the content of the Charlotte Fellows program is that we get to honor God through our work and vocation - regardless of what that work is.
The wonderful thing about God is that he knows exactly what we need, not what we think we need. This is evident in my gracious host family, the Murchisons. Prior to moving to Charlotte, I was so excited to meet them, and I felt so hopeful about this family that I would be living with for the next 9 months. A little intro to my host family: Fred and Katy (parents), Ivy (14) and Ella (12). Rounding it out with 2 pets, we have their dog, Lolli (She and I are pals) and their cat, Raven. (We are… still warming up to each other).
Imagine being asked to solve a physics equation. That’s likely what learning how to round numbers feels like for a third grader.
Every Monday, the Charlotte Fellows serve at Brookstone School’s after school program, and I’ve paired up with the third grade class. In all honesty, sometimes I struggle articulating why we round up or down when I’m helping third graders with their homework. Most of the time, I’m trying to get them to lower their voices or focus on their homework. However, the hecticness doesn’t mean sweet moments don’t happen.
I’ve always liked the beginning of fall. It’s always given me a feeling of expectancy: New school year, new classes, new people, new school supplies. There was something so exciting about a brand new notebook with all the clean pages and new pencils. It just felt like a fresh start, like anything could happen.
The Charlotte Fellows have had a very eventful spring semester. Here are a few highlights:
1. Gifting, calling, vocation seminar: Dr. Bill Fullilove of Reformed Theological Seminary Atlanta led a two-day seminar on calling, gifting, and vocation. Dr. Fullilove taught on the theology of vocation, helped the Fellows interpret their results from the Highlands Ability Battery, and addressed practical hurdles that recent college graduates face in seeking full-time employment. In preparation for this weekend, the Fellows drafted work mission statements, addressing how their talents, shortcomings, interests, personality type, and relating style might come together in full-time employment. From the Fellows:
"The workshop helped me to clearly define (in normal, everyday language) my gifts/abilities, the kinds of roles I can fill in an organization, my core vocational values, and my short/long term career goals."
2. Hope for the Inner City Chattanooga: The Fellows traveled to Chattanooga, TN last month for a week of living, learning, and working in cross-cultural ministry in the inner city. Hope is a non-profit birthed from New City Fellowship Church (PCA), a church made up of Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic believers from every part of the socio-economic spectrum. Fellows put on Bible clubs for neighborhood kids and worked alongside a man and his family to renovate their new home and help them move. The Fellows also participated in conversations on racial reconciliation, learning how to recognize and confront fears and biases toward brothers and sisters in Christ from different cultures. From the Fellows:
"Our time at Hope for the Inner City was one of my favorite parts of the Charlotte Fellows. We formed relationships, heard testimonies, shared the Gospel, shared meals, and worked hard for others. Our friends there taught us, by word and example, to embrace conflict, serve selflessly, and love generously. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to travel to Chattanooga not only for what it taught me about poverty and the church, but also for the chance to grow in even deeper community as brothers and sisters in Christ."
"The week was a chance to give undivided attention to the idea of racial reconciliation, and to face the cynicism and bias that has gone unchecked in my heart."
"I saw God destroy fear and replace it with compassion."
3. The Gospel and dating relationships: We are in the midst of an ongoing discussion on dating and marriage, and God is bringing many fears and insecurities to light -- some for the first time. Fellows are asking questions like these:
As the Fellows learn to believe and apply God's Word and build relationships with host families, mentors, and other friends of the program, they are experiencing freedom in Christ from fear, shame, and insecurity in relationships.
Thank you for you prayers and support!
Beyond meeting basic needs, what motivates you to work? Is there a level of personal wealth are you striving to attain? What will happen when you get there? How will your life be different? What you are working for reveals what you believe about God. Nothing has more direct impact on your day-to-day life than what you believe about God.
In Luke 12, Jesus is surrounded by thousands of people, all listening to him teach on matters of the utmost significance. At some point a man in the crowd interrupts Jesus, saying essentially, “All of this stuff about God is fascinating, but I want to talk about something real, something that will actually impact my day-to-day life.” The man wanted Jesus to use his pull to help him acquire a larger share of his family’s inheritance. The man believed, as we are naturally inclined to do, that material wealth guarantees comfort, security and happiness – the good life. But he couldn’t see that his inordinate desire for personal wealth revealed what he believed about himself, about God, and matters of eternal significance. He couldn't see that his most troubling problems are the kind that money can't solve or that the solution to his deepest problems and the source of the abundant life he so badly desired was the man he was trying to use for his personal gain.
Knowing that others in the crowd shared the man’s sentiments, Jesus capitalized on a teachable moment. He cautioned the people against believing that material wealth can guarantee abundant life, and told a story to illustrate his point. The man in the story actually succeeds in achieving a level of professional success and personal wealth beyond the wildest dreams of most, and then, immediately thereafter, he dies. His abundant wealth failed to translate into abundant living (or any kind of living). For an emphatic period on his story Jesus says matter-of-factly: any man who worships and serves material wealth for comfort, security, and happiness is a fool.
A fool uses God as a tool to help him worship money and experience abundant life. A wise man uses money as a tool to help him worship God and experience abundant life. To this end, the Apostle Paul says this:
“As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.” (1 Tim. 6:17-19)
As theologian A.W. Tozer observed, what comes into your mind when you think of God is the most important thought you will ever think. So what do you think of when you think of God? A cold tyrant? A senile grandfather? A subservient personal Santa Claus? Or the embodiment and origin of love, wisdom, and perfection who invites us to call him Father, having reconciled us to himself through his son Jesus?
Jesus invites us to see what this man in the crowd could not: that, far from being irrelevant, what you believe about God impacts your day-to-day life more than anything else...including your motivation to work.
I was recently invited to read and weigh-in on Ken Wytsma’s new book The Grand Paradox: The Messiness of Life, the Mystery of God and the Necessity of Faith as part of the Patheos Book Club. The author describes his book as “a frank conversation about the true nature of the Christian faith” seeking to address the question: “If we were made for relationship with God, why do we often feel lost and distant from him?” The problem with the ensuing 210-page discussion is that our sin isn’t a major part of it. In fact, it's barely mentioned. The reality, though, is that our sin plays a major role in the matter.
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (Eph. 2:1-3)
We come into this world spiritually dead. A symptom of our spiritual deadness is a rebellion against God, a hatred of his authority over us. Like everyone else before us, we didn't want a relationship with God. We wanted to be our own gods. And this disease of sin blinded our eyes so much so that we actually believed that we were okay and that life apart from God was not only possible but preferred!
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.” (Eph. 2:4-5)
The Spirit of God has made our souls alive, and he dwells within us. For the first time, we are able to see things as they truly are: the rebellious self-worship that oozes from our core, the glorious perfection of God, our deserving of an eternal death sentence, and our receiving unmerited and eternal love from our heavenly Father in condemnation's place. But...we are not yet loosed from the grip of our old selves, not completely (though we will be). Thus, the table is now set for the grand paradox:
“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. …For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. …For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” (Rom. 7:15-23)
The grand paradox, then, is this ongoing war between our old selves who hate God and our new selves who love God. Jesus' call to "repent and believe in the gospel" is now rightly understood as continuous and central to our existence, not something that happens once and for all when we come to faith. As the Spirit of God enables us to see and confess more of our sin and ask our loving Father to transform us, he is faithful to “forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). God lovingly and supernaturally humbles us in the face of our sin and his love for us; it sobers us up, so to speak.
How does this practically impact our daily lives? The Gospel actually incentivizes us to be honest and open about our sin and shortcomings with God and one another. To do so is evidence that we have believed the Gospel in the first place, evidence that we are not counting on our own efforts to earn right relationship with God, evidence that we believe that the work of Jesus on our behalf is sufficient, evidence that we love and trust God.
"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8:1-4)
Great reminders that work doesn't have to be drudgery. There is something innate in us that affirms the dignity, value, and significance of work. We were made for this. Merry Christmas!
Do you have questions about what life looks like as a fellow? Contact us by filling out the form below, and learn more about the Charlotte Fellows!
