Moving Notice!

Hello Friends!

For all our loyal followers out there, we wanted to let you know that we've moved our blog to blog.trinityfellows.com. You can follow us there!

Peace,

Trinity Fellows Program

Charlottesville, VA

Fellows Farewell

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.

New Orleans

By Andrew Simmons and Jenny Fearnow

One of us was recently in a staff meeting in which a supervisor asked, “Y’all took a N’awlins trip recently, didn’cha? I don’t know why people keep going down there. It’s just gonna flood again.” Yes, people are indeed still going down to the Crescent City after Katrina’s second, and more catastrophic, landfall on August 29th, 2005. So, why? Will our visits realistically change anything?

This thought occurred to at least we two, and likely more, of the Trinity Fellows and U. Va. Students from Reformed University Fellowship who made the trek to the Big Easy from Jan. 3 to 10 of this year. As we both hope to convey, the Lord’s kingdom made strong advances in New Orleans during that first week of 2009.

In addressing change, one must assume there is a pre-existing need. In New Orleans, people are still hurting: emotionally, physically, and mentally. Many have resigned themselves to apathy, tired of the long rebuilding process or extended unemployment. Some are still waiting for their houses to physically come off the 4-by-4 wood blocks that resemble a Jenga game. Driving through the now-famous Ninth Ward, we saw no street signs and no attempts, on the part of the city government, to rebuild; however, people are resettling there, living amidst brokenness.

The combination of compelling, audacious rebuilding and the seeming big-picture futility of it in the face of such wide destruction could cause one to question their usefulness there. And in some sense that is true - God is the only one that will bring about real peace and restore in our hearts a hope for it. In this respect, our very presence was an act of trust in God to work his sovereign good will to restore his people.

But we do get to play an integral part: as believers, we are called to bring peace to the city and reconciliation to hurt and brokenness. “…That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us,” says Paul in II Corinthians 5:19-20. God has made us ministers of his peace for His Kingdom. If we understood anything from being in NOLA, it was that lasting change comes only through the catholic Church. Members of RUF at the University of Virginia along with the Fellows, Redeemer PCA (Pastor Ray Cannata’s church), and the Annunciation Mission joined together to declare the gospel in word and deed within the Broadmoor district of New Orleans. Our short-term work projects meant nothing except in that they were rooted in the local church which could further a long-term relationship with community members.

By tearing up tile, scraping and painting, caulking and gutting, raking and pressure-washing, we participated in incarnational ministry. We did realistically change something. Sure, some benefits are visible even now. We gave a couple from the community leak-proof windows and a pleasant entryway. But some may not be for some time. We helped connect this same couple with the local church. Long-time development practitioner and Vice President for International Program Strategy at World Vision International Bryant Myers says that the Church is critical to genuine social transformation, “It is hard to imagine sustainable transformation without churches committed to soul care [development of personal faith] and social care [helping the poor and correcting injustices].” This truth was borne out in our own experience – the other groups we encountered aiding in reconstruction were, by a huge majority, evangelical groups of believers working in partnership with a local church.

So, to our surprise, there is indeed hope in New Orleans. This hope is found in a personal God who chooses to work through the local church and the Christians there that believe in His promises of restoration. We must remember that this applies not only to New Orleans, but to Charlottesville, as well. The church is the arm of God ministering real and lasting peace to its community. New Orleans, as that supervisor suggested it might, is indeed experiencing another flood – one of vital and engaged Gospel work that labors in the nitty-gritty of everyday life, not in spite of, but because of the imminent arrival of the Kingdom. So when the good times roll, know that the church is there.

If you want more information about the New Orleans trip or other service opportunities the Fellows are involved in please email me at jennyfearnow@gmail.com and/or check out our NOLA pictures on the Trinity Fellows Blog at www.trinityfellowsprogram.blogspot.com. Also check out the RUF website and pictures at www.uva.ruf.org

Common Grounds Post- "A True Portrait is Never Pretty"

Our greatest desire is to be fully known and fully accepted.  Deep down we want someone to see us for who we are- the beautiful with the ugly- and neither balk in disgust nor mistake us for something we are not, something better with fewer blemishes and flaws.  And yet, we fear the fulfillment of the very thing we desire.  Our greatest fear is to be known, found out, rejected.  Out of this fear we build up defenses like walls, hiding our weakness, preventing anyone from really knowing us at all.  We are like shopkeepers that put mannequins in the window, clean projections of the person we would rather people see (confident, attractive, sociable, interesting, etc), all the while keeping the shop door locked tight, carefully keeping the ugly reality of our imperfect lives out of sight.

As a portrait artist, the goal of my paintings is to subvert this practice of building defenses, and instead create a conversation with the viewer that is open and honest. You look at the person on the canvas and they look right back at you. Hopefully there is intimacy in that moment of examination.  Maybe it is because the person in the canvas never looks away.  You can look and look, critiquing every wrinkle and zit, but the subject has no shame.

 I recently had a show that consisted of a bunch of portraits of folks I know from around Charlottesville. At one point I stood up and made a brief artist’s statement, which pretty much began like the first paragraph above, talking about lowering our guard and allowing ourselves to be known.  I talked about how the bright colors were meant to represent each subject’s character and affirm their dignity as image-bearers of God.  A question came from the back of the room, “Why don’t you have any self-portraits up, and if you did, what colors would they be?” 

Uh.

Er.

I, uh.

I half jokingly replied that putting a self-portrait on the wall for the entire world to examine would demand that I unlock the “shop door” and let people in.  But seriously. It is much easier to talk about not being so guarded than to take an honest look at oneself and stop pretending.  I will hang up a portrait of a friend and subject them to public scrutiny long before I will subject myself.  Why? Because even if you tell me you won’t reject me, my mind says, “you don’t know what I know.” 

So what’s the solution- how do we get over the fear of exposure? The answer is certainly not  try harder.  Rather, I think the answer has to do with resting, resting in the promises of the God “to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.” This is the gospel: that God walks into a gallery, sees your face on the wall- knows every bit from the surface right on through to the core- and is utterly mesmerized by the beauty.  He may as well be looking into a mirror.  We are utterly known and profoundly accepted.