Eden Fellows: What and Why?
Drumroll, please…
Today is an exciting day for me because today—after years of working toward the launch of Eden Fellows—I get to tell you all about it!
I could give you the official elevator speech. Tell you the details about this ten-month fellowship program designed to help people connect their sense of vocation with what God is up to, in ways that bring good news to them, their neighbors, and the world. Live together in community, with its many formative blessings and challenges. Learn more about God’s vision for the world through graduate-level coursework at Abilene Christian University. Explore vocation and the ways of the workplace in a part-time job in your field. Join in on rhythms of personal and spiritual development through mentoring, meals together, and regular retreats. An unforgettable time in your life where you grow immensely in ways that you can only now begin to imagine…
Don’t get me wrong—the what is important. And I’ll tell you more about it as we go. But even more important than what is the why behind it.
Why did the Eden Community envision Eden Fellows in the first place? Why do we bring together these fellows each year for such an intensive experience of formation? Why connect up the specific components of live, learn, work, and grow? Why focus so much time and attention and energy on this experience when there are so many other things we could be doing instead?
The short answer is this: so that we can see a vibrant family of Jesus in close reach of everyone.
I’ll explore that really big idea more in future posts, but let me start with this. It’s by embodying the good news of God’s kingdom that we’re most successful at spreading it. A “demonstration plot” of kingdom life is worth a million words. Similarly, it’s by first-hand experience within a vibrant family of Jesus—a joyful, interdependent, intergenerational community of God’s love and purpose—that we’re best equipped to instantiate thriving Christian community and invite others into its transformative power.
So that’s what we do—and why we do it—in Eden Fellows. We pour into the next generation of leaders in the church, drawing them into a life-changing experience of vibrant Christian community so that they might be shaped by it, in every aspect of who they are, and empowered to embody it, wherever they go, whatever they do. Investing deeply in a small group of fellows each year has the capacity to change their lives irreversibly, and through them, to nourish the church and transform the world. The Spirit’s work through every fellow—and every devoted disciple of Jesus who lives out the ways of the kingdom—brings us one step closer to seeing a vibrant family of Jesus in close reach of everyone. I hope you’ll join us on this incredible journey!
