Eden Fellows – An Update and Invitation
About this time last year, we were able to share with you the exciting news that we intended to launch a 10-month long master’s level fellowship program, Eden Fellows. This year, we’re eager to share with you a brief update and an invitation to prayer and partnership.
Our first Eden Fellows class has been a wonderful experience, with three delightful young men joining us to explore discipleship in intentional Christian community, with a specific focus on the idea of regenerative culture—a way of life in which God’s Story transforms us, our Settings and our Systems. These guys have been taking classes in Abilene Christian University’s Graduate School of Theology and working part-time in jobs that connect to their career paths. In addition, we’ve poured a lot into communal spiritual formation, with our fall semester including weekly fellowship gatherings, regular mentoring meetings, a launch retreat, an “adventure weekend,” a 2000 mile road trip to Kentucky for the NCN gathering (where some of you got to meet our fellows!), and an incredibly life-giving silent retreat. (Check out our Eden Fellows blog for more on all these things!) This spring promises more growth as we continue our regular rhythms, throw in a “Missional Imagination Trip,” and have our fellows participate in the Eden Community’s upcoming Foundations of Regenerative Culture workshop (feel free to join us!).
God is doing good things through these young men, as well as through Eden Fellows. At the same time, we’re still in start-up mode and attempting to “build the plane in flight,” as you might say. All that being the case, we’d like to invite you to prayer and partnership.
Please pray with us for God’s continued guidance and blessing on our efforts, for courage and confidence to step forward in faith, for the remainder of this year with our first class to bless and form those fellows well, and for God to provide the right people and resources for our second class, which will be launching in August.
And as you pray, we invite you to consider also if/how God might be inviting you to partner with us — to share the news of Eden Fellows with young people who might be a good fit to join us, to help provide scholarship funds for our fellows, to send an encouraging note to our fellows or director. Whatever you and the Spirit come up with, we welcome your joyful partnership! And whatever the case, we’re so glad just to get to share the good news of what God is up to with Eden Fellows! Blessings on each of you in your own lives and kingdom work!
Our fellows gathered with Kent and Laura at our silent retreat in December.
