Follow Me
From the Desk of Dr. Blake Puckett, Board President
We have a wonderful new cohort for this year’s Fellows Program, with the theme for the year of “Thinking Christianly About…” Last week at Cambridge House, we had the privilege of hosting John Kyle, Director of the Capital Fellows program at McLean Presbyterian Church in Northern Virginia, a one-year intensive Christian leadership and discipleship program for recent college graduates. John Kyle also serves as Executive Director of the Fellows Initiative, a network of over 30 post-graduation Fellows programs around the United States. He joined our own Cambridge House Fellows for an evening discussing Os Guinness’ The Call as we considered how we might “Think Christianly” about Vocation.
As someone who has worked in over 10 countries, served in four or five professions, and yet sometimes still wonders what I’ll be when I grow up, the idea of vocation as “something more than a career track” resonates deeply with me. Many years after reading Guinness’ book for the first time, his invitation at the end of every chapter to heed Jesus’ call, “Follow Me,” still causes me to stop and say “yes” one more time. For vocation, or “to be called,” isn’t something we figure out once and then proceed apace (or at least, it certainly hasn’t been that way for me!) It’s the constant reminder that we are first called to follow Jesus, for salvation and for the redemptive purposes of His Kingdom in this world. And then to listen closely as He daily calls us into work, into relationships, into hard places, for our good and for His glory. As Guinness puts it, “Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service” (The Call, 20th Anniversary ed., 5).
Last Thursday at Cambridge House, John Kyle met with more William & Mary students, inviting them to consider joining a fellows program after graduation. Whether or not students choose a transitional year (as a Fellow or through some other post-graduate fellowship), go directly into the workforce, or continue their education in graduate school, John Kyle provided what I thought was some hard-earned wisdom for new graduates: The reality that life after William and Mary won’t have any OAs to guide them (Orientation Advisors —those cheerful W&M students who greet new freshmen arrivals in August).
He suggested three transitions that those approaching graduation should be aware of so as not to be surprised by them: loss of freedom, loss of structured validation, and loss of community. Loss of freedom—the reality that the work world will require far greater investments of time (on their schedule) than a typical day as a student. Loss of structured validation—no major’s required courses, no class syllabi, and no grades every 13 weeks to check your progress. And loss of community—the reality that for most graduates they will be moving from a campus life where hundreds of (potential) friends are geographically concentrated and following similar schedules, where syncing up is as easy as a text message, a five-minute walk, and coffee at Aroma’s—to modern cities, where a friend may be 30 minutes away by car, if the rush hour traffic has passed.
Investing now in the lives of students to equip them for these transitions—and the many more to come in their lives ahead—is what we hope Cambridge House and the community of believers here at William and Mary are able to do.