Calvin Names Jubilee Fellows

December 8, 2005 == MEDIA ADVISORY

The Lilly Vocation Project at Calvin College has chosen 12 Calvin juniors as
its 2006 Jubilee Fellows.

The goal of the Jubilee Fellows program, founded in 2002, is to foster a new
generation of Christian leadership, says Lilly Vocation Project director
Shirley Roels.

"There is no Christian church circle," Roels says, "Protestant or Catholic,
that will have sufficient church leadership in the decades ahead."

"One of the problems," Roels says, "is that there were very significant
numbers of people who went into seminary education in the 1960s and early '70s,
and those large pools of people are now retiring. We need a tremendous number
of young people to consider futures in the church to fill the void."

Next spring and summer the dozen Calvin students will be trained to fill that
void. They will expand their gifts of Christian ministry leadership through
training and mentoring and through summer-long ministry internships in churches
around the country.

First, in the spring of 2006, the Jubilee Fellows will take a semester-long
class concentrating on the visions and theologies of Christian leaders
throughout church history. During that period of study, they will also meet
regularly for supper with current ministry leaders from all over the world.

Come summer, the fellows will work in ministry internships in churches all
over North America.

"They could be spread from New Jersey to California and from Toronto to
Texas," Roels says.

These ministry internships will be as varied in focus as they are in location,
Roels promises.

"We will place students in congregational care, youth ministry, social
outreach, new church development, and preaching and worship-related settings,"
she says.

Next fall, the fellows will spend a retreat together, debriefing about their
internship experiences and clarifying their plans for future ministry. The
students will also make decisions about how they'll contribute to the community
life at Calvin during their senior years.

Each Jubilee Fellow will receive support for her or his internship living
expenses and a $4,000 fellowship for the senior year of college.

The 2006 Fellow are Braden Britton, Matt Cosnek, Allison Graff, Jordan Horras,
Kwang Ji, Melody Joachim, Deborah Lemmen, Ryan Kruis, Julie Richards, Emily
Rose, Julie Saksa and Rachel Schipull.

They hail from Grand Rapids and Rockford, MI, Pittsburgh, PA and a variety of
places in between.
 
For the full story see
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2005_06/jubilee_fellows.htm

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Received on Thu Dec 8 11:30:06 2005