The Brazos Fellowship seeks to redefine vocations for college graduates, Paul Gutacker, the program’s executive director, told Hilldsale students on Oct. 11.

“I think we assume that discerning your vocation means figuring out your career,” Gutacker said, “In Scripture, it has to do with the thing that we’re all called to do—following Christ. It’s not overly simplistic to say it, but we actually know what our vocation is.”

Gutacker recently visited Hillsdale to encourage students to apply to the Brazos Fellowship, a nine-month residential program in Waco, Texas. There, college graduates study church history, reflect on their spiritual calling, and grow in their relationship with God and fellow Christians.  

“The Brazos Fellowship started to answer the big questions that emerging adults have,” Gutacker said. “Questions like ‘Who am I? What do I hope to do? What should my life look like? What is a good life?’ The last thing we should try to do is think for ourselves. Instead we should pursue these questions in community and, in particular, the church.”

During each week of the program, a group of four to 10 fellows gather together to attend lectures, discuss texts, and worship in prayer. 

According to Gutacker, college gives very little time to develop important spiritual habits, so the Brazos Fellowship aims to build that foundation.

Cody Strecker, assistant professor of theology at Hillsdale, said he helped get the program off the ground when he worked as an academic tutor at Baylor University

“The mission of the program is to help students begin a life of spiritual integration in which everything they’re doing, not just individually but in community living with others, is in pursuit of a life of faith,”  Strecker said.

During their time in Waco, fellows dive into four areas of concentration: theological training, vocational discernment, spiritual disciplines, and community life. 

The core of the theological training is the Course of Study, a series of lectures and discussions held two days a week by visiting scholars, Strecker said.

“One of the best things we can do is attend to how forebears in the faith have thought about their own lives and thought about God in relation to the world,” Strecker said. “And that’s really what the Course of Study is seeking to do, to draw students into a deeper understanding of what Christianity has been and allow that to illuminate what it can be in the present.” 

In addition to studying thinkers like Aquinas and Calvin, fellows choose an area of interest to study under a personal tutor that culminates in an informal presentation. 

Fellows also meet regularly with a certified life coach who assists in spiritual discernment and personal discovery. 

One of the highlights of the program is the amount of time fellows spend together exercising spiritual disciplines, according to Strecker. The program offers morning prayer time and Monday cohort dinners. The group also goes on two retreats: one in the fall that is focused on prayer and one in the spring that is focused on food and celebration. 

The fellowship gives young adults an opportunity to truly reflect on what it means to live a Christian life. College often does not leave much time for thinking about how to translate a liberal arts education into the life beyond, Strecker said. 

“If you talk to graduates, they say this has shaped the way that they make prayer a constant component of their life, the way that they read and engage with the Christian tradition with a kind of capacity for knowing where to look, what to think about, and what to dwell upon that they otherwise might not know how to live, not just alongside other people, but with other people drawn into life together,” Strecker said.

Senior Griffin Johnston said she is interested in the program because she wants to invest in her intellectual life and form good habits.

“It will give me the time and freedom to read things I am interested in with someone who is knowledgeable about those things,” Johnston said.

Applications for the 2023-2024 cohort open Nov. 1.

Strecker said the purpose of the program is particularly aligned with Hillsdale students. 

“It’s something that many Hillsdale students would benefit from and would delight in, not as a kind of repetition of what they’ve done here but as an extension and that kind of bridge to life beyond,” Strecker said.