The newly-established Reformed Student Fellowship drew about 30 students to Hayden Park for a cookout dinner Sept. 7.

The fellowship hopes to join the Catholic Society, Lutheran Society, Orthodox Christian Fellowship, and Anglican Student Fellowship as a campus ministry. According to the group’s mission statement, they exist “to celebrate, equip, and promote the broader reformed tradition and community on Hillsdale College’s campus.” 

According to sophomore club president Luke Waters, the fellowship will cooperate with the churches in Hillsdale that fall under the broader reformed tradition: Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Holy Trinity Anglican Parish, College Baptist Church, and Countryside Bible Church. 

“We hope to be partnering with those four reformed churches for events structured around civic and church holidays, Thanksgiving, and so on,” Waters said. “We’ll be throwing a Reformation Day party for sure.” 

The group’s vice president, senior Carver Talcott, said that previous rumblings and attempts to start a society for reformed students did not deliver.

“Our particular iteration started with Luke Waters and I,” Talcott said. “The reformed tradition is the only orthodox tradition that is not represented by a student organization on campus. We saw that need and decided to act on it together.” 

After discussing the idea at length in the spring, Waters and Talcott committed to getting the ball rolling in the fall. 

“He’s done an incredible job working, writing, getting this thing moving,” Waters said of Talcott. 

With the help of the group’s adviser, College Chaplain Rev. Adam Rick, the fellowship is operative. The group is currently focused on short term goals, both Waters and Talcott said.  

“There are a lot of atomized, confessionally reformed Bible studies and fellowship groups that already exist on campus,” Talcott said. “The short-term goal is meeting them, finding out who they are, and connecting them to one another.” 

Waters also emphasized the need for connection.

“For this semester and next semester, we want to get information out to students on campus about the great reformed churches in the area, getting them in communication with each other, and involved in their churches, and bringing them together under the banner of confessionally reformed,” Waters said.

Both men said gaining committed members is the main focus because it is vital to the fellowship’s future aspirations.

 “We have great visions of what the future looks like, we just don’t have the people and resources right now,” Waters said. “These next two semesters, we want to be bringing in more reformed students who can lead this fellowship. When we have that, foreseeably by next fall, we can become an official campus ministry.” 

The complicating matter for this fellowship relative to the others is that “reformed” casts a wide umbrella. 

“The organizations on campus right now are either expressly affiliated with one church or are ecumenical or non-denominational and unaffiliated,” Waters said. “Obviously a group around anything has to be exclusionary in some way, but this is intended to be unifier for the reformed traditions focused on the many places we all agree. I’m tired of reformed students only discussing our differences.” 

The non-reformed communities on campus varied in their responses to the new fellowship. 

“They pointed to a few different reformed confessions in their statement of faith, some of which contain certain disagreements,” said junior Dominic Taranto V, an Anglican Student Fellowship member.  “I’ll be intrigued to see how they incorporate them into one reformed identity, as opposed to being a vaguely Protestant group.”

Others found the prospect encouraging.

“Fostering that kind of interaction between multiple reformed churches, stressing unity on campus, that could be a good for everyone. I think it’s an interesting idea,” said junior Ethan Bourgeois, a member of Catholic Society. 

In the coming weeks, Waters said the Reformed Student Fellowship will be putting up posters across campus and social media in an effort to expand and connect to potential members.

 “Anybody who is interested in joining or helping, we are absolutely going to welcome them,” he said. “They can be members, leaders, mentors. We want to see everyone grow in the truth, goodness, and beauty of the reformed tradition.”