You’ve probably heard me talk about our Colson Fellows Program before, and you may be wondering: Does it really make that much difference? Would it really have an impact on how I do ministry? Is it worth the time and money?
For the answer, let’s ask someone who graduated from the Colson Fellows Program a few years ago.
Brett Fischer is the founder of Victory Lane Camp, a community centered on families who have children with disabilities. As a practicing pediatric physical therapist for 19 years, Brett understands the unique pressures on a family that has a child with medical challenges. He’s witnessed “the struggles of stress, pain, and divorce.” Brett founded Victory Lane Camp to help these families form meaningful connections with other families while offering therapy in a “real-life” setting.
Brett says that the Colson Fellows Program “changed the trajectory of my life.” He recalls that Chuck Colson “challenged us and trained us to think differently. To ask God about the sphere of influence He placed us in and how we could make a Kingdom difference to help renew the culture.”
Through the work of Victory Lane Camp, Brett equips families and healthcare professionals with worldview and bioethics training. Victory Lane Camp also helps churches and communities connect with families who have children facing disability.
This kind of assistance is badly needed. As Chuck’s daughter, Emily, the mother of an autistic son, has noted, many churches fail to fully welcome children with disabilities, or provide programming for them. And many individual Christians are not sure how they can best help families that include a child who has a disability.
As Brett explains, “Many people want to help children with disabilities, but they don’t know how or where to start…” These families “need friends and family who understand the complexity of their needs. I believe,” he says, that “ God has given us an opportunity through Victory Lane Camp to help bridge that gap—to be a catalyst for building community around families facing disability in their children. To live the language of God’s love so we can each learn how to live alongside each other.”
daily_commentary_02_23_16Finally, The Colson Fellows Program gave Brett “a network to cast the vision and share the work God has been doing in a unique way. It continues to be a lot of work, but a lot of exciting ‘God things’ are happening as well.”
Now that’s quite a recommendation! I hope Brett’s story will encourage you to look into becoming a Colson Fellow, yourself. The program allows you to interact with other Colson Fellows through webinars and discussion boards, learning how to “read” the culture by watching films, reading books, and discussing current events and trends.
Three times a year, you and your fellow participants will gather in person to hear thought leaders like John Stonestreet, Dr. Glenn Sunshine, Joni Eareckson Tada, and others speak. They’ll help you gain perspective on how to be a redemptive presence in your community and culture. Over the course of the program, you’ll design a personal mission field plan implementing the worldview training the Colson Fellows Program provides.
Yes, it’s a demanding program. But God will use it to prepare you for frontline Kingdom work.
Please check out the Colson Fellows Program at ColsonFellows.org. We are accepting applications now for the 2016-17 program.
And by the way—visit victorylanecamp.org and see how you can connect with a ministry making a Kingdom impact. Or follow them on Facebook. It just might help you come up with ideas for how YOU can help redeem the culture.
BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.
Eric Metaxas is a co-host of BreakPoint Radio and a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and popular apologetics have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Publication date: February 23, 2016
