Real Life Fellows
Foundations for Christian thought, life, and vocation
A structured, intentional pathway for college students who want to take their formative years seriously—growing in faith, theological depth, mentoring, community, calling, and faithful service.
Why Real Life Fellows?
College is preparing you for more than a career. It is helping shape the person you are becoming.
College is filled with opportunities—and with questions. During these years, students are developing convictions, habits, friendships, ambitions, and ways of seeing the world that may remain with them for decades.
Real Life Fellows is for students who want to take those formative years seriously.
The Fellows program brings together Christian formation, theological study, mentoring, community, hospitality, calling and vocation, and service in a more intentional experience.
Fellows are invited to go deeper: to know Christ more fully, understand the Christian faith more thoughtfully, develop habits of faithful Christian living, build meaningful relationships, and consider how the gospel shapes their studies, work, relationships, and future.
This isn't simply another Bible study or another activity to fit into an already crowded college schedule.
It is an invitation to spend part of your college experience deliberately asking:
- Who is Christ?
- Who am I becoming?
- What is true?
- What is God calling me to?
- And what would it look like to follow Jesus faithfully with my whole life?
What Fellows Looks Like
A more intentional way to spend your college years.
Real Life Fellows is not designed to add another crowded program to a student's schedule. It is designed to create a rhythm of Christian formation, learning, relationships, and service within the life students are already living.
LEARN
Fellows engage in biblical and theological study, thoughtful reading, seminars, and conversations that deepen their understanding of the Christian faith and help them think Christianly about the world around them.
BE MENTORED
Each Fellow has opportunities for personal mentoring and discipleship with mature Christians who can listen, encourage, challenge, pray, and walk alongside them through the opportunities and questions of college life.
SHARE LIFE
Formation happens in community. Fellows spend time together around meals, conversations, prayer, study, hospitality, and ordinary life at the House—building friendships that go deeper than simply attending the same program.
EXPLORE CALLING
Fellows are encouraged to think carefully about gifts, vocation, work, relationships, church, and the kind of life God is calling them to live. The question isn't simply, “What am I going to do after college?” but “How do I faithfully follow Christ wherever He places me?”
SERVE
Following Jesus turns us outward. Fellows have opportunities to serve others, practice hospitality, participate in ministry, and use their gifts for the good of their neighbors and community.
GROW
Ultimately, Fellows isn't about completing a list of requirements. It is about intentionally using these formative college years to know Christ more deeply, become more like Him, and learn to make Him known in every part of life.
The Fellows Pathway
Four years of growing deeper.
Real Life Fellows is designed as a pathway students can enter and continue through their college years. Each year explores a different dimension of Christian thought and life while continuing the rhythms of study, mentoring, community, prayer, service, and life together.
Foundations & Connections
An introduction to the Christian story and Christ-centered community, exploring what they mean for life, study, relationships, and vocation.
The Grand Story
Exploring the sweeping story of Scripture, God's redemptive purposes throughout history, and what it means to understand our own lives within His story.
Cleaning the Lens: An Introduction to Good Theology
Learning how theology works, why it matters, and how it helps us think, live, worship, and understand Scripture faithfully. We don't study theology as an end in itself; good theology helps us know and worship God more truly.
Theology & Thought in Real Life
Bringing Christian doctrine and the biblical story into conversation with culture, calling, work, relationships, and the questions of everyday life.
Program Structure Note: Foundations & Connections is offered each year for new Fellows, while Years Two through Four are offered on a rotating basis.
Reading with the Church Through the Ages
Alongside engagement with Scripture, the Fellows Program introduces students to selected voices from the early church and throughout church history. Readings from figures such as Athanasius, Augustine, and John Chrysostom help students see how the gospel was received, articulated, and lived by Christians shaped closely by the apostolic witness.
These writings are approached not as authorities over Scripture, but as faithful guides—pastors and teachers who help students read the Bible with greater historical awareness, theological depth, and humility.
Why We Read Historical Christian Voices:
- Joining a Larger Conversation: Students realize they are joining a conversation much older and larger than themselves.
- Enduring Wisdom: The Church has wrestled with enduring biblical and theological questions across generations.
- Beyond Our Moment: Older Christian voices help us see beyond the unspoken assumptions and blind spots of our own cultural moment.
- Holistic Formation: Theological depth and historical awareness are vital parts of Christian maturity.
Encountering the Fathers and key thinkers reminds students that they are part of a long, living conversation and encourages careful, rooted Christian thinking shaped by the church across time.
Real Life Study Center Fellow's Certificate
Participation in the Fellows Program is a complete and rich formation experience on its own. For students who desire to pursue a more intensive, structured formation experience, we also offer the Real Life Study Center Fellow's Certificate.
REAL LIFE FELLOW
Core Formation PathwayOpen to all interested students. Includes participation in the 4-year curriculum, cohort discussions, regular mentoring, shared meals, community life, and service.
FELLOW'S CERTIFICATE
Optional Intensive PathwayBuilds directly on the Fellows Program. Includes additional individual mentoring with a staff advisor and customized learning/service components shaped around a student’s specific interests, gifts, and vocational calling.
Both pathways share the same commitment: helping students grow into thoughtful, mature, Christ-centered leaders equipped for a lifetime of faithful service.
Interested in Real Life Fellows?
You do not have to have everything figured out. If you are interested in going deeper in your faith, learning, community, and calling during college, let's talk.