Colson Fellows Commissioned with Purpose

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Throughout this month, hundreds of thousands of graduates will walk across stages and begin a new stage in their journey of life. Many will sit through boring, pointless, or otherwise uninformed graduation speeches, unhelpful microcosms of what happened to them in the classroom.

Perhaps the greatest commencement address of the modern era was given in 1978 by renowned Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. His prophetic voice to that year’s Harvard graduates stressed the importance of civil courage in the pursuit of truth. The trajectory of Harvard commencement addresses since then has been inconsistent at best. This year, grads will hear from late-night comedian Conan O’Brien, who will at least be funny. Henry Adams once quipped that the transition from President George Washington to President Ulysses S. Grant was sufficient evidence to refute Darwin’s theory of evolution. The same thing might be said of Harvard commencement speakers. As Harvard alum Charles Kesler quipped, “So much for natural selection.”

Important to understanding this time of year and what it all means is the choice of words. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word graduated, as an adjective, goes back to the 1600s and simply means to have received or hold a university degree. Yet, to have merely graduated lacks special significance. Consider the growth in the number of college graduates in America today, driven by the massive expansion of higher education institutions, degree modalities, and the seemingly endless supply of federal financial aid. One could also add the rising chorus of concerns about students’ use of AI to complete assignments, grade inflation, and declining academic standards, all of which make college degrees more attainable but less distinctive.

According to recent data, between 1993 and 2023, the number of U.S. college graduates among adults aged 25 and older skyrocketed by 75%. Today, 38.3% of Americans aged 25 and older are college graduates compared to 20% in 1990. None of this is meant to discredit what so many have done to earn a college degree, but it seems clear that an undergraduate degree is not the marker of distinction it once was.

Framing graduation as a “commencement” points to a higher purpose. To commence means to begin or to enter. Unfortunately, for many, what is not clear is what they are to begin? Or to enter where? As one Duke University graduate put it years ago, quoted by Steve Garber in his book The Fabric of Faithfulness,

“We’ve got no idea of what it is that we want by the time somebody graduates. This so-called curriculum is a set of hoops that someone says students ought to jump through before graduation. No one seems to have asked, ‘how do people become good people?’”

After 10 months of rigorous worldview training in a cohort setting with like-minded colleagues, the Colson Fellows Program does not graduate fellows. Nor are they asked to commence into their next stage of life. Rather, Chuck Colson determined that they would be commissioned, and therein lies a worldview of difference.

The Colson Fellows Program provides key distinctives that help Christians develop a Christian worldview and engage the world with clarity, confidence, and courage. As noted in the American Mind, the fellowship model has many virtues worth extolling:

The fellowship is small enough to be genuinely formative. The curriculum is focused enough to produce actual knowledge. And the community that emerges—the fellowship in the deepest sense—persists long after it’s over.

That has been the experience of Colson Fellows. Through Scripture, serious study, and a committed learning community, participants in the Colson Fellows Program move beyond merely understanding a Christian worldview to actually inhabiting it—here and now, for the good of their neighbors and the glory of God.

In How Now Shall We Live?, Chuck Colson made a claim that lies at the heart of the Colson Fellows Program:

Our calling is not only to order our own lives by divine principles but also to engage the world . . . We are commanded both to preach the Good News and to bring all things into submission to God’s order, by defending and living out God’s truth in the unique historical and cultural conditions of our age.

And so, the Colson Fellows Program culminates each year in a commissioning. Colson Fellows are charged to go into their spheres of influence as redemptive agents in this cultural moment. The language of commissioning is both appropriate and essential to the purpose of the Program, and Colson Fellows accept it with confidence, knowing that Jesus promised in His Great Commission, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

If you are interested in the Colson Fellows Program, visit https://www.colsonfellows.org/.

Related Article

9 Ways to Trust God When Graduation Brings Change

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Rattankun Thongbun

John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.