Evan Maxwell serves as Admissions Coordinator at Act Five. However, he began his work with Act Five as a Resident Leader. In both of these roles, he has had many opportunities to reflect on how Act Five transforms students, and what may make it different from other programs or pathways.
Rooted and Growing
In the process of looking into how gap year programs ‘market’ themselves or communicate what they do, I found something that made Act Five stand out. Other programs have taglines on their websites or promotional material beckoning you to come ‘do this’, or ‘do more.’ As I was looking through our website, I was struck by our tagline on the home page. It’s not calling you into doing more or being more, instead it’s “Rooted In Faith, Growing In Community, Living With Purpose”. These values and convictions are what people are experiencing and embodying as a part of Act Five’s community – it’s not just a beckon, it’s an invitation to become a person of character, within community.
At Act Five, community isn’t just a by-product of doing a program together. Experiencing the community and the indwelling values are the deepest parts of what Act Five is, and the reason students leave having been transformed.
Through the process of experiential learning, community, and discipleship, people slowly begin to change. When you allow yourself to be a part of something fully, investing time and energy into it, you are slowly shaped by it. It’s like how we start to sound like our friends or family members after being around them for a long time; we are shaped by the people around us.
This is exactly how Jesus helped to shape his disciples. There’s a reason Jesus didn’t create a system where they’d meet him once a month and talk about life and God – transformation takes time, just as community takes time, intentional time.
Building Connection
As a Resident Leader in Act Five, I had time in my afternoons, and I began to try to bake cookies. I am not a natural baker. These skills did not come easily to me. Regardless, I wanted to gain some baking skills, and an ability to eat fresh cookies more often. This meant that I spent a considerable amount of time and ingredients in the main kitchen, focused. It wasn’t muscle memory, so I wasn’t able to put on a podcast or a show in the background. I was just there to bake. This meant that I was approachable to people, especially to students who were just hanging out.
I wasn’t projecting my best self, in fact, it was just the opposite. I was able to be vulnerable; too focused on trying to figure out baking to notice how I might’ve looked. There was more than one batch that I had to use a hammer to separate the cookie-like substance from the baking sheet. I had not yet learned the value of oiling the baking sheet or of using parchment paper. During all these moments I was baking, I had deep, honest conversations with others and we were able to delve into hardships and difficulties the students were wrestling with.
Becoming Transformed
This is just what I was saying earlier about transformation; we don’t become a community by enjoying only peaceful moments together. We become closer, deeper and richer communities by experiencing challenges and overcoming them together, weathering the storms together and giving time to be shaped by the whole of a community and our own place in it.
It is a gift to be able to spend time with people who are after the same thing, and an experience most people don’t have the opportunity to be in every day after their university or college years. And through re-discovering our website’s tag-line and reminiscing on many burnt cookies, I am reminded of how powerful a thing like Act Five’s Gap Year or Residency program can be. When we allow ourselves to be shaped and transformed, and to experience hardships alongside others (even when that hardship is as simple as being bad at baking!), we become more embodied humans, with richer experiences and deeper understanding of what it means to live like Jesus.
Keep Exploring
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