About TFI
A network of churches raising up leaders who don't split their faith from their Monday morning.
The Fellows Initiative is a network of Christian discipleship and leadership programs for recent college graduates. We want the year after school to be more than a layover between a degree and a career — a year that shapes how someone works, worships, and shows up for the people around them for a long time after.
Every program in the network holds the same commitment, to Jesus Christ, his Word, and his church, worked out through servant leadership where faith, work, and community aren't kept in separate rooms.
What we do
Three jobs, one network
TFI itself doesn't run a Fellows Program — local churches do. What we provide is the training, coaching, and intentional know-how so a church can launch and run one well.
Keep the existing programs strong
Serve and strengthen the church-based Fellows Programs already up and running across the country, so directors aren't figuring it out alone.
Bring new churches into the network
Expand by helping new churches, in new cities, launch Fellows Programs of their own rather than starting from a blank page.
Keep people connected once the program ends
Build real community among Fellows, alumni, and staff, so someone's discipleship doesn't stop the day their cohort does.
Our story
Where this started
Before there was a Fellows Program, there was L'Abri
Francis Schaeffer opened it as a center for Christian study in Switzerland, teaching young people to hold biblical conviction, real community, and honest engagement with culture together instead of choosing between them. TFI has no formal tie to L'Abri, but the modern Fellows Program builds on that same ground, with one addition: a much stronger tie to the local church.
The first Fellows Program
The first Fellows Program opened in the Washington, DC area. What that first group figured out over the following years became the shape most Fellows Programs still follow today.
The Fellows Initiative is formed
TFI was formed to support the program directors already doing this work and train the ones who wanted to start. TFI is an independent nonprofit, but it exists to serve local churches — we think of the church, not TFI, as the actual hub of the work.
A coast-to-coast network
TFI is a coast-to-coast network of Fellows Programs, each one still run by and accountable to a local church, equipping several hundred young leaders every year.
The program
What a Fellows Program actually looks like
A Fellows Program runs 9 to 10 months and asks a lot of a recent graduate: a real job in their field (yes, we help you get one), graduate-level coursework and Bible study, one-on-one mentoring, and real service in a local church and city — inside a cohort of peers going through all of it at the same time.
How do you think "Christianly" about work, culture, and the friendships you're building right now — not someday, but this year?
That's the question a Fellows Program is built to sit with. Fellows spend their first year out of school figuring out how their own story fits inside a much bigger one, instead of drifting through it on autopilot.
Head
Graduate coursework and biblical studies — real theological training, not a Bible study bolted onto a job.
Heart
A cohort you actually do the year with, plus a mentor who knows your specific situation, not a generic playbook.
Hands
A real job with real responsibility, and hands-on service in the church and the city around it.
More than a launchpad
The approach works as a way to start a career. It also works as a strategy — for a church that would rather keep its young adults than watch them drift off after graduation, into a new city or just out of the habit of showing up.
The Fellows
Core Beliefs
01
Jesus Christ & His Church
Unified by a core belief in and love for Jesus Christ and His Church.
02
Whole-Life Discipleship
We seek to honor and serve Him in every area of life.
May this be at work, at church, at home, and in society.
03
High View of Scripture
We share a high view of Scripture as God’s good word for the world.
04
Historic Christian Faith
Churches joining the network affirm a set of historic Christian beliefs that reflect deep trust in Jesus Christ and the truths of His Gospel.