A Gift Greater Than Anyone Had Anticipated
Thank you for investing in the Orlando Heart of the City Fellows! This program is going on ten years now, and it all started with a brilliant idea, a courageous and compassionate leader, and the generosity of people like you. This photo is from the Orlando Fellows alumni welcome dinner in 2025. Lots of familiar faces here!
At a retreat for The Fellows Initiative, Bret Allen, Minister of Family Life at First Pres, watched fellows program directors and their eager flocks of recent college graduates walk about the retreat center. The air resonated with the fellows’ excitement to learn and mature in their faith, with their joy and playfulness. Suddenly, Bret thought, I really want to do this.
“It captures my heart,” shares Bret Allen, Minister of Family Life and Director of the Orlando Fellows, “to invest in this age group and to be in relationship with them and lead, and guide, and direct them to whatever gateway God chooses. I’m as blessed by this as they are.” One of the trips Bret take the fellows on each year to form them spiritually is a mission trip to the Dominican Republic. Here’s Bret with the men from the class of 2025 in the DR.
In 2016, the First Pres senior leadership team wondered if they might start a fellows program here at the church. They knew it would be a wonderful experience to offer to recent college grads who are interested in learning more about the integration between faith and work, but they had questions about whether it would be a wise investment financially. If they were to do it—because they really wanted to do it—they felt that Bret would be the perfect person to lead it. Unsure, he did some research. He went to this retreat. And he fell in love with the idea.
Michelle Jernigan, longtime Covenant Partner and Heart of the City Foundation trustee, also went to a conference by The Fellows Initiative. She, too, felt a spark fly. When she came back, she presented the program to the rest of the trustees of the Foundation, who also felt enthusiastic towards it.
She remembers, “We recognized that it would involve not only businesses in our area but our church and also families because obviously the fellow has to have a family to stay with. So we looked at all those factors and thought it would really be a great thing for the Heart of the City Foundation to fund because it would create a legacy going forward.”
With so many Covenant Partners excited to fund the program through the Heart of the City Foundation, the Orlando Heart of the City Fellows became a reality. Michelle and Bret worked on the application for the fellows, and soon, they received their first application from Lindsay Smith, formerly Alexander. Bret says, “Nobody else had signed up and she said, ‘I’ll be the first one.’ And I tell her all the time, ‘If you hadn’t said yes, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened. We had to have the first one, and you were the first one.’ She’s special.” Soon, they had twelve fellows. In fall of 2017, Bret launched this first class.
Over the last nine years, he has curated a program that he’s proud of, one which complements his personal strengths, passions, and convictions. When asked what he believes makes the Orlando Fellows exceptional, he says, “Our bent towards spiritual formation.” Each aspect of the program exposes the fellows to new ways to orient themselves towards God.
Every week, the fellows gather at Bret’s house for a “Roundtable” dinner. This particular Roundtable was at Christmas this past year.
When they go on a mission trip, they learn how God moves through them when they encounter poverty within a foreign culture, serving together. When they engage in theological training, they understand God in ways they never have before. During their “Roundtable” dinners each week at Bret’s house, they cook together, pray together, and enjoy nourishment together, experiencing how a spirit of family creates space for healing and growth. Through their internships, they learn how to meld their faith with their work, and when they set aside a day or even many days for silence, they learn how to let God stir in them through rest.
A major opportunity each fellow also receives throughout the program is monthly counseling. During these sessions, the fellows are encouraged to go even deeper, considering how all the pieces of their childhood and young adulthood, their relationships, their life experiences, have made them who they are today—with all of their joys, fears, blessings, and wounds. All of this is possible because of the generosity of people like you.
There’s another aspect of the program that is equally vital for the spirit, though perhaps underestimated: They have fun! Bret shares, “At first, I was like, gosh, I don’t want to be known as the ‘fun’ Fellows program. It’s almost surface-y level. But now we’re unapologetic about it. We believe that God is so honored and pleased and just glad we’re having fun. And we laugh together and go to Universal and ride roller coasters and do the things we do. We think it’s part of living the abundant life that Christ talked about.”
As expected, the Orlando Fellows has transformed the lives—and souls—of the fellows who have taken part in it. What Bret and many others didn’t know or weren’t sure to expect is how extraordinarily this program and these fellows have transformed the church.
Here’s class of 2026 with their host families. Host families pour so much love and kindness into these fellows. The program wouldn’t be the same without them. This year, for the first time, an Orlando Fellow alum is hosting a fellow!
One way in which the program has changed the life of the church is through its host families. “Initially, I would say host families were like, ‘They’ve got to sleep somewhere and get some food,’ you know? Then a couple years in, I was like, ‘Wow, this is a significant element.’ I talked to a host family recently that said, ‘Until Fellows came along and we became a host family, we were not engaged with the church. Now we’re so engaged in church.’” No one knew the church needed it, but now more than 60 families have had the opportunity to express their generosity and Christian hospitality by hosting a fellow, strengthening people’s bonds.
When Ana Montoya, alum of Orlando Fellows’ first class, told Bret, “My host family will sit with my family at my wedding,” it was a sweet moment for him, and it demonstrated just how much these host families can mean to these fellows and how much these fellows can mean to their host families.
Other ways in which the Fellows Program has beautifully impacted the church are how so many of the Fellows alumni stay in Orlando at First Pres—becoming the core of the 20s Ministry, volunteering in Student and Children’s Ministry, and even becoming staff at the church. Emily Dotson, alum of the fifth class, is now on the Young Adult Ministry team and works alongside Bret with the Orlando Fellows. Bret says, “I met her when she was a junior in college, talked to her about Fellows, and I get to officiate her wedding in July. Who’d have thought? I’m excited about where God’s taking her and the path that she’s on.”
Orlando Heart of the City Fellows’ fifth class, including Emily Dotson (middle row, second from the left) and Nathan Shinn (bottom row, left). It’s really special when the fellows stay in Orlando and at First Pres. So grateful for the way these fellows alum continue to pour their love and energy into our church.
Nathan Shinn, also an alum of the fifth class, volunteers with the Children’s Ministry and frequently hosts events for the 20s Ministry. “If he walked into the Children’s Ministry building any time on a Sunday morning,” laughs Bret, “there are kids just jumping all over him. They just love the guy.” One of Nathan’s close friends and an alum of the fourth class, Ben Willsey, has been a Student Ministry leader for the last few years. You’ll be able to read his story in our upcoming print newsletter.
Ultimately, the Orlando Heart of the City Fellows has been a gift greater than anyone had anticipated, for everyone involved, and none of it would have been possible without the faithful generosity of people like you. Already, Bret and his team are assembling their tenth class of Orlando Fellows, and they are celebrating the recruitment of their 100th fellow, a woman named Eden. You can be ready to give her and the rest of the tenth class a warm welcome this fall!
“There’s no way to measure the impact that the Fellows program is having on the city of Orlando, the First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, and the fellows who are actually graduating,” says Brett, “As much as we could try to quantify or tell stories, I think it still falls far short of the way other people are impacted by what we’re doing. And I didn’t even talk about all the fellows that live in other places. We’re maybe not going to feel that, but what about Madisen who lives in Charleston, or Hunter who lives in Washington, D.C., or Kate, or Nathan who lives in Atlanta? How are these fellows out there making a difference in the places they are? In the churches they’re in? That we don’t even know about.”
