Fusion talk a lot about going to university – that life transition of moving away from home to a new location, and how to navigate such a big change.
But what about afterwards? What about the transition from student to graduate?
In one church I spoke to the other week, they realised they had a growing number of students who were staying and settling in that community post-graduation. Dan, their student worker, realised that these guys needed specific teaching and tools for dealing with the issues they faced in their workplace and a new culture, far-flung from the campuses and student societies they’d been part of the year before.
They needed to feel like someone else had gone before them and was already figuring out what it looked like to follow Jesus in graduate life, in the increasingly diverse communities they found themselves in, post-studenthood.
What’s the best way of cheering them on into the next season of life?
For Dan, it began with celebrating the new opportunities of their new life stage, by giving each of his graduates a copy of The Graduate Alphabet. It made a great difference to each of them to even just acknowledge properly the end of their journey as a student, to pray over them and to challenge each of them to hit the ground running as a graduate. With stories, tips, encouragement and challenges for life after graduation, The Graduate Alphabet is one way churches can help students through the next transition.
You can buy a copy of The Graduate Alphabet here
