Sojourners Fellowship Program welcomes rising leaders to work and learn alongside our professional staff as we fulfill our mission to articulate the biblical call to social justice. The year-long program combines full-time, entry-level jobs in our Washington, D.C. office with an opportunity to live in a shared community house. The fellowship is a time for personal, spiritual, and professional growth. To learn more, view the fellowship information.
The Cycle 40 fellows bring our values of stewardship, joy, grace, and storytelling. We are committed to an atmosphere of continued learning, both spiritual and political, as we put our faith in action for social justice. We are grateful for the 50+ year legacy of the Sojourners community and strive to contribute to its continued purpose.
To our fellowship year, the 38th cycle of Sojourners fellows bring our passion for justice, love for storytelling, commitment to radical welcome, and the desire to put our faith in action as members of the body of Christ. We are bringing ourselves and our experiences to the work of Sojourners while allowing the community and work of Sojourners to shape us.
Cycle 37 of the Sojourners Fellowship Program
Comprising the 37th cycle of Sojourners fellows, we come with restless hearts and faithful spirits, ready to contribute to Sojourners’ nearly 50-year history. We are already busy fact-checking articles; organizing campaigns for a free, fair, and safe election; and maintaining the circulation and sustainability of this social justice organization.
Living in the intentional community feels like living with nine incredible siblings. Holding faith, justice, and empathy as a foundation, we actively choose to get to know each other and allow ourselves to be known.
In our home, we have entered a space where we can be our unrefined, imperfect selves. We don’t need to impress each other. We can simply be, and grow as beings. This involves conversations about hard topics and sharing our deepest hurts and struggles with each other, but luckily, it also involves a lot of laughter. I don’t want to brag (OK, maybe I do,) but we are a hilarious bunch. A quote board hangs on our wall, and we regularly add funny one liners (funny to us at least). Different things strike different people as funny, but laughter is truly contagious. Usually it just takes one of us to get the whole table laughing.
Every fall, Sojourners welcomes 8 - 10 leaders to our office here in Washington, D.C. for a year-long internship program focused on spiritual formation, professional development, vocational discernment, and communal living. Program members are placed in different departments and work full-time alongside our staff. Throughout the program, interns practice intentional community living: sharing a budget, meals, spiritual practices, sorrows and joys, among many other things.
I was the first intern of Cycle 34 to arrive at the Sojourners intern house in Washington, D.C., in August. An incredibly generous staff member picked me up from the airport, drove me the hour back to the house, and left me to settle into my new home (later I learned that this type of generosity was just a part of the job at Sojourners, but that is another story altogether).
Image via Sojourners / JP Keenan
A new wave of hopeful energy has emerged here at Sojourners with the arrival of Cycle 34 interns!
Together in community, we have the opportunity to reveal our whole selves to one another: our pains, our joys, our doubts, our hopes, our failings, and our gifts. Being like Christ is to love people in their fullness — recognizing their strengths and not stopping there, recognizing their weaknesses and not stopping there. Because of our love for one another, we see each other. We do not dwell on our shortcomings, and we do not pretend their nonexistence. We are not wholly bad or wholly good. We are a beautiful, human group of somewhere-in-betweens who desperately want to live out Jesus’ commandment to love one another.
Staff and interns celebrate online assistant Da'Shawn Mosley's graduation from the University of Chicago, and their first week on the job. Image via Sojourners.
Each fall, Sojourners welcomes a new cycle of interns to our yearlong internship program. The program seeks to empower these leaders through professional development, spiritual guidance, simple living, and community building. The program embodies our organization’s history, which was birthed out of holistic community.
Every fall, Sojourners warmly welcomes a new intern class. For a year, a group of 10 women and men join our mission to put faith in action for social justice. Each intern works full time in one of our departments. The Sojourners Internship Program is dedicated to offering a holistic integration of life and faith through professional development, spiritual guidance, and intentional Christian community. Sojourners is also committed to providing interns with housing, meals, healthcare, local transportation, and a stipend in keeping with a simple lifestyle.
Our newest intern group, Cycle 32 (Yes, this program has been around for 32 years and is going strong!), comes from a dizzying array of backgrounds and religious traditions. From California to New Hampshire, they are brought together by their passion for faith and social justice. They bring laughter, creativity, and just the right dose of quirkiness with them wherever they go.
Read on to learn about each individual in Cycle 32 and the people they are grateful for in their own journeys to Sojourners. And a deep thanks from our entire staff for the ways your support allows this internship program to thrive year after year!
Intern Cycle 30. Image via Sojourners.
This week’s headlines regarding the latest Pew report about the changing religious landscape in the US have gotten me thinking about my own journey with religion, especially as the discussion continues to emphasize the growth of the 'Nones' – the religiously unaffiliated who are said to now make up about one-fifth of the population and outnumber Catholics and mainline Protestants.
Almost eight years ago, I showed up to work at Sojourners for the first time as a member of Sojourners’ Intern Cycle 24. It saved my faith and it changed my life.
Screenshot via Ted English / Sojourners
Alongside professional development and communal living, Sojourners’ internship program prioritizes spiritual formation through educational seminars, spiritual retreats, and mentorship pairings. Seminar topics focus on the intersection between faith and justice, and this year have included politics as vocation, simple living, reflecting on MLK, and discerning spiritual gifts.
Three spiritual retreats over the course of the year emphasize a time of rest, reflection, and service. Along with other communal living commitments, interns hold a weekly time of prayer to pray for their house, the neighborhood, and the world.
Screenshot from 'The Sojourners Internship Program' trailer. Courtesy Ted English/Sojourners.
It’s rare that a film can take all of these journeys and still tell a cohesive story. Sometimes, when we’re very lucky, a truly special film comes along that gets as close as possible to combining and distilling the infinite layers of the human experience. The Sojourners Internship Program is one of these truly special feats. It takes each facet of its characters’ journeys seriously, and allows each of them to explore those facets in their own unique ways.
Like most great stories, the setup of The Sojourners Internship Program is simple, but filled with the potential to go any number of directions: 10 individuals from different ethnic, economic, political and spiritual backgrounds are selected as interns for a social justice organization. They travel to Washington, D.C., to live in community and work together. But the community they live in is no ordinary community, and neither is the organization. The interns enter their house in Columbia Heights as strangers with hopes, ideals, doubts and a few preconceived notions. But they will leave forever changed.
Screenshot via Ted English / Sojourners
At Sojourners, our interns have the chance to meaningfully put their faith into action for social justice. Placed in entry-level positions throughout the office, interns are given significant responsibilities that range from writing for the blog to managing relationships with donors to collaborating on mobilizing initiatives.These full-time jobs are combined with mentorships that help connect each intern’s professional development with their vocational discernment.