Andrea Agola

Multi-Uni Black Christian Fellowship Convention!

Recently, I attended a Multi-University Black Christian Fellowship Convention at Tufts University with Dartmouth's Morning Glory Community Fellowship. The Saturday event was wonderful and a great time to join together in fellowship with students from Tufts, Brown University and Harvard University. The conference took place at Tufts' Interfaith Center, their version of our (Dartmouth's) William Jewett Tucker Center which is more commonly called Tucker. 

"Tucker cultivates spiritual and ethical lives…is inclusive and affirming of all students, faculty, staff and alumni and offers caring, thought-provoking opportunities to grow a sense of connection and purpose through reflective personal exploration and intentional community engagement." Within Tucker, Morning Glory Community Fellowship is a student-led, interdenominational Christian group influenced by African, Diasporic & African-American worship traditions. All are welcome to join and participate in praise, worship, and fellowship every Monday evening at 7pm! Morning Glory hopes that students will "join us as we celebrate who God is and what He's doing in our lives." 

After a Dartmouth Coach ride into Boston and a bit of train confusion – we may or may not have rode 30 minutes in the wrong direction – we arrived at the convention during mingling time. Everyone got to meet each other and the Tufts students even gave us a tour of campus! Worship followed afterwards in which Morning Glory's Anthony Fosu '24 played the ukulele and everyone sang. The songs were "King of Kings" by Chandler Moore (originally by Hillsong), "Promises" by Maverick City and the Doxology hymn. Soon after, we had Chick-fil-A for lunch which I was so happy about because I'd missed it so much. After lunch, we took turns doing scripture/passage readings then decided to go outside for small group discussions since the weather was lovely. The questions not only pertained to the scriptures but included ones like: What do you love about your community? Why is it important that your school has a Black Christian Ministry? We closed out by regrouping and sharing key moments from our small group discussions. After a little walk through the bustling city and with the sun setting around us, we boarded the coach back to Dartmouth. 

Morning Glory meets the MBTA (handshake emoji)

I'm so grateful for this experience and for Morning Glory's existence at Dartmouth. I love the sense of community Morning Glory offers. This is especially felt when we close out meetings by going around the circle and hearing prayer requests on anything like health, exams, social relationships, internships, and more. To me, having a Black Christian Ministry is important because not only do we uplift the word of God, we uplift each other.