Welcome to the Pursuit, a series documenting the experiences of a Colson Fellow-in-Training as they seek to walk wisely in this time and place. Each segment will provide an insider’s look at what a prospective participant can actually expect should they choose to embark on the journey themselves.
In this segment, we sat down with Cortina Nystad, a fifth-grade teacher, wife and mom, and American expat living in Norway, and asked her to share her experience with the Colson Fellows program. The Colson Fellows program is designed for busy men and women from all walks of life in mind. Here's a glimpse inside. Enjoy!
The Pursuit: Cortina Nystad
How a full-time Christian educator does the Colson Fellows program
As told to the Colson Center communications staff
Where are you from? I’m from the Chicagoland area, but I have been living outside of Oslo, Norway, since 2013.
What is your occupation? I’m a 5th grade teacher.
What stage of life are you in? I’m a wife and also a mom of three teenage boys, including a son with special needs. My husband and I both work full-time.
When did you become a follower of Christ? My parents grew up going to church, but as adults they didn’t. It was actually my neighbors who took me to church. I ended up going to a church camp, where I became a Christian and got baptized. After that, my parents and I started attending a new church in the Chicagoland area.
What led to your interest in the Colson Fellows program? Over the last few years of living in Norway, I started listening to the Breakpoint This Week podcast so I could get the news of the week from the U.S. from a Christian worldview. I also listened to The World and Everything in It and heard John Stonestreet on that. Then when they started promoting the Colson Fellows I thought, “Maybe that’s something I could do.” I reached out about doing the program two years ago. It didn’t work with my schedule at the time—but this past year it did!
What Colson Fellows cohort are you in? How many CFITs are in your class? I was in an online cohort. We had a very small group. It was basically just me and another American couple, plus our cohort leader and a Colson Fellow from the previous year who would attend our meetings. I loved the small group. My mentor from the U.S. did the program at the same time, so we were encouraging each other along the way, even though we weren’t in the same cohort.
How did you approach the workload for the Colson Fellows program? Do you have advice for other participants? The way I handled it was by listening to audiobooks. I trained myself to listen to them at double speed, so that worked really well for me. And it helped me to have the truth in my head and heart all the time. Even when I listened to them, I also had physical copies of the books to reference when it came time to enter my answers to the questions in Pathwright.
What was your favorite book or topic to study? How Now Shall We Live? was definitely one of my favorites. I still re-listen to it in pieces when I want to prompt some reflections that are worldview based, you know, with the current political climate. I just can’t believe how forward-thinking Chuck Colson was. I can’t believe that book was written so long ago and so many things in it have come to fruition.
Most challenging moment? I think my biggest challenge was probably that same book! It was so big. Finishing it was a big milestone.
Where has the Colson Fellows program most impacted you? What transformation did it bring about in your life? It has most impacted me in my commitment to biblical literacy in the people around me. I’m part of a very tiny Bible study, and I’m asking how I can influence it so that we’re teaching biblical literacy all the time. We meet every other week, and I don’t think most of the people read their Bibles every day. If we’re going to meet so little, it has to be very meaningful and from the Bible.
A younger woman in her 20s has come into my life. She’s super hungry to learn more, and my group encouraged me to mentor her. I was meeting with her but not going through the Bible with her, but now I am—and with her mom too! And her mom has told another woman in the group that we’re meeting and reading the Bible together. Just a few months ago, no one was interested at all, so this is so cool! Now we get together, read Scripture, and ask questions like, “What did we learn about Jesus? What’s a command? What’s something we should avoid?”
What did you do for your personal mission plan as a commissioned Colson Fellow? My mission plan was to help people pursue biblical literacy. Whoever I can help and encourage to pursue biblical literacy, I want to do that. I just want to take care of the community I’m a part of right now, and maybe we can take this year to build each other up in biblical literacy and see what the Lord has for us after that.
What would you say to someone considering the program? I would just say the Lord will provide. He will provide the time and the motivation. The workload is very intense, but the Lord will completely provide. I jumped out of bed every morning in the darkness at 5 a.m. just to read Bill Brown’s devotionals. And that just set the tone for the whole course—that it’s really about knowing Jesus more. So, if you’re right there on the edge of doing the program, you should definitely do it.
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