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 Laura Laster, who spends her days between her roles as pilot, aviation instructor, wife, and mother, 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: Laura Laster
How an Aviation Instructor Does the Colson Fellows Program
As told to the Colson Center communications staff
Where are you from?
Longview, Texas.
What is your occupation? I work at LeTourneau University, where I’m one of the aviation faculty members. I’ve been teaching there full-time since 2019. I’m a pilot, an FAA-certified aircraft dispatcher, flight instructor, and I teach a variety of aviation topics.
What stage of life are you in? I’ve been married for 22 years. My husband and I have a daughter who is 11 and a son who is 15. My husband also went through the Colson Fellows program the year after me.
When did you become a follower of Christ? I was raised in a Christian family, and we went to a Bible-believing church. That's just what we did. I went to a Christian K-12 school. My parents were very into Christian education. My mom has talked about me becoming a Christian in Sunday school when I was three. It was one of those things where I said, “I want to pray to receive Christ.” I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t an “official” salvation experience, and I would have told you I was a Christian. But I didn’t really make my faith my own until I was into my 30s. Really, I credit the Colson Fellows program with helping me make my faith my own and getting more serious about my faith.
What led to your interest in the Colson Fellows program? I had been listening to Breakpoint for a really long time. I first started when Eric Metaxas was on, and he alternated with John Stonestreet. They would talk about the Colson Fellows program when it included four trips a year to D.C. I couldn’t afford it or manage it at the time, because I had younger kids and was working while my husband went to school full-time. But, after COVID they mentioned starting online cohorts. I was very interested in that, and I decided I wanted to be in it.
This is kind of a cool story. I told my boss I was going to do this program. He said, “You could use your money for that,” and I said, “What money?” He said, “We get $1,000 every year to spend on faculty development. It would be a perfect use for that.” I applied, and the whole thing (books included) added up to $997 dollars, so it covered the whole cost. It just felt like a God thing.
What Colson Fellows cohort are you in? How many CFITs are in your class? I was in the Central online cohort with about 40 people. I thought it worked really well. They said we would have a 3–4-hour long meeting [every month], and I thought, “How am I going to engage with that?” But at the first meeting, the time just flew by.
I thought they managed it really well. Our cohort leader was excellent. She would break us into smaller groups and then into bigger groups for discussion. I thought it was great.
It was also really fun to meet everybody in person at the Wilberforce Weekend [Colson Center National Conference] in Orlando. Me and a few other ladies in the cohort made our own WhatsApp group, because one of them lived in another country. We would get together offline occasionally and talk about different things from the program that we were learning.
We also did a follow-up book club and invited other people from outside the program to join us. It was neat how the online format brought people together. There are people who would never be able to do it if it weren’t for the online format, because we live in a kind of rural area.
How did you approach the workload for the Colson Fellows program? Do you have advice for other participants? I read a lot, so I said to myself, “I’ll replace my current reading with books from the Colson Fellows.” Personally, I did not find the workload to be insane. It was a bit like my master’s degree that I did online, which was pretty laid-back. In some ways, the Colson Fellows Program was more work than that. It took more time and planning, but I appreciated how much I was able to fit it in with my normal reading. I just didn’t read any books “for fun” for a few months. I read pretty fast, so for me it was doable. I watched some of the videos at double speed, but I never got behind and was able to stay on track.
What was your favorite book or topic to study? Definitely Mere Christianity. I was afraid of it before I started, but I read it and thought, “This is a really good book!” I’ve actually led two book clubs of students through it since then, and that’s been really fun. I also really liked Nabeel Qureshi’s book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus and Another Gospel? by Alisa Childers.
Most challenging moment? My most challenging moment was figuring out what to write for my mission and vision statements. But my mentor helped me a lot with that.
Where has the Colson Fellows program most impacted you? What transformation did it bring about in your life? I think of the program as an experience in refocusing. It’s like when you go to summer camp and get pulled out of your normal routine for a week or two. It was like that, but for nine or ten months. It really was transformational as far as refocusing on questions like, “What am I here to do?” and “What does God have me here for?”
My husband and I paid my son to read Mere Christianity. We took him to lunch a bunch of times to talk to him about what he got out of it. We’ve also had him read other books from the program. So, even our family got reoriented toward what’s important. We brought him to the Colson Center National Conference in 2024, and he asked us, “When can I sign up?”
I benefited from the program’s structure of being in community with people and reading good books and devotions that guided what I was thinking about. It helped me focus and ask myself, “What is God leading me to do to?”
What did you do for your personal mission plan as a commissioned Colson Fellow? I compiled all my notes from the program—notes from every reading, my three-year plan [now the personal mission plan], and a list of all the projects I thought about doing. I’ve done a bunch of those things already, like leading a Mere Christianity book study, which I’ve done twice now. I made a series of videos where I interviewed various Christians in the aviation industry about how they’re sharing their faith at work and how Christianity affects what they do. I also led a mentoring group at my university where we watched various What Would You Say? videos based on the topics the students wanted to learn about.
I feel like college students are my target group, because I’m already in that setting. So, I’ve been doing what I can every semester to continue to impact them. I’ve been asked to speak at chapel twice, and I used those opportunities to share some of what I learned in the program.
What would you say to someone in higher education who’s considering the program? You should definitely do it. If you’re in Christian higher education, this program absolutely helps. But even if you’re not in Christian education, this program gives you an excellent basis for apologetics and applied knowledge. Most higher education people are in this field because we like to learn. So, for me, it was really fun to take more time to learn. You will learn a lot from the program no matter where you’re at in your Christian faith journey. I keep telling people at my university to sign up!