The Clearing After the Summit

In 2019, Keisha Dawson stood on the stage at Howard University's School of Divinity, diploma in hand, her mother weeping in the third row. Three professors had told her she was one of the most gifted students they had seen in years. Her advisor clasped her shoulder and said, "You were made for this." Forty-eight hours later, she was sitting on the floor of a bare apartment in rural West Virginia, alone, starting a church plant in a town where she knew no one.…