Jen Vanover stands outside the Duval County Courthouse in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. Opened in 2012, this building houses courtrooms and judges from the Duval County and Fourth Judicial Circuit Courts. (source)
Jen Vanover stands outside the Duval County Courthouse in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. Opened in 2012, this building houses courtrooms and judges from the Duval County and Fourth Judicial Circuit Courts. (source)
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Jen Vanover, a Jacksonville, Florida lawyer, stared at the assessment in front of her. Reflecting on each question, she identified herself on a scale of one to 15 using the statements corresponding to each number.
“How well are you able to handle anxiety, stress and fear?” 8 — I’m productive, but it affects my well-being.
“How would you describe your work/life balance?” 5 — Not great.
“How would you describe your spiritual life/health at this point?” 7 — I wish I felt more connected to God.
Tom McThenia (left), Jen Vanover and Rupa Lloyd talk in a conference room at GrayRobinson’s Jacksonville office, on the 11th floor of the Bank of America Tower — the tallest building in the city. Tom and Rupa usually work at the firm’s Gainesville office. The firm has 16 offices across Florida and Washington, D.C.
Jacksonville’s glittering skyline casts colorful light across the St. Johns River at dusk.
When John Westmoreland, executive director of Faith and Law Around the Globe® (FLAG, a Cru® ministry), invited Jen to join a biweekly virtual FLAG group three years ago, he asked if she wanted to grow personally, professionally and spiritually. John kicks off every new group with a 32-question assessment, which examines these three areas of life. Jen thought she’d at least score highly in the personal and professional categories, but her results were sobering.
Jen’s life revolved around billable hours and an endless to-do list. Burned out and ready for a change, she realized that the invitation to FLAG meant an invitation to live differently. Her life hasn’t been the same since.
GrayRobinson attorneys gather for a monthly luncheon. These lunches give people time to connect and discuss topics relevant to the entire firm, like budgets, recruitment, and upcoming social and business development events.
A Boston-area native, Jen grew up in a community of diverse religious backgrounds. With a mind motivated by evidence and facts, she understood faith as a comforting worldview that some people choose to believe, rather than as spiritual realities grounded in history.
This understanding began to change in 2014 when she met her husband, Mike, who had attended Mass every Sunday for most of his life. Jen slowly started joining him on Sundays, and when they decided to get married, she began the process of officially joining the Roman Catholic Church.
When Jen first started wearing her Fitbit smartwatch, she was surprised by how little she moved on a normal day — only about 1,200 steps. She worried that she wouldn’t reach anywhere near the suggested 7,000 daily step goal. Now, she and her husband, Mike, take lunchtime and evening walks around their neighborhood almost every day. On stressful days, Jen says, a 10-minute walk refreshes her energy and focus.
Jen attended classes that Mike’s church offered to learn the basics of the Christian faith. Despite her consistent participation, the spiritual topics weren’t making sense to her.
“Without any sort of religious background at all, it was very confusing,” she says.
Until 2013, Jen worked at a country club in Florida as the dining room manager, where she coordinated weddings and events. Although she enjoyed her job, Jen grew tired of working nights and weekends. She decided to pursue a law degree, specializing in patent and intellectual property law, and she assumed that a shift to more traditional working hours would follow.
When she started working as a young associate at a large law firm, however, she found herself working days, nights and weekends.
She persevered, thinking the pressure would lessen as she progressed in her career, but it compounded instead.
“I was still doing a lot of work, and the stress was [increasing] because you kind of realize the magnitude of what you're doing,” she says. “This is really a big deal; this is people's livelihoods that you're managing.”
Spending time outside is one way Jen clears her head and connects with God. She and Mike spend many weekends on the water, at the beach or hiking around the cabin they’re building in North Carolina.
Jen lay wide awake most nights consumed by client problems, and every week began with a bout of what she calls the “Sunday scaries.”
“Sundays for me [were filled with] pure dread,” she says. “If I wasn’t actually having to work all day long, I was just thinking about what I should be doing. It was just a miserable day.”
By 2021, she knew something needed to change.
“I never had any time for myself,” Jen says. “I really was at the point where I was like, ‘OK, this career is unsustainable. I’m going to make myself sick — and not like getting a cold. I’m physically wearing myself down to the point where I can’t do this anymore.’”
At the height of all this stress, Jen’s colleague Tom McThenia helped introduce her to a virtual FLAG group.
Tom had worked for several years in campus ministry with Cru before becoming a lawyer. Because of his experience in both ministry and law, he played a key part in designing and launching the first of these virtual FLAG groups. He knew Jen was involved in a church and interested in growth opportunities, so he suggested that John Westmoreland reach out to her with an invitation to join a developing group.
Between meetings, Tom McThenia (left) stops to catch up with Jen. Tom recognizes the effectiveness of Faith and Law Around the Globe® (FLAG, a Cru® ministry) groups to work with lawyers’ busy schedules. “If a lawyer takes an hour, or five hours or a day to go do something in ministry outside of work,” he says, “that’s a direct impact on their income and their ability to get their job done.”
Jen said yes to John’s invitation to grow personally and professionally, but she didn’t know what to expect spiritually.
“I was super, super nervous because I thought it was going to be people quoting Scripture, and I was just going to feel like I don’t fit in at all,” Jen says. “I don’t know why I thought that, but I assumed [the other participants] would be like, ‘What is she doing here? She doesn’t know anything.’ And then it wasn’t like that at all.”
Instead, Jen noticed that the other lawyers in her group seemed to have a surprising peace. They faced similar pressures and problems in their law practices, but they weren’t consumed by their work the way Jen was.
“I was just blown away by how much everyone listened and cared,” she says. “I wanted what they had.”
Their secret? A relationship with Jesus.
Jen leads a discussion with her virtual Faith and Law Around the Globe® (FLAG, a Cru® ministry) group. FLAG groups use materials such as “Multiplying Your Life for Lawyers.” Many groups also choose suggested books to read and discuss together, such as “Leaders Eat Last” by Simon Sinek, a book Jen read with her group recently.
FLAG is a global, volunteer-led movement of lawyers dedicated to challenging legal professionals to develop their personal, professional and spiritual lives for lasting impact.
Faith and Law Around the Globe®: A Global Community
Jen’s biweekly virtual Faith and Law Around the Globe® (FLAG, a Cru® ministry) group includes attorneys from...
Jen’s biweekly virtual Faith and Law Around the Globe® (FLAG, a Cru® ministry) group includes attorneys from the United Kingdom and Guatemala, as well as the U.S. The first group she participated in consisted of four U.K. attorneys and four U.S. attorneys. Other FLAG virtual and in-person groups bring people together from North Africa, Eastern Europe, Francophone Africa, South Asia and beyond.
No matter their time zone or law practice, lawyers find community and belonging in these groups.
“I think lawyers’ lives are actually more similar around the world than I would have imagined,” Tom says. “It’s interesting — an African lawyer has more in common with a U.S. lawyer than you would imagine.”
Whether participants have followed Jesus for a long time or are simply curious about God, they learn the importance of faith in their practices, how to talk about their faith and how to mentor other lawyers.
Outside of her involvement with FLAG, Jen grew in her relationship with God in other ways. Soon after joining her first FLAG group, Jen and her husband started reading through the Bible together from start to finish — a first for both of them.
Jen and Mike are reading through the Bible a second time using a reading plan by Fr. Mike Schmitz. They follow along in their Bibles as the podcaster reads Genesis 3-4. When the podcast episode ends, they discuss that day’s verses.
“I remember sitting in [my home office] when we first started reading,” Jen says. “[Mike] would read in the morning, and he’d come in and say, ‘It's gonna blow your mind. You need to do it right now.’”
Suddenly, dinner conversations turned from endless work complaints to lively discussions about what they’d read in the Bible that day.
“It's part of my routine [now] versus, ‘Ugh, I have to check the box,’” Jen says. “Now, I want to do this. I enjoy this time. I get a lot out of it and it’s an important part of my day. It’s a priority versus a task.”
Jen exercises her creativity in the kitchen, particularly in creating a variety of dinner bowls. Her husband calls her a “bowl wizard,” for always knowing just the right combination of toppings.
Reading the Bible helped Jen learn about God, and her one-to-one mentorship with Lori Beyar, global vice president of Cru®’s Leader Strategies, provided her a space to ask questions along her journey of discovery.
After John introduced the two in early 2023, Jen and Lori met together regularly for a year and worked through a Leader Strategies resource called “Practical Christian Living.” This study helped Jen take what she was reading in the Bible from story to reality.
“Practical Christian Living” is a robust discipleship series that equips professionals to live out their faith in practical ways.
“Practical Christian Living” is a robust discipleship series that equips professionals to live out their faith in practical ways. According to the study’s introduction, it’s “designed to help a person grow from his or her initial commitment to Christ to a level of spiritual maturity that results in discipling others.”
Lori says she chose “Practical Christian Living” for its simplicity and focus on multiplying faith. This study covers the basics of faith like salvation, forgiveness, prayer, community and evangelism.
“I was a chemistry major in undergrad. So I really like concrete, tangible proof,” Jen says. “One of the chapters [in “Practical Christian Living”] is about how the evidence is there. Like the scrolls and writings.”
From biblical artifacts to the identity and works of Jesus, this study gave substance to the Christian beliefs that had long puzzled Jen.
Lori says she enjoyed meeting with Jen and was humbled by the opportunity to witness her spiritual journey. Lori also says their meetings worked to strengthen her own connection with God.
“Why does our organization exist? It’s for people like Jen, who love Jesus,” she says. “We can come alongside them, be part of their journey and help them become multiplying disciples.”
It’s been three years since John first invited Jen to join a FLAG group. She no longer wakes up in the middle of the night stressed about work; she doesn’t get the “Sunday scaries” anymore; and she has found the rest she longed for in Jesus.
Not everything has changed, though, she admits.“I have the same clients, I have the same workload, I have the same everything; but at 6 o’clock, I’m done for the day and I can shut it down and enjoy my evening.”
Jen leans over a puzzle on the patio with her husband and her stepdaughter Hannah. “My whole family are big puzzlers,” Jen says. “It’s sort of part of my personality — I like solving problems.” Jen also appreciates how focusing on a puzzle can often relieve her mind of work stress.
Jen’s growing relationship with Jesus has affected so many areas of her life, but the greatest difference by far, she says, is the peace she experiences every day.
“The Scripture that I always think about is, ‘And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,’” she says. “It just doesn’t make sense that nothing in my job has changed, but I am totally at peace. I don’t have that stress. I don’t have that anxiety. I don’t have that constant dread.”
This life transformation has overflowed into her relationships with others too. These days, Jen shares her story whenever she can.
In May 2024, Jen met a lawyer from Haiti while attending an international conference for intellectual property lawyers. The Haitian lawyer shared about his frustration with the Christian faith. Jen took that opportunity to share her story and talk about how her involvement with FLAG changed her life. In the end, she invited him to join a FLAG group too.
“So many attorneys are that stressed-out, overworked, overwhelmed attorney that I was,” she says.
Jen found relief when she started trusting in Jesus and allowing God to transform her life. The truth of the gospel isn’t like the self-help tips Jen used to read about.
“It seems like it’s such an easy sell to me,” Jen says. “Why wouldn’t you want this?”
Jen visits Jacksonville Beach with Mike and one of her two stepdaughters, Hannah. Mike is a retired dentist and Hannah just graduated from Florida State University with a degree in political science. Jen’s younger stepdaughter, Paige, is a sophomore at the University of Florida, studying computer science.
Jen has noticed a change in her family relationships too — particularly with her older sister Stephanie. Their relationship had been strained for many years, but now Jen calls her sister often, just to talk about what’s happening in their lives. The regular conversations have brought them closer and have opened the door for Jen to share how her relationship with Jesus has changed her life.
“I send her a lot of Instagram reels that are [about] God and positive; she does like those,” Jen says. “That's one way that I can spread the word to her without being over the top.”
Jen leads a FLAG group now, supporting other lawyers while still seeking to learn more about God through the Bible.
Jen and Mike paddle on a small river that flows into the St. Johns River. What started as a Sunday routine to distract from Jen’s dread of the coming work week has now become a steady and enjoyable hobby.
A new FLAG group starts with the same personal, professional and spiritual assessment...
A new FLAG group starts with the same personal, professional and spiritual assessment Jen took three years ago. When John challenged Jen to lead a new group after participating in one for a year, Jen retook this assessment and was amazed by how her answers had changed.
The assessment provides a numerical scale from one to 15, and Jen answered almost every question more favorably by two or three points the second time she took it.
In two instances, her answers jumped ahead by five points:
“How would you describe your work/life balance?”
2021: 5 — Not great. My work occupies my thoughts much of the time when I am “off.”
2022: 10 — Good. I leave my work at the office
2021: 7 — I wish I felt more connected to God.
2022: 13 — I am constantly aware of the presence of God in my life.
“It’s exciting to see someone thriving professionally, and not only because they’re a hard worker but also because they’ve allowed God to work in their life,” Tom says about Jen. “She would be an excellent lawyer one way or the other, but she’s a better lawyer because of growing in her faith.”
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