Investing in the Future

How do you Manage and Mentor Summer Interns?

Mike Holly is the Pastor to Students and Contemporary Worship at Canterbury United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Ala. He is married to his friend an...

From an episode of The Office in Season 6:
Intern: Is there anything else I can do?
Dwight: Yes, um... [looking around the office] See those files behind Kevin's desk?
Intern: Mm-hmmm?
Dwight: Go put them in random order.
Intern: Ok...
Dwight: Then come back here for your next assignment, concerning their order.

My wife served a church one summer as a part of her field education in seminary. She was sent as a pastoral intern and the most important task she was asked to handle in her first month was serving a cheap supper to the families gathering for Wednesday Night Programming. Low cost meant that she had to make it herself. And the pastor was adamant that church members not help because they were there for education. In the kitchen, reading St. Augustine with one hand and making grilled cheese sandwiches with the other, she wondered to herself: am I really called to do this?

Summer Interns in Youth Ministry

Within six months of arriving at a church as the new Pastor for Student Ministry, I was gifted the opportunity of hiring three summer interns. We chose three college students who had grown up in our program, and we paid them a modest amount. It was nothing to brag about to their parents, but they worked very hard.

From the beginning I realized that I had no clear plan for their time with us. We were deep into our rebuilding phase as a youth ministry and as a staff. More energy was being placed into larger decisions and developing the overall climate of the program. The three interns were, for all practical purposes, merely utilized. They organized and packed for mission trips. They attended our programming. Each one of them may have had a calling in ministry, but we never explored those avenues. They were important, but we underinvested in them.

For many churches, summer internships are vital to summer survival, as they are usually over-programmed and under-prepared.

Step 1: Making Room For Mentoring

After we realized our mistake, we decided to tackle our problem of being over-programmed. Summer by summer, we decreased the amount of weekly programming. Kids don't need a summer camp. They need a church. They need holy relationships and regular times to gather in community. So, we increased opportunities for mission, but for the most part we kept our normal schedule from the fall and spring.

Then, we reduced the need for summer interns to perform the detail work for big events by preparing ahead of time and scheduling parents and volunteers to help us prepare. Problem solved. Preparation for summer programming and events is key. There's still a lot of work to be done, but our team is less stressed and is more open to engaging with summer interns. We can spend one-on-one time with them, discussing their calling and processing their experiences instead of relegating them to cleaning up our youth center and organizing tools for our mission trip.

Step 2: How Do You Want To Invest?

Our student ministry team has decided that long-term, intentional coaching is the best plan for our congregation and for our program. You may find that short term intense coaching and training is your best model. We have come to understand our role is to train up future youth ministers and volunteer workers who have extensive training in junior high, senior high, and college ministry. This means we need to spend at least a year working with our interns. We attempt to hire students from a local college in their first two years of school and we ask them to spend two semesters in each of our programs.

Along the way, members of our full-time staff sit down with our interns weekly and read through seminal works in youth ministry: Yacconelli, Root, DeVries, Fields, etc. We dig through these books and help them navigate both their calling and their style of ministry. They are required to learn the names of our teenagers and their parents. They are to build relationships. We invite them to start their own ministries, such as a weekly accountability group with students. They undergo Safe Sanctuaries training and we give them an open door to our reasoning in decision-making, budget-drafting, and communication techniques. They are a part of the team.

Some churches must do more intense, periodic internships due to financial or time constraints. Still take this time seriously. Do an "orientation week" where you go over policies and get them acclimated to your unique climate, language, and methodology of youth ministry. We've seen too many "loose cannon" interns on large group retreats where the intern and youth leader were on very different pages. Get them on board quickly by establishing rules and a chain of command, along with clear consequences to bad behavior. Train them in Safe Sanctuaries or other means by which to protect themselves and the students they work with. Be prepared to fire an intern if necessary. But try to do it out of love with clear communication as to why it is happening and how you hope they can learn from the mistake made.

Get them reading a book and schedule time to meet with them weekly, even if it's a devotional study. Sometimes the shorter internship requires the most basic training, but be careful to gauge the learning level of the student before assigning her a book or study program.

Give them clear expectations and definite hours of work. Short-term interns are usually overworked and underpaid. This does not demonstrate to the intern good stewardship of his time. It can end up sending mixed messages about how they will work as youth workers in the future. Hold exit interviews at the end of the summer and learn from your own mistakes as a leader and coach. Humility is important when working with the next generation of youth workers. They will be full of new ideas and passion. Don't be intimidated by it. Teach them to channel that passion and creativity into healthy ministry!

The major lesson here is to be prepared. Have a purpose for their time with your ministry. What do you want them to learn? Schedule time with them throughout the summer in order to get them to that end point. Your plan will inspire confidence in your intern and it will open him or her up to on-the-ground learning.

Who Should You Hire?

The million dollar question: Who should you hire? Kids who came through the church's program or kids from out of town?

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