Posted in Church Staff

Designing Church Intern Programs

A ministry intern’s effectiveness is usually correlated to the effectiveness of the internship plan and supervisor.

There’s been a lot written about how to properly use an intern to be both helpful to the intern and to your church. Without going into those pros and cons, let’s start at the foundation: designing an internship plan that will attract the best interns for your church’s situation.

Not only for what an intern will provide for your church, but also what your church can provide them. If the program is not designed well, those don’t always line up.

Being a good steward of an intern requires you to know what you’re looking for on the front end. If you need someone to clean out the camp lost and found closet, design the internship that way. If you want someone to delegate ministry tasks to, great. If you want to develop someone called into ministry, design the internship for that.

Our church has long used interns, and used them effectively. But this last year we decided to streamline our approach with all of our ministry departments. We documented core philosophies, expectations, and compensation for our internships. Then we allowed space for each ministry area to contextualize their internships for their ministry area.

As a resource for you to review, I’ve provided our church’s internship application and ministry plan. Choose from a PDF form or an abridged web version.

Our plan won’t match all of your needs, but perhaps parts will spur you on to be thoughtful and proactive at designing an internship program which has Kingdom impact for all those involved.

A Critical Step in Hiring A Minister

The pause.

The pause is relevant no matter how many ministers you hire.

The pause is critical no matter your church’s governance model.

The pause is a ‘must have’ no matter how long you’ve been hiring ministers.

The pause is, in fact, a pause.

After each step in your selection process with a minister candidate, you as a church leader need to ensure the decision maker or makers (hiring manager, elders, personnel team, whomever) pause.

Once we as church leaders get excited about a candidate and can see how they fit into our church’s future, we sometimes move things forward quickly and don’t stop.

We perpetuate urgency.

When you’re working urgently, you miss things.

A pause in the hiring process accomplishes several things:

It makes sure we’re in an Acts 15 moment “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…”
It slows it down for things below the surface to literally rise to the top (some things are only uncovered in time)
It allows people to catch up. This is really important for search processes that include multiple people. Most “multiple people” have lives that aren’t solely focused on hiring ministers. So pauses give literal time for people to catch up on the process
A pause at each step tells the candidate that this is a process, it includes due diligence, and they too, should be pausing
And related to an Acts 15 mindset, pauses allow us to be still enough to hear from God. We want to always be a part of God’s “good, pleasing, and perfect will,” and that may not always match our desired candidate

There are some negatives to pauses. But the positives far outweigh the negatives.

One pause is not enough, I suggest a pause at every significant step (see link at bottom for examples of steps). I’m not suggesting how long a “pause” should be, that’s circumstantial and usually clear to the leader who’s involving others, wants the best, and seeking divine wisdom.

Completing a step doesn’t have to beget another step. In hiring a minster, the paradigm should be: complete a step, pause, and then make decision about whether to take next step.

Pausing could mean you delay having a minister on site by a week or a month. Pausing could also mean you never hire the minister. And in that case, the pause did its job…allowing time for the process to disqualify candidates, or changed the desires of a candidate or the search team, or for the Spirit to provide clarity that only comes from God.

As a practical takeaway, here is an Abridged Version of BBC Selection With Pauses that shows pauses throughout.

p.s. Lifeway President Thom Rainer has written some excellent blog posts recently about what ministers want search teams to know and what search teams want minister candidates to know.

Ministers and Image Management

How important is it to be perceived well by church members even it means you’re slightly inauthentic? Can you try to impress others and not sin? Are you simply creating a personal brand?

I’ve written before about how managing your image with ministry peers and how it leads to church leader jealousy syndrome, but today I’m focused on the image management that occurs for the perception of church members.

Are you guilty of any of these?

You use social media to announce how much work you’re completing (ironic, I know)
When you leave the office you pack up half your office so everyone seeing you leave assumes, you must work from home
On Sundays, you leave your tithe envelope hanging out of your pocket so everyone sees
You use any opportunity available to discuss the depth of your relationship with Jesus
You use big words and slightly fabricated stories to impress your church’s key influencers

Mindful of Image vs. Management of Image

I first became aware of the term “image management” in John Ortberg’s book Everyone’s Normal Until You Get to Know Them.” Ortberg says this about himself and image management:

“There are many situations in which I find myself being more measured or calculating than I wish I were; situations where I work as hard—and subtly—as I can to try to manage what the other person is thinking of me; situations in which I emphasize opinions I think they might agree with, or tell stories that make me sound smarter or stronger or more successful than I really am.”

As is true with being a human and Christian, it’s important to be mindful of your image. However, a slippery, and probably sinful slope, is managing your image. Here are some distinctions for ministers:

Ministers Mindful of their image…

Work hard, and are noticed through their output
Dress/present themselves in a way that’s appropriate for the environment they’re ministering in
Doesn’t share every opinion that crosses their frontal lobe (amygdala hijack). Yet, they say what needs to be said, even if it doesn’t win them friends
Spends time with important leaders, but focuses provides ministry to all who require it

Ministers who are managing their image…

Work hard, but are noticed through their own self-promotion
Dress with the intent of impressing others
Never says the hard things because they’re afraid of people not liking them
Focuses their conversations and ministry to those in the church who are important and/or can provide something in return

Like most professions, I believe there can be an appropriate and righteous amount of image management for ministers (what I’m referring to as being “mindful of your image”). Consistent management of your image up can be very inauthentic and sinful. And at some point, if you are faking who you are–it will be found out by those you’re minister to. If you’re allowing church members to define your image, it’ll never work out. That job is taken, and provided to us already through Christ and the Bible.

I’m guilty of image management. It’s a daily effort to stay away from this sin. Despite my prescriptive suggestions in this post, what I’ve found most helpful is to simply remind myself whose image I’m created in.

Practical takeaway: Ask a friend, whom you can trust to tell you the truth, to say whether or not you appear to be managing your image among church members rather than simply being mindful of it.

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