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.
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