Internship Revamp

My church is gracious enough to give our staff a 4-week study leave every 5 years.  I’m spending my time working on a revamp of our internship at the church.  Here are a few reasons why:

Our Location: If you’re not familiar with Magnolia, we’re located directly across the street from CBU – a Christian college with nearly 5,000 students.  We are being bad stewards of our location if we don’t intentionally invest in this up-and-coming generation of leaders.

Our History: There are currently 4 of us on staff at the church who started out as interns.  I started at my church as a non-paid intern 12 years ago and now I’m on full-time staff.  Our internship won’t be designed to guarantee people jobs, but the reality is that it creates a pipeline of leadership for us for years to come.

Our Situation: We use interns, but it’s here and there, and not necessarily requiring the same thing of all interns.  My hope is to come out of February with a workable document and process to recruit, place, and develop interns.  At one point we had 4-5 paid interns, but our church (like many others) had to make budget cuts and those positions have all now been eliminated.  Our new approach is to develop a non-paid internship that provides value in itself because of the experience and opportunities it opens for interns.

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