Comments on: Supervising Youth Ministry Interns

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:58:08 +0000

Awesome thoughts, thanks.

By: Franklin Wood

Franklin Wood — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:19:49 +0000

I had my first intern last year, and this year have our next one, plus a volunteer intern!
- You really have to gauge where they are at. Last year, I had a guy with zero ministry classes or knowledge. So, with him I worked on fanning the flame for youth ministry.
- Show rather than tell. Just like we tell parents, “Your kids are watching you. Faith is caught and not just taught!” Same with interns. You can’t tell them to hang out with the whole youth group over the summer, when you don’t even hang out with two.
- Keep your expectations low. I’m not saying not to challenge them, I’m saying have grace. If you have lower expectations, you will be surprised. Don’t expect your intern to come in and be your equal.
- I agree with the commentator above: Let your intern see the hard side of youth ministry. Ours got to see how to deal with death as one of our teens died in a tornado at Scout Camp. Rough time, but that’s not stuff you learn in seminary. Invaluable teaching time.
- Invite them to meet with your leaders. I encourage our interns to meet twice a month with our elders (and every week at staff meeting.) They need to learn how to deal with leadership.

- Have fun together!
- Pray together. Not just during class or at staff meetings. This is where I wish I had done better.

By: Adam Lehman

Adam Lehman — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:08:00 +0000

@ jake.

sounds like a grand intership.
thanks for turning me onto wufoo. great stuff.
um, can i intern for you?

By: Jake Bouma

Jake Bouma — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:48:19 +0000

Soon and very soon.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:29:33 +0000

Did you, ahem, subscribe him to my blog?

By: Jake Bouma

Jake Bouma — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:01:37 +0000

Matt,

Great question… We JUST hired a YM intern who is in his first week at the office. I’m taking all the advice I can get from my former boss (for whom I was an intern).

I just thought I’d reply quick and let you know that I’m using Wufoo to set up a feedback form that the intern will fill out weekly. I can’t remember if you use Wufoo or not, but it eliminates paperwork and the completed forms can go directly to my inbox (I could set it up as an RSS feed even!).

Here are the questions on my form:
- Who did you contact this week?
- What did you talk about? What do I need to know?
- What project(s) are you currently working on?
- What is your ministry highlight and lowlight this week?
- Besides your assigned reading, did you read anything pertinent to youth ministry (i.e., magazine articles, websites/blogs, newspaper articles, etc.)? As a side note: I provided him with a list of YM blogs and websites and set up Google Reader for him
- What did you learn this week?

Hope that helps. Appreciate this blog post, man.

By: Adam Lehman

Adam Lehman — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:20:13 +0000

@Matt about “setting up to win” vs “give them too much responsibility.”

here is how it worked for me: I was given a ton of trust. Not necessarily relationship trust (i wasn’t asked to disciple the senior girls one-on-one), but trust that I understood some things about ministry and that I was capable of more than my title as “intern” suggested.

In my first intership, I was given the responsibility of running the youth groups most significant fundraiser of the year. I had just finished year 1 of college and I’m horrible at detail/organizing/etc. I did it anyways. I had to pull an all-nighter the night before, but success happened. I learned a ton, etc. In that first intership, i was given “too much” responsibility, but it paid off.

In my next internship, i was set-up to win. The people around me knew my wiring and my gifts and they totally reinforced those. They allowed me to serve where I was gifted.

Unless you’re using the internship as a pre-cursor to hiring the person, I think an internship has to be SUPER-tailored to the intern, because – probably – they’re going to go somewhere else and minister in a different context/church/ministry/etc. So, making it all about your church’s style of ministry will probably close them off to future opportunities more so than open them up to what they’re called to.

just my thoughts. could be completely wrong. could be heretical. i don’t know.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:47:41 +0000

Haha, well, those are great thoughts. I will definitely be putting some into practice.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:44:55 +0000

Some real helpful suggestions there. Helping out on finances is something that I had only implicitly thought about, but it is very important. I might try to make the financial aspect of the internship a bit more explicit.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:40:20 +0000

More great thoughts. Thanks, Adam. I’m curious, I’m assuming when you say “give them too much responsibility” you mean to push them past their comfort, perhaps even to failure. How do you see that balancing out with “Set them up to win”?