Don’t Blow it With Your Interns

Adapted from Clayton Bullion’s Don’t Blow It With Your Interns with additions by Stephen Alexander

Interns and Summer Volunteer teams are gifts from God. Here are a few principles and tips as you interact with them and host them.

HOST SUMMER INTERNS WELL

    If you are receiving volunteer students, it is vital you host and utilize them well. This is a generation that believes they can and will change the world. I believe this to be true, but they need some help from us along the way. If you are a leader or supervisor of a summer volunteer group, university team, or individual, take time to plan. Focus on where you need volunteers in your ministry. Think through how you will best utilize them, how you will invest in them, and how you will host them well. These students are some of the most energetic workers who can invest a lot in a short time. They can help reach new areas, new depths in relationships, and bring new life into our ministries. These are often our future midterm workers, career workers, and stateside church leaders and lay leaders. Let’s take the time to see them as part of the mission field we are investing in and discipling. 

Before Arrival  

It is a great idea to get to know your volunteers before they arrive. Especially if they are coming from different churches, states, or other sending agencies. This can happen from the Go Method system. Start posting “Get to know you” information. Ask them to begin interacting with each other. Housed in Go Method is information about gifts and talents the students have and how they have used them in the past. This helps them get to know each other, helps you know what gifts they have and how they can be used on the field. Use this time to set up expectations and reality as much as possible. Nothing hurts the momentum of a summer team more than their arriving and it not being anything like they thought it would be. This does not mean they need a detailed schedule but a basic idea of what they will be doing and what they can expect along way.

Field Arrival 

You have written the job, worked to recruit volunteers, found places for them to stay and even helped get them through Go Method! Now to receive them well and get them off on the best foot possible. Orientation looks differently based on the team, the length of stay, and other factors, but they all need some version of orientation. 

More than ever students coming to serve have a large desire to know the “why” of what they are doing. Many coming know the what as it was in the job description. But to fully jump into the work you have for them; they want to know the “why” and how they fit in. A key part to student orientation is to be able to share the vision and values- or “the what and why” of the task you and the team are working on. Being able to share this broader team vision with them is key to them understanding how they fit into the larger picture. Then bring it down to the summer level and share with them the summer vision and goals you have for them during this time and how it is connected to the larger vision. Do this and they will be set up to be about the work with a clear understanding and passion to see it come about. 

Leadership Care 

I often jokingly tell summer volunteers they can sleep on the plane ride home. We joke with them but there is some truth in this statement. Yes, we run them hard, and you can do that for a summer pace. But you also invest in them so they can run hard. This does not just happen naturally. You need to have a plan to care for and mentor these students who come to serve. This can and will look different depending on: the number of volunteers coming to serve,  the size of your team you have helping you with this, and the job they are coming to do. 

     One area we have found that is really needed is to have in their weekly routine a set Sabbath Day. If they are running a long and hard pace, this helps to show them the need for a Sabbath Day. This allows them a known day each week they can rest and refresh. Another key area to consider is a mid-week debrief and prayer time. This is a time to share highs and lows of the week and ask clarifying questions about the schedule or questions they have received in the week's work they have done. This is also a great time to pray for each other and those they have met by name. Look for some one on one time to invest in them over the summer. It can be weekly or just a time or two, depending on what you and the team can work out. It does not always need to be from you, it can be from a co-worker or close national partner, but someone who can help them process and debrief what God is doing in their lives and a time to encourage and sharpen them.

Remember, this is about more than just a summer. This is a summer that God can use to shape and change their lives as much as the lives of those they came to serve. 

Exit Well

Help your students exit well. There is a rhythm to the summer volunteer time. The excitement and newness of landing, orientation and getting started, the daily/weekly rhythms that soon give way to the last few days or weeks. Make sure you give thought to your summer activities so that they have built in times for volunteers to pass off information or contacts they are making to national partners, mid-term workers or long-term workers. Has this been made clear to them in the vision and goals of the summer expectations? As you pass over the halfway point to the last third of the summer, start talking to them about this transition of relationships and encourage them to finish the race well.

    Ask the interns to write down what God has taught them; how will they take that back with them, and what will change based on this time and experience. We have such a great opportunity to show these volunteers this is much more than just a trip. God often does just as much in their lives as he does in the lives of those they came to invest in. Remember that God’s Kingdom includes both your local context and those who come to serve.

Bonus 

Another great benefit to an active summer volunteer ministry is sharing about next step options for them. Toward the end of the summer, have a time to share with them about possible next steps. Share or even have your team share as a panel about their calling to the field and then talk to them about hands on and journeyman opportunities. If they are younger, talk with them about coming again next summer. Many of the best fitting hands-on and journeyman were first summer missionaries, even if they do not return to your team or field of service. God uses these times to call many to missions around the world. They can also be some of your best recruiters for future volunteer teams back on their campuses and churches.

THEY ARE NOT MINISTRY ASSISTANTS

You have recent college graduates or current students who have more energy than you, they blend in on campus, they can go to places you can’t, and connect with people you wouldn’t.  Please, for campus’ sake, don’t stick them in your office making copies and doing clerical work.  Seriously, make your own coffee, hire a ministry assistant to answer the phone and a janitor to clean the building!  You should have to go out on campus to find your interns!  Spend their time and their energy on campus doing discipleship and evangelism.  Ask your interns to lead an outreach weekly on their campus, spend the majority of their time on campus, and disciple as many students as they can handle weekly.  Have them spend their semester investing in students instead of propping up your programs.

NO INTERN IS BETTER THAN THE WRONG INTERN

Nothing is worse than having a staff person who is a wrong fit.  Maybe they aren’t spiritually, emotionally, or socially mature enough for the job.  Don’t bring them on.  It is harder to get the wrong people off the bus once it’s going than keep them from getting on in the first place.  You want people who multiply and add to your ministry not take away from it.  The wrong person will cost you time and relationships.  Two simple questions you can use to help screen potential candidates: 1) Are they F.A.T.? (Faithful, Available and Teachable) and 2) Are they a Disciple-Maker? (Check out the Discipleship Ladder in Chapter Four of The Fuel and the Flame by Steve Shadrach for a great outline of this.)

CREATE A SAFE PLACE TO FAIL

Interns are going to make mistakes and fail.  They need to have confidence that you aren’t going to give them the boot the first time they say something wrong or offend the pastor, the deacons, or the alumni.  Use your influence and your authority to create a safe place for them to learn, try, and fail.  Chances are, you made some dumb mistakes early on and look how you turned out?  By God’s grace and some coaching from you, your interns will be the ones who will go farther than you ever could and start ministry in places you’ve never dreamed of.

INVITE THEM TO GIVE A LIFETIME

Not every intern will end up called to college ministry.  But how’d you get into college ministry?  Chances are you “stumbled” into it. Chances are someone asked you to pray about it or they saw it in you and called it out. No one comes to college “called” to college ministry. Most of us didn’t know college ministry was a thing until we landed on campus!  But if you see your CMI thriving and you see them making an impact, ask them to stay on longer!  Tell them you see them thriving and you see how their giftings and talents make them a great fit for college ministry.  The ministries who have and send the most interns are the ministries who invite the most students and staff to give a year to college ministry and pray about giving a lifetime.  They ask them to give up their small dreams and spend their lives on the most strategic mission field on earth.

Interns are a lot of work and it’s not necessarily easy work, but it is multiplying work. It’s worthy work.  And we are not called to what’s easy, but to what’s worthy.