college interns

mars hill is pretty fortunate to have 10 colleges within a 25 mile radius of the church.  many of our leaders and interns attend or attended at one time one of these schools.  the unfortunate part for me is that i spend little to no time on any of the college campuses (except for calvin which continually brings in some of the best indie bands on a regular basis).  as we continue to try and look toward the future, we want to begin creating more consistent opportunities for some of these college students to intern with us.

as we plan for this and begin dreaming it up i've had a couple bizzare ideas cross my mind that i'd love to get your take on.  is it ridiculous to put in an intern's job description that they will help you find their eventual replacement?  the reason i thought of this is that most young emerging leaders who are fresh out of a college come with a list of names of underclassman who would be great volunteers or interns.  for those of us who are removed from many of the college campuses, these interns are some of our only real connection to that university.  i'd love to have a video intern from the local state university help us find another talented person in their program.  does this make sense?  what are your thoughts? 

Comments

[Geoff Snook]

Hey Steve,

Sounds like a good idea for a number of reasons: helps build into interns the concept of replacing yourself and passing on your faith & ministry, helps you out as you'll have potentially an endless supply of gifted interns, provides a wider network of 'advertising' for internships.

Had a couple of thoughts though (based on my internship experience): I think your interns should be chosen by you, you are the one who will be leading them and building into them and working with them so they need to be a certain type of person. Also, with this process it'd be possible to get people with the right gifting but wrong heart. Something that is helpful from a practical point of view but won't help extend the message of Jesus necessarily.

Just my $0.02. Cheers!

[sean.]

Great idea! Something that might be cool along with that is that the intern can then train the person who is taking their spot. I look forward to meeting you in June along with Dan.

[Kyle Nolan]

I think it's a great idea, but I also agree with Geoff. Students probably wouldn't work as hard at being objective in choosing their replacements as you would--not because they're lazy or dishonest, but just because everyone is a little bit more biased toward close friends. Another idea might be to try to build relationships with groups like Campus Ministry. I'm a Young Life leader at Grand Valley (at Grand Valley, Young Life College is one of Campus Ministry's outreach programs) and I know that the number of kids connected in some way to Campus Ministry here is enormous. I'm pretty sure they have a huge database of kids and a pretty good bead on a lot of students' abilities. That might be a good place to start.