Starting a Summer Internship Program-Part 1
In coming to Visalia there have been several 20 year olds that have shown interest in being a part of the ministry via an internship program. So in a few weeks we will launch a Summer Internship designed to do more than use these young people to do all the grunt work we don’t want to do. We are going to take the summer to give them spiritual, leadership and ministry training.
Over the course of the next few days I will be letting you know the “why” as well as the “what” we will be doing each week in our new internship.
Scriptural Training.
One of the things I have seen thru the years with young people getting into ministry is; they are very talented and very excited but they don’t know very much about the bible.
There have been far to many young leaders start ministering to others before they learned how to minister to themselves.
This is a big mistake.
Young leaders that learn how to sing, lead worship, speak, or lead from up front but don’t take the time to learn how to read or study the biblical text for themselves, carry that lack of spiritual discipline into their later years of ministry.
I am convinced that many veteran leaders fail financially and morally because they did not develop a healthy personal relationship with God thru his word when they were rookies just starting out.
Our internship program is going to strive to remedy this problem by putting a premium on developing a healthy habit of reading, journaling and discussing the scriptures.
We are going to take the entire summer to go thru the book of Romans. Each week we will assign a chapter or chapters to read. Each student will then answer the following questions in their journal:
1) What is God saying in this text?
2) What does this have to do with me?
3) What does this have to do with the world around me?
4) How can I apply this to my life this week?
Each Monday morning we will take an hour as a team to discuss and dialogue about what we wrote and what God was showing us thru his word.
Taking time each week to read His word, listen to His voice and openly discuss what He is saying will not only build a sense of community within our group, it will build His Kingdom in the heart of every one of our young people. And isn’t that what this thing is all about?
