Pastoral Internship

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Pastoral Internship

Pastoral Internship is designed to provide space and time for learning the ropes of ministry, and to provide a period of observation and evaluation as to the fitness and qualifications of a pastor for regular, full-time pastoral employment. The ending of the internship should result in ordination/commissioning, or with the releasing of the pastor to pursue another line of work if he or she is deemed to be better suited to something else. Internship is often simply called "the pre-ordination process."

In most cases, the Ministerial Director will be given oversight over this process in his/her conference, though often the conference administration will want some input into whatever process you elect to use in shepherding your interns through their pre-ordination process. In some cases, there might already be a well-established and honed process in place that you are expected to use. In still other situations, you may be asked to create one from scratch.

Some of the issues/observations/questions about pastoral internship are:

What is internship for?

How long will it be?

What will it be like?

Dealing with the distance between expectations and reality

Intern family experience

Financial planning

Ordination-Commissioning Committee

Pre-ordination-commissioning/Intern development models/practices

Ordination-Commissioning Resources

NAD Pastoral Internship information

Pity the Poor Intern!