Pastoral Internship > What Will It Be Like?

The actual intern process will vary from conference-to-conference, but here are a few things that generally happen in addition to their on-going, regular work as a pastor:

•Regular contact. This could mean personal calls, e-mails, text messages, personal or group meetings. In fact, regular contact should include all of these.

Personal contacts allow your intern the dignity and safety of privacy if they need to ask questions they might be embarrassed to have others hear them asking, or if you need to help them with a specific personal or pastoral skills issue. Group meetings allow you to see how well your pastor functions in a group of their peers. This can often give you insights about how they interact with their general membership.

•Specific training events. You may elect to design/create specific training events for your interns to help reinforce pastoral skills/duties, or to help them develop collegiality and the ability to function well in a group. These will be most effective if done on a regular basis and if all interns are required to attend. Make sure to vary the content, and don't hesitate to bring in seasoned pastors or other Ministerial Directors who might have specialty skills that can be shared.

Additionally, it will be very useful for your interns to develop competency with some of the outstanding tools available today such as Prepare/Enrich, Taylor-John Temperament Analysis, etc, to give them a toolbox of things they can use in their real-world pastoral work. These tools have some cost involved, and presenting the training in a group setting may often be the most cost-effective way of doing it.

•Mentors/Coaching. Connecting an intern with an experienced pastor nearby in whom they can regularly confide can be a significant help to them in their development. This is especially helpful if the intern is not placed in a multi-staff church setting where the senior pastor directly mentors the intern.

•Interviews. Some conferences ask their interns to meet with their standing ordination committee several times during the internship process. This can be a helpful thing because it acquaints the pastor with the overall process, and gives them a good sense of what a final ordination interview might be like. The thought of the final ordination/commissioning interview can be very intimidating to a new pastor, and anything you can do along the way to alleviate their anxiety will be appreciated!

•Evaluations. Hand-in-hand with regular interviews are regular evaluations. It may be worth creating your own evaluation process for your interns that will be different from the process you might use with those who have already been ordained/commissioned. These can be a real help in providing the appropriate remediation for areas in which the pastor needs to be strengthened.

•On-site visits. While many times you will ask the pastor to come to the conference office or to the conference camp for meetings, you can learn a great deal by visiting the pastor in their own district/church. You will learn a lot just by showing up on a Sabbath morning to hear them preach and watch them interact with their church family. Come by some time and take the pastor and their family out for a meal, and get to know them personally. These kinds of visits are generally deeply appreciated by the pastors, and you will have your best chance to see them as they are.

•Consult with your administration. While most conference administrations will leave the intern development process up to you, some may have some expectations of the interns. Spend some time in conversation with your administration to make sure that the learning and development experiences you are using meet with their approval. If they have further suggestions, integrate their wishes as soon as you are able.