{"id":985,"date":"2012-01-24T11:08:42","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T16:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/?p=985"},"modified":"2012-01-24T11:57:35","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T16:57:35","slug":"seminary-internships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/seminary-internships\/","title":{"rendered":"Seminary Internships"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When I went to seminary I did not have an internship in a church that was a formal, full-time position where I was mentored by a church pastor and staff to take the content I had learned in the classroom and implement it in real ministry and develop my leadership skills.\u00a0 Looking back, I really\u00a0 needed one.\u00a0 While I respect the small windows of application that I received along the way, it turns out that my first real internship was the first church where I served as lead pastor!\u00a0 They deserved better…much better.\u00a0 For five years and three months I learned how not to do church.\u00a0 The church members were the recipients of my halting yet occasionally effective ministry.\u00a0 They deserve more than a medal.<\/p>\n

I had learned to appreciate internships during my last year of undergraduate work at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.\u00a0\u00a0 A math major, my senior year I took part in a co-op program (internship) where I worked across the street from the University in Research Park at Teledyne Brown Engineering.\u00a0 There I worked for a group of thermal engineers working on the Space Shuttle back before they ever built one.\u00a0 My fledgling computer\/engineering career started firmly with inside experience which helped me immensely.\u00a0 At that first church I pastored I started an internship program working with Bible college students because I recognized the need in my own life and had also seen it work in the engineering field.\u00a0 Why wouldn’t it work in the ministry?<\/p>\n

Thus, when I interviewed to teach at Baptist Bible Seminary back in 1994, I was elated when I saw the intense interest in internship training.\u00a0 At BBS, we still have a one year internship for our standard Master of Divinity degree.\u00a0 The seminary cooperates with a local church in training the student in both academic content during that year and in practical implementation of ministry efforts.\u00a0 Both seminary faculty and church staff members evaluate the student in real time ministry.\u00a0 One great thing about the BBS internship is that it is a FULL TIME PAID POSITION during that year.\u00a0 No students work at UPS or Walmart during this time.\u00a0 Their focus is totally on the ministry of that church.\u00a0 The tuition for the internship courses are also REDUCED BY HALF for that year.\u00a0 That makes the overall tuition price per credit hour less for the entire program.\u00a0 But the main benefit of an internship for a student who has never had a full-time position in a church is to learn his way without the pressure of being the lead pastor.\u00a0 One of my greatest regrets in my own ministry is that I never had such an internship ministry experience.\u00a0 The people under my ministry in my first church would have been better served.<\/p>\n

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When I went to seminary I did not have an internship in a church that was a formal, full-time position where I was mentored by a church pastor and staff to take the content I had learned in the classroom and implement it in real ministry and develop my leadership skills.\u00a0 Looking back, I really\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":990,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions\/990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}