budget crunches suck. our church is presently going through a small budget crunch right now. it’s not a major shut everything down “money crunch.” no, it’s a “let’s tighten our belt” budget crunch. it means that we need to spend less on what we are doing but we don’t have to stop doing everything. those far it hasn’t been a huge deal. i’ve had change a few things that we were going to do (i.e doing a different less costly mission trip, etc.) but i haven’t had to drop anything that we were going to do. until today.
since, i’ve been at parkview i’ve wanted to change the way we use interns. when i first came here i was given two intern positions. the problem with intern positions is that the intern almost always has another thing that has priority in their life (usually school or another job). whatever it is all that matters is that there is almost always something else (besides GOD, family, and their own being) that pulls at their priorities. because of this my experience has been that interns are rarely completely passionate about the youth ministry and often (but not always) what they do comes across as a job that they enjoy doing but not a passion that they have got to express. to a large extent student ministry is my “voice” (“vocation” comes from the latin word “voca” meaning “voice”). what i do is an important part of expressing who GOD has made me and thus i try to pour myself into what we are doing youth ministry-wise. interns are pulled in different directions and it’s hard to get one whose “voice” is youth ministry (mainly because they are just beginning to discover what they “voice” is). that’s why i moved to get rid of the two part time, year round interns positions and instead we now have alan the assistant youth minister whose “voice” is definitely ministry.
with the above paragraph said i love interns – just not for a full year. instead what i would like to be able to do is “hire” 6 to 7 interns ever summer. the difference between a summer and a year is that being an intern for a summer gives you a good taste of ministry. that taste helps a person to discover if ministry is their “voice” or not. that’s the reason that i would like to have 6 to 7 interns every summer – i want to be a part of helping future ministers discover their “voice.” this summer was supposed to be the first step toward that goal. the personnel committee approved 1 intern for this summer with the understanding of bumping it up to 2 next summer. i told them my whole desire of wanting to give kids a “taste of ministry” and they agreed with it and jumped on board. i even had the perfect candidate ready for the positions – a girl that i know would do a great job. the problem is that the budget went south and now the personnel committee has to focus on other things. so they nixed the intern position (because it had not started yet).
i don’t blame the committee – they were doing what they had to do. but it still stinks.
