There are plenty of reasons to set up a formal ministry internship for your church. Whether it’s because you need to raise up more young leaders from within your congregation or you see lots of potential being wasted, an internship can scratch lots of itches.

Creating the structure for an internship that is healthy for everyone involved is tricky and takes lots of work and research. I’ve setup several programs, both in churches and in businesses, and here’s what I’ve learned.

1. EXPECTATIONS: DRAFT AN AGREEMENT.

Setting expectations in written format helps with accountability for everyone involved. Have both parties, the intern and the intern leader, sign it as an agreement or covenant. The details in the document should cover the following.

Make it clear who is the primary point of contact for the intern. Interns will interface with lots of people within the organization, but they need to know who their boss is.

Be specific about the amount of work expected of the intern on a weekly or monthly basis. This might be office hours, but probably will involve time outside the office.

Be specific about the amount of exposure to ministry areas and leaders. You might even want to set expectations for booking meetings/interviews with specific ministry leaders in the areas the intern is interested in.

Map out a clear end goal for the internship. This should be measurable so there can be accountability to hitting that goal. A subjective or flimsy goal will create frustration in the end.

Be specific about compensation. Is this a paid internship? If so, what is the pay rate? Is this internship for college credit? If so, what are their school’s requirements for compensation?

Set milestones for achievement throughout the timeframe of the internship. A worst case scenario is an intern getting to the end of their internship window and falling flat. Milestones give you midway checkin points.

2. ACCESS: MAKE SURE THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION IS READY.

Giving your ministry intern access to the leaders in your organization is key to the success of the program. Every leader on your team should be on board and ready to invest time to sit down with the intern for interviews, let the intern shadow on day-to-day work, or answer email questions as necessary.

3. EXPERIENCE: MAKE TIME FOR PRACTICE.

Your ministry intern should be able to experience life in the shoes of various roles in your church. Again, this involves your entire team being on board to allow interns into the day-to-day workings of each role.

Each intern won’t need to practice in every role. They should have a focus and therefore work in roles adjacent to that focus. For example, if the intern’s focus is Next Gen ministry, they should, at a minimum, be working with students in every age group, planning events, planning communication, and organizing volunteers.

4. TRAINING: MAKE SPACE FOR STRUCTURED LEARNING.

Internships are usually designed to give an intern a taste of life in the ministry. It helps them to decide if this is what they want to do with their life and orients them to the experience early on. However, as any minister knows, there’s more to learn than just what rubs off through proximity.

Structured learning is important, so give the intern homework. Read books and write reports. Watch videos and answer followup questions. Write summaries of what they’ve experienced in the day-to-day. Interview leaders and capture their responses.

Keeping all that activity organized is important. If they’re interning for school credit, the school will likely want to see some example of their activity. And even if they’re not doing it for school credit, having a record of their learning provides accountability.

Many churches are using TrainedUp to organize the structured learning process for interns. It allows them to create courses that interns must complete and then tracks their progress through the entire process.

5. SCHEDULE: MAKE STEADY OFFICE HOURS.

It’s not necessary to have the intern sitting at their desk doing nothing, but providing specific hours that your intern works on the internship is important. It provides accountability and gives your intern some time structure so they can do all you’ve assigned for them to do.

If you find that your intern doesn’t know what to do with themselves in the office or at their desk, that’s a big red flag. They have access to the entire organization to get involved anywhere. That should provide them with endless opportunities to provide value to the team during those office hours.

6. ACCOUNTABILITY: MAKE SUCCESS MEASURABLE.

The end of the internship should coincide with a final evaluation that is both subjective and objective. The subjective evaluation is easy enough. Ask each leader to review their experience with the intern using a standard assessment. The objective evaluation is a little tougher.

To be able to perform an objective evaluation, you’ll need to have already set objective standards. Those might take the form of test scores, grades on papers and interviews, assessment results, and the average of all the leader evaluations.

Running an internship in your church will likely be a lot of work. It’s hard work to get it going and hard work to keep it running smoothly. But when you build an internship program that benefits the intern and the organization, all that hard work will pay off.