I was very impressed with the quality of suggestions left in the comments section of yesterday’s post. Really, you should go and read every single one of them. They were all well thought out, insightful, and helpful. Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond. Most of the comments were quite long (in blogdom, at least), showing that you thought this was an important topic, so thank you.

Here are some highlights, but do go back to the post to read them all.

Jonathan, who is just now finishing up a youth ministry internship, suggests:

be open to learning from the intern as he may have some interesting things to add to the mix when it comes to innovating and coming up with new ways to reach out to the community of students

Adam, who has been an intern thrice (he’s almost a professional intern), gives some big-picture ideas for approaching the internship:

• Figure out that intern’s wiring and really encourage it.
• Give them too much responsibility.
• Set them up to win.
• Grow to be their friend as much as their supervisor.
• Don’t just teach them, learn from them.
• Be super-honest with your intern. They deserve to see the crappy sides of ministry.

Leena talked about a class she taught preparing students for an intern-type experience. One of the things that stood out to me was here suggestion to get the intern acclimated with the financial side of the church. I took accounting in high school, and to this day I am grateful for it because I am familiar with the terminology and procedures when discussing our church treasurer’s report. Without that class, I think I’d be lost. But interns may not have taken those classes and need to learn how to be conversant in accounting matters. Leena describes this part of the course she taught:

Intro to Financial Management: Focused on how to read a balance sheet, budget and various financial terms. Students obtained a copy of their practicum site’s financial report and analyzed by making observations and asking questions, we talked about this in class.

Alaina had a great list of suggestions, and here’s a few:

• weekly STRUCTURED meetings. We didn’t go to Robert’s Rules, but we had a set agenda that covered new stuff, old stuff, and health (spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical… I always joked that he was going to make me do more crossword puzzles if I got mental unhealthy).
• regular self-evaluations. The intern should do these once a month. They should be simple 1-10 scales with an opportunity to comment and 2-3 reflective pieces. We are adapting my DCE internship evals for the youth intern (narrowing some of the areas, etc.).
• This should be #1 or #2: develop written goals as a team. Everyone has their own goal-writing philosophy, so we’ll leave it at that. They should be written. 🙂

As I said, there’s much more in the comments, so head over there and check them out.