note -- We were asked in our second quarter of the internship to take part in a discussion group.  The goal would be to interact with other pastoral interns to learn and listen.  Part of this was to write a case study in which something negative happened.  The group then wrestled together with the problem and issues raised.  I wrote this.   After I presented it everyone was genuinely surprised I stayed at the church.   The end of this, however, shows some of the hope I still had at the time, as well as my own wrestling for positive insight.  

Internship Case Study

Background/History

            The church I am currently interning at has also been my “home” church for nine years.  Because of my own background with New Song, I began the process of developing an internship far before my actual “official” role began.  This preparation took the form of several discussions with the pastors of the church about beginning an additional style of service during the week.  While we are already a “contemporary” church, I felt that we were not fully ministering to the needs of the broader community by having only a Sunday morning service.  As we have just moved into our own facilities for the first time the opportunity was ripe for the development of a Sunday night service, which would hopefully have been a time of worship and maturation.  Although we are a church which averages about 800 people per weekend we do not have any other service besides the Sunday morning in which to gather as a community.

 

Description/Facts

I began to meet with a team of people, including our Worship leader, and we visited other churches, spending time before and afterwards discussing how an additional service should be framed.  I also wrote a ten page paper describing the basic philosophy and goals of this service which reflected the discussions I had with those involved.  I was told by my pastor that I needed to be conscious about how this service would interact with the other ministries of the church and how this would be unique enough as to require the additional time.  This I did.  I also presented the basic format and content to the staff of the church during a weekly staff meeting. My basic philosophy was to design a service which played around with some of the specific paradigms of a typical church “service”.  The goal was to have an evening of worship which would help mature believers in their faith.  The style would be flexible with a great deal of music, a variety of speaking styles, and primarily “lay” led.  Part of the goal was to include and develop those within the church who had great gifts or talents but who were not, nor ever would be, a staff member.  I did not want this to be another task for staff who were already overworked, but rather wanted this to be a time in which the gifts of the congregation were used in a congregational setting.  The plan was to begin the first week of February, on a Sunday night 7-9, and I with the others on this team began to build the specifics of the service so as to begin with a well worked out philosophy and plan.

            Most of this “groundwork” was laid before I even began my internship, and as I developed this, my thought was for my internship to primarily consist of the tasks involved with this service, including planning and developing involvement.  Two weeks before the Winter quarter began found me sitting in my church during our Saturday night service (which is the same as the Sunday morning).  During the time of announcements I was rather surprised to hear of a new “class” which would be starting in mid-January.  The class was on Evangelism and the Christian life, taught by an associate pastor from a nearby very large Church.  This class, I learned as I sat there, was going to be held on Sunday nights from 6:30 – 8:30 in the church sanctuary.  It was a mandatory class for those who were planning to participate in one of our various summer short-term mission trip (which always has a sizable number of people involved).  Thus, I find out during the church service, all that I had been planning and working on for the previous several months was suddenly pushed aside.  Another pastor had planned this new “class”, and my efforts and thoughts were simply disregarded.  Upon approaching the pastor with whom I had been in the most contact about this I was told it was a “communication” problem, and while regrettable, nothing could be done.  I have realized that part of the whole difficulty I experienced was related to others in the church actively promoting their own emphases and understanding of ministry.  In conversations with other pastors and staff, however, I am realizing that my work was not totally in vain, but rather that my timing was not right.  This experience left me dispirited about providing creative suggestions, but I feel that there is still a place for what I was suggesting.  My question is how I properly work within the “political” structure of the church,  drawing in often contrasting views in order to help bring about the most effective use of our gifts and skills, while avoiding disunity or competition.  How also do I best relate to those who did distinctly ignore and downplay my efforts on the church’s behalf?