the Intern at work

Lately, as I am the summer intern at Central Avenue United Methodist Church, I have been introduced as The Intern. I find this somewhat comforting that I have a title, but also interesting that it has almost become a running joke.

I am in my 5th week of being The Intern at Central Avenue and it never gets old. I am a part of an undergraduate internship program through the Office of Next Generation Leadership of the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church. This internship was created to help young adults discern their call into ministry, specifically ministry as a vocation in the United Methodist Church, alongside an ordained mentor.

As I was pondering the word "intern," I decided to look up the definition on Dictionary.com. These are a couple of the multiple definitions:

• a student or a recent graduate undergoing supervised practical training
• a person who works as an apprentice or trainee in an occupation or profession to gain practical experience, and sometimes also to satisfy legal or other requirements for being licensed or accepted professionally

I realized that neither of these definitions fully (or at all) describe my role as The Intern at Central Avenue as a part of the West Ohio Conference. If I can mesh them together (while deleting some or a majority and adding my own thoughts), then it might just work. Let's try that. Here is my definition for The Intern at Central Avenue UMC:

• a student who works as a trainee in ordained ministry to gain practical experience and discernment for the future of the student's ministry

Another definition from Dictionary.com says, "send to the interior, confine." This would hopefully not be a comfortable definition for an intern who is seeking professional experience, but would rather be used for a prisoner of war or someone who is suspected of being an ally of a foreign enemy during a time of war.

When I saw this definition, though, I immediately thought of Ezekiel 37:1-2. (The hand of the LORD was upon me. and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.) The LORD led Ezekiel in and among the bones that the LORD was going to bring to life and breathe the breath of life into. The LORD sent Ezekiel to "the interior" of the work that the LORD was going to do.

I am really excited to get "practical experience" and to have time to discern my call, but I am most overjoyed that God calls each and every one of us to be interns - to be at the interior of the work that God is doing and calling us to carry out for and with Him.

Here begins my reflections of being theIntern.