Purpose:

What are our Goals?

"To mature young Christians and train them how to be effective leaders of and ministers to the Body of Christ, with an emphasis on reaching our Generation with the Good News of freedom through Jesus Christ, as well as raising up men and women of strong prayer and relationship with Jesus Christ."

Structure:

How will we meet out goals?

The Foundation: Prayer

Prayer is and must be the foundation of any ministry. What good is a ministry unless the people leading it are hearing from God to get direction for where the ministry is supposed to go. As we have done our research on internships we have found that the people that are running them are people who rely on prayer as not only an indispensable part of the their program, but base everything they do out of prayer and relationship with God.

That is why we have decided to follow the example we saw at City Church and City Bible Church (many of the ideas we have, and how we have structured out internship, stemmed from interviews and time spent with Steve Carpenter at City Church, Kirkland, WA and Doug Lasit at City Bible Church, in Portland OR) in Joshua Generation School and begin every day with at least an hour or prayer and worship time. As we interviewed the Interns we found that they said 80% of what God had done in their lives over that nine month period was during that one hour of prayer each morning. Prayer must be and will be the most important ingredient in any internship.

Prayer is communication with the very Person who created the Heavens and the Earth. We have audience with the all powerful God because of what Jesus did on the cross for us. I think it would behoove us to make full use of this privilege that we have been given to have open access and even a command to come boldly before the throne of God (Heb. 4:16).

Pillar One: Ministry

Since Joshua Generation School is not a program that is just trying to contain teens until they are mature enough to standup against the rigors of college life, work life or just life life, we feel it is our responsibility to teach the Interns by hands-on methods to minister to the Body and to those who have not yet accepted the gift of Salvation through Jesus. This essential part of the Internship will take up approximately half of the time we spend to gather. It is so important for the young person to understand the need for there to be leaders and ministers who can meet people at the point of their needs.

The way the hands on ministry works is that each intern would begin to cycle through each department in the church learning the ins and outs of each department, from janitorial to pastoral. This way they are getting a full grasp of what is going on in the church and it gives them an opportunity to see if they feel God is calling them to vocational ministry. If so, there are other plans in the works for them the next year. This will help us fulfill our purpose by allowing each person to serve in each area of the church. It helps give them an idea of what area they feel God I calling them to be a part of.

This can be a great time of gifts testing and mentoring from the full time staff pastors in each department. Every day that we meet, they will work in their respective departments from 1:30 till 4:30, in addition to being trained and participating as a cell leader in the youth department (strongly encouraged, but not required). They will also be an important part of the youth department staff. Under the youth pastor’s direction they will minister to the youth on an individual basis, as well as be an example in every area of their lives to the youth. They are the hands and feet of the Youth Pastor.

Pillar Two: Instruction

This section of the Internship will give each student a firm foundation in the Word of God. We want every Intern that leaves Joshua Generation School to have a foundation in the Word of God, the source of all truth! This will not be a complete college curriculum, it will be the basics of Biblical studies.

A few of the classes that will be taught are: Basic Doctrine, New Testament Survey, and Old Testament Survey, for which there will be college credit available, as well as a couple of one week mini-courses on Personal Bible Study, which gives basic instruction on how to use certain tools of Biblical interpretation (such as the NIV Concordance, Naves Topical Bible, and the Bible Dictionary). Another mini-course will be on Personal Evangelism. And lastly, we will require papers to be submitted after any conference, basically discussing the things God spoke to them about that conference’s specific thrust.

Classes will be held immediately after Prayer time from 9:00 until12:30 with a few minutes break between classes. As I mentioned earlier this part of the internship is extremely important. This is where a lot of the cement of biblical foundation will be poured and it will give them some thing very firm to stand on, as well as teaching them skills that are essential to continued Bible study, and Christian life.

Pillar Three: Mentoring

This is the last of the three pillars but definitely not the least important. We see the Mentoring relationship of the Joshua Generation School as absolutely indispensable. This involves many things.

First, most of the mentoring that will take place in the first year will be pretty general, and it will grow as time goes on. A good part of the mentoring will take place during the classes and while the Intern serves side by side with a seasoned Christian. A lot of wisdom can be gain from a student who puts his or her mind to being taught. On the other hand, there will be regularly scheduled times when Interns can come in and receive counsel from the pastor or the Intern Administrator/Youth Pastor.

We learned a very valuable lesson from people we interviewed concerning mentoring, and that is, you can’t legislate relationship. You can try all you wan to hook a younger man and an older man or woman respectively together, but unless there is that special connection that only God can bring to a relationship all you have is a Paul/Timothy relationship on paper. But is that person’s life really being changed, are they really being mentored? Probably not.

Mentoring is a huge part of the internship, so big that it is woven into the very fabric of the way it is set up. It is designed so that if a young man or woman finds a mentor they can go full guns for it. If not, there are lots of mentoring possibilities available everyday by simply watching someone’s life and asking lots of questions.

Another aspect of this mentoring side is accountability, in any area of life. This will occur more often in a small group setting such as a cell group, where the small group becomes like family and a person can feel safe sharing and being vulnerable enough to receive accountability. You will know who your real friends are because they won’t let you get away with things that can potentially hurt you!

Why do we feel so strongly about internships? Why have we spent so much time and effort researching internships and talking with people who seem to be successful in discipling youth? What is the big deal anyway? Isn’t it just a lot of "hoo-haw" and a Christian fad? This is a question that we have been asked and had to ask ourselves. What is the real reason for wanting to start Joshua Generation School? The answer came to me very quickly. I would have liked to have been a part of such a program. Just the prospect of being able to spend a whole year getting planted, not only in my relationship with God but in the Word, in my calling and ministry, while functioning in a ministry capacity at my home church, would have been great.

However, the reason we feel so strongly about building an internship ministry is because we feel there is definitely a deficit of young Christian leaders in every arena of life. Not only does this internship keep kids from falling away after High School and sacrificing their whole eternal destiny on the alter of un-biblical decision making or from drifting off the course God has for them as we read about in Hebrews, but it also creates young men and women of God who are leaders.

I find it interesting that while we look at the lives of many people we think are such great leaders, when we look closely we see that before they were a leader they were a disciple, they were a follower. Something I learned a long time ago is that if you have a good leader it means he is probably a good follower, and vice versa, and a good follower is the only person to consider making a leader.

As I close this overview of the structure and purpose of our Internship, Joshua Generation School, I would like to leave you with a question to think about the next time you read about Joshua and how he led a whole nation and changed a generation for God. How did Joshua become the mighty man of Valor, Leadership and Victory that he was?
1) He spent time in the presence of God at a young age –Foundation/Prayer-[Ex.33:11]
2) He ministered as a Servant to Moses –Ministry- [Ex. 24:16]
3) He received instructions from Moses-Instruction-[Ex. 17:9]
4) He was Mentored by Moses-Mentoring– [Num. 11:28]
5) He was Commissioned by Moses –Leadership- [Num.27:22].

This is the reason why we have chosen the name Joshua Generation School for our internship. Joshua was a man who truly had a heart to see his generation reach the Promised Land. He had the passion and the heart for it, but it was in those years of training when God made him a useable vessel.

The time of preparation has come. Let’s start making disciples and building leaders! I hope you enjoy this study as much as we all did and gain insights from our study of how to build a successful Internship.

 

 

As the nine of us, under the direction of Larry Asplund, researched this issue of how to build an Internship, we traveled to spend time at internships in the Northwest. We also read about Internships, such as Master Commission, and other styles of Internships and Mentorships. We studied a lot about the success of some of these internships. We learned many important lessons, a few of which we saw as the most important:

First and foremost, the thing we witnessed was the that fact the individual and the team of people who were running the Internship were submitted to their Senior Pastor, Eldership, or recognized Spiritual Covering. Non of the Internships that we saw to be most effective were a para-church organization. The ones that were being the most effective were Internships that were established by, in and around, and were vitally connected with a local church, with the covering of the spiritual leadership.

Secondly, as we began this study on Internships and how to build one and make it work right, God gave each of these youth pastors/senior pastors a vision, a verse or a strategic plan for how to begin there Internship. It is not just a matter of finding a model that works for you, or trying to be some "cookie cutter" image of another churches’ internship. Before you even look at examples to follow in building an internship and even before you take this research too seriously, SEEK GOD. He is the one that will tell you exactly how He wants your Internship, Youth Group, or even the whole church to be structured and what the vision and goals should be for it. We did do a lot of research on this topic, but I would have to say that a lot of what we read, saw, and experienced as we visited other internships, studied books and talked to people, was simply conformation of the direction and basic ideas God had given us as a group and individually in our own personal and group prayer times and in seeking Him for a workable pattern for an internship in our specific churches.

I think the biggest thing we saw as we researched these internships is that one particular model will not work the same for one church as it does for another. SEEK GOD. See what He wants you to do, obey Him, and then see if there are any resources you can gather from people who have walked the road before. I am not saying that each youth pastor and senior pastor should reinvent the wheel, but make sure you are not using good programs as a substitute for really getting a vision and specific strategy for your city, church, and youth.

Finally, a third big lesson we learned as we researched internships was the fact that we look at the solutions to problems wrongly. We see that a significant amount of youth are falling away from God immediately out of High School once they enter college, and our hearts cry for them, as does mine. So, we try to make it so they don’t fall away. We lock them up in the church for a year before letting them go to college. This can simply be a band-aide for the real issue at hand. The real issue is that youth are not being discipled in many youth groups and churches. They are going to youth services on Wednesday nights and attending Sunday services, but never really getting ahold of God for themselves. We give great pizza parties, but do we give them real Spiritual Meat? For instance, how many youth in your church could accurately explain the need for a knowing the Word and having a strong relationship with God in prayer. It seems as though we want to skip these important issues. We want to pacify them until they are older. But sadly, that is often too late.

However, there is an option! We as youth workers can choose to actively disciple our youth. When they look at you as a minister of the Gospel, are they saying to themselves, "That is a man/woman of God. I would like to find out why they are so successful in their walk with God. I want to be like them!" If you are a minister who can say that, great job, all you have to work on now is being an effective discipler (see ‘sources’ # 5, 9,10), be a Paul to a couple of young people, train them to be real, godly leaders like yourself, (and strive to be a more godly leader every day, yourself). I know it sounds intimidating, but Jesus did it so I guess we are supposed to as well.

When we started this research project we thought the real problem was that these kids we just falling away from God because of lack of training or discipleship or because they were not founded in the Word, which are major parts of this equation, but another side is that many of these kids have fallen away from the faith, from Jesus, because they have never seen a leader portray Jesus to them. They have never had a leader that was Jesus to them. What an internship is designed to do is raise up leaders, to raise up men and women of God who can function as a leader in ministry, the work force, in college, and throughout their lives, serving the King of kings with every bone in their body.

Every believer is called to be a leader in some capacity. We are all called to serve, we are called to lead others to Jesus Christ, and the ONLY way that you make good leaders is BY EXAMPLE! A young person looks at a leader and makes a decision on weather he/she will be involved based on the example of that leader. The question that I want to leave every person that reads the research we have compiled, is this (and it is not a one time thing, it is a life-long challenge to any one who works with youth, or for that matter, any one who is a Christian and is committed to serving Jesus Christ): "Are you portraying an accurate view of Jesus to your youth (or others you are ministering to) through your life? Do your teens look at you and see an accurate representation of Jesus and the work of Jesus through your everyday actions, attitudes, relationship with God, and out level of Agape love toward them?"

We hope that you enjoyed this research, and that you seek God for the answer for your specific Internship, or whatever God leads you to do to raise up young leaders in your local church. The product of our research leaves us with a good report to bring. The Internships that we looked at are doing very well and we were very impressed. We were amazed with the level of spiritual maturity and the ability to function and minister in and to the Body that we saw in the youth attending these Internships (see ‘sources’ # 3 & 4). An Internship, as we see it, would be very profitable to a church and is the best way we have seen yet "To mature young Christians and train them how to be effective leaders of and ministers to the Body of Christ, to reach our Generation with the Good News of the freedom through Jesus Christ, and raise them up to be strong young men and women of prayer and relationship with Jesus Christ."

God Bless You and May His Wisdom Guide You,

-Dave, Ben, Aaron, David, Josh, Katie, Jon, Jason and Asim

Sources of Research

1. Wagner, Peter. (1993). Churches That Pray. Ventura, CA: Regal Books.

2. Damazio, Frank. (1988). The Making Of A Leader. Portland, OR: Bible Temple Publishing.

3. Interview With: Pastor Steve Carpenter, City Church, Seattle, WA. Re: Internships. April, 2000.

4. Interview With: Pastor Doug Lasit, City Bible Church, Portland, OR. Re: Internships. April, 2000.

5. Damazio, Frank. (1998). Seasons of Intercession. Portland, OR: City Bible Publishing.

6. Hendricks, Howard & William. (1995) Iron Sharpens Iron, Chicago, IL: Moody Press.

7. Asplund, Larry. Personal Interview. May, 2000.

8. Asplund, Larry. Class Lecture, Educational Ministries of the Church. Portland Bible College. April, 2000.

9. Graham, Kevin F. (1995) Jesus for a new Generation. Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press.

10. Dunn, Richard R. & Mark H. Senter. (1997) Reaching a Generation for Christ. Chicago IL: Zondervan Pub. House.

11. Anderson, Neil T. (1993) The Bondage Breaker. Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers.

 

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