My Job Description

The other day, I read a satirical article on how easy it must be to work in a church. For me, as someone who works in a church, the article was hilarious, because the presentation it gave of what it must be like to work in a church was so far from reality. The article did remind me, however, that most people (especially those who have never worked in a church) have no idea what it takes to work in a church. So, I have decided to compile a list of just a few of the key elements that fit under the broad umbrella title “Youth Intern.” A youth intern is a very unique person. He must:
• Be skilled with setting up and running sound equipment. This is especially handy when nobody else in the room knows how to do it or when you use your sound equipment somewhere besides your normal location then have to put it back where it belongs.
• Be a public speaker.
• Be an interior designer. More goes into arranging a youth room than meets the untrained eye.
• Be a friend.
• Be a Bible Scholar. Ok, probably not all youth interns are Bible scholars, but including this in my job description makes me feel even better about reading theology books/the Bible.
• Be a Facebook friend. Because there are friends. And then there are Facebook friends.
• Be a counselor. Wisdom must flow from the youth intern’s lips as water in a raging river. Or maybe it’s just my dream that the last sentence describes me someday.
• Be a camp counselor. This one definitely fits me. As everyone knows, every good youth ministry involves camps. And at the camps, the intern gets to live in the cabin with the kids. Reminds me of my 2 summers at T Bar M, except that when I’m in charge, there are no curfews, so I get much more exhausted than T Bar M would ever let me get.
• Be a janitor. Who cleans up the youth room when the kids leave? The Intern
• Be a financial planner. Planning next year’s youth budget… one part of the job I’m not looking forward to.
• Be an event coordinator. Because awesome youth events don’t just happen on their own (at least not every time).
• Be a mediator. Do kids go to parents for conflicts with friends? Why would they do that when there’s a youth intern in town!
• Be a mentor. One of the most awesome parts of the job. Getting to impart my wisdom (or whatever you call the thing I have that I hope someday qualifies as wisdom) to the youth, especially in a small group setting.
• Being a mentee. I think that’s what you call it when you learn from others.
• Being a discussion leader. If you’ve never led a small group discussion with a group of high school guys, there is no way on earth you can comprehend how challenging of a task this seemingly simple thing can be.
• Being a small group discussion material writer. As if it wasn’t hard enough just to lead the discussions, I also have to come up with material that will keep all 4 of the small groups in our Sunday School class talking for about 40 minutes.
• Being a high school music/sports fan. What better way to show the kids you really care about them than being there… for guys field hockey? (Austin, if you read this, I really enjoyed watching your game)
• Being a marketing genius. Because events can’t happen if kids don’t know abut them.
Like I said, there is much more that goes into being a youth intern than this short list, but if you ever want to consider applying for the job, make sure you have at least these bases covered first.