Tracy Wells on Episcopal Internships
February Enewsletter
Last year, I woke up every morning and went into work at a church office. Wednesday mornings, I helped lead a Eucharist and then dropped in for a brief hello with the Wednesday morning Bible study crowd. Friday mornings I'd head over to a local retirement community for a Bible study and hymn sing and would always be treated to warm banana bread baked by one of our attendees. Sunday mornings I'd vest and process in with the clergy crowd, help serve at the altar, and preach on occasion. During Lent, I led the church's Lenten series, and sat on a committee about starting up a J2A class for the youth. No, I was not a seminarian. I was not even in the formal discernment process for the ministry! I was an intern in one of the Episcopal Church's "Domestic Young Adult Internships," this one called "Resurrection House" in Omaha, Nebraska.
Did you know that the Episcopal Church offers year-long internships for young adults in their 20s? These programs, based out of cities from Boston to Los Angeles, from Omaha to Chapel Hill, N.C., give young adults an opportunity to spend a year in service and discernment, similar to Jesuit Volunteer Corps or Americorps programs. In most of the programs, interns spend their time in service work positions, taking a year to give back to the community and to discern their vocational path.
Some of the programs also have a parish ministry component. Resurrection House is one of those programs, and it does an incredible job of giving young adults a first-hand look at all the ins and outs of ordained ministry. Before even formally declaring that you are interested in discernment to any "official" diocesan discernment committees, you get hands-on experience actually working in a parish and "trying it on" for size. Interns spend 20 hours per week working in a parish, 10 hours per week volunteering in the community, and 10 hours per week in discernment and Sabbath rest (we also meet regularly with a spiritual director). The structure of the program is very healthy and balanced and does not at all lend itself to burn-out, which is EXTREMELY rare in many programs geared toward young people that seem to expect you to be able to run a million miles an hour and burn the candle at both ends constantly. If you are at all interested, even slightly, in the possibility of pursuing ordained ministry, I cannot recommend this particular program (Resurrection House in Omaha) highly enough. Let me tell you a bit about my story and how I wound up there.
In 2006, I was about to graduate with a master's degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but I felt more confused about what direction my life should take as I finished up my degree than I did when I went in! Although I'd thought when I entered the M.T.S. program that I was going to be a journalist, a religion reporter, towards the end of my time in Boston folks had started to suggest that I might think about a career in ministry, but I was still wary of that notion. I had never really seen myself as a leader in the church. But I wanted to take their suggestions seriously and really take some time to consider this potential career path, so the idea of spending a year in discernment was very appealing.
Several of my friends from the Episcopal church I attended in Cambridge had participated in the young adult internship program in Boston -- The Micah Project -- and raved about the program. It sounded great, and so in my head I envisioned staying in Boston another year and doing the Micah Project. I didn't want to move very far, to totally uproot my life. But God had other plans.
I applied for Micah and for the New York Intern Program, but neither of them offered me a spot. The woman who interviewed me in New York, though, asked if I might consider the Omaha program.
Now, I know. It was my first thought, too -- "Omaha?!?! Why the heck would I move to OMAHA?! Is there even anything to DO in Omaha???"
But then it occurred to me -- I am from Columbia, S.C., which is a great city, but if someone from another part of the country were assigned to go there for an internship, they would probably have a similar reaction - "What the heck is there to do in Columbia, S.C.? Who would want to move there?" And yet if they didn't go, they would be missing out on all kinds of wonderful things that Columbia has to offer. I figured Omaha was probably the same way. So I decided right then and there that I would give Omaha a chance, that I would be open to the places God was calling me, even if it wasn't a place that was even on my radar screen before.
In many ways, this seemed like a crazy decision for me to make, to spend a year in discernment and intentional community living in Nebraska, of all places. I had an established home and community in Boston, where I had been living for three years. I had an apartment full of furniture, none of which I could bring with me to Omaha (the program encourages folks to bring as little personal possessions with them as possible and provides a furnished house for the interns to live in). And I had been in school for seven years straight, having gone straight from undergrad to three years of graduate school. It seemed it was time to enter the "real world," to get a "real job" and start making money, rather than essentially taking a vow of poverty for a year and putting off the student loan payments yet another year. There were a million reasons for me NOT to do this internship.
But that little voice in the back of my head that I have now come to understand as the voice of God just wouldn't let go. Nag, nag, nag. It kept pushing and prodding me towards this program - I knew it was something I had to do.
So, I said yes. I packed up all my belongings, shipped them home to my parents' house in South Carolina and put them in storage for a year, and packed up my car with several suitcases and set out across the country into the great wide open -- driving long days across the vast, expansive plains of the Midwest until I arrived in Omaha, not knowing a soul, totally open to the possibilities God had in store for me for that year.
And what an amazing year it was -- I was blessed with incredible mentors in Mother Judi Yeates, director of the Resurrection House program, and Father Bob Scott, rector of Church of the Holy Spirit in Bellevue, Nebraska where I served as intern. Both of them showed me incredible care and interest in my life and discernment path, talking through all my many doubts and questions about the life of ordained ministry.
The congregation where I worked, Church of the Holy Spirit, was an amazing, warm, welcoming community that really sees mentoring the Resurrection House interns as a part of their collective ministry. They welcomed me with open arms into their community and encouraged and empowered me to lead. I never once felt like I was looked down upon or patronized because of my young age, even though most of the folks I was "ministering" to were old enough to be my parents or grandparents. A lot of the program was about watching and observing and just being in the life of a church, but I also got to take some initiative and leadership, such as in the Lenten series that I led. I created an interfaith stations of the cross project that brought perspectives from different faiths to that community and started some interested interfaith conversations. I was thrilled with how open they community was to going along with my crazy ideas and trying them out, even when they didn't always come across as the most well-polished presentations.
The Church of the Resurrection, the parish that sponsors the internship program and houses and feeds the interns each year, also has a HUGE level of ownership in the internship program and really sees the internship as a key part of their parish's ministry. Resurrection is very small parish, but with a very big heart. They have a non-profit community outreach center that actually has a larger budget than their church budget! And they see Resurrection House as a crucial part of that outreach, and take ownership and pride in the mentorship and encouragement of the interns each year.
Through the nine months I was at Resurrection House, I began to feel more and more that perhaps ordained ministry really is where I am called. And it surprised even me. But I would have never have realized this, I don't think, without first trying it on through the Resurrection House internship, and I will be eternally grateful to the folks of Resurrection House, Church of the Resurrection and Church of the Holy Spirit for all they have given me. (To read more about my sense of calling, check out this sermon I gave on my last Sunday in the Resurrection House program this past May: http://tjammas.blogspot.com/2007/05/sermon-for-may-20-calling.html )
And for the record, Omaha is actually a pretty cool city. It has a great downtown area with lots of fabulous restaurants and nightlife, a world-class zoo, great coffeeshops, and I even found a few venues where I could hear live folk music concerts, a particular passion of mine.
So all this is to say -- if you are a young adult interested in ministry**, or even just not yet quite sure what you want to do with your life, consider taking a year of intentional discernment in one of the Episcopal Church's Domestic Young Adult Internship Programs. It will probably be one of the most meaningful experiences of your life.
If you'd like to talk with Tracy more about her experiences in Omaha in the Resurrection House program, feel free to contact her at tjwells@gmail.com.
**If you are particularly interested in parish ministry, you'll want to check out Resurrection House in Omaha, Pathways to Ministry in Dallas or Watermark in Spokane, WA - these three programs have strong parish ministry components. The Micah Project in Boston also has opportunities for parish ministry as well, although not all interns have parish ministry placements.
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