Lessons Learned as Interns

My Journey of Faith Part 6

Our son and his wife stand in the nursery they shared in 1981, by the predetermined counsel of God.

While serving at Elohim Bible Institute, we were blessed by many missionary speakers during Chapel. Hearing a call to foreign missions, we pursued Global Outreach Missions and were accepted. We were then sent to a Missionary Internship and made our way to Redford, Michigan, where I interned at Covenant Community Church from 1980 to 1981.

It's amazing how many things must pass us by during our lives, and we are entirely unaware of them. The couple in the picture on the right is our son and his wife, who celebrated their 23rd wedding anniversary last month. Yet, during our stay at Covenant Community Church, my son and his future wife were together in the nursery on Sunday mornings. They meet nineteen years later while attending Liberty University.

The Intern Lesson Learned: Unnecessary Divisions

We worked at the church during the year and attended classes for two week intervals. We took such classes as cross cultural communication. That's where we learned that the American way of practicing our faith may not fit into a different national community. One of many red flags that got my attention over the years but incorrect loyalties kept me from moving on to a more Biblical way.

The Intern Lesson Learned: Behavior Speaks Louder than Appearance

The pastor decided to put me in charge of the Christmas program. I immediately delated music and children to the appropriate people who were more than willing to lead. I spent some time praying and creatinga past about Christmas, that I named, That Old Time Christmas spirit. The story involved several children going to different people to learn the meaning of Christmas.

To help with the play, feeling inadequate for the dialogue, I don't know if I was, I never gave it a try, I enlisted a church member previously published. From a child, I always felt compelled to write. The play was submitted, by a very nice member, who to this day has my respect as a fine Christian. She gave me the foreign rights to the play. Years later I submitted an article to a magazine about a movie with an allegorical perspective. They loved it but couldn't publish it because they didn't have enough time. They sent me a ton of information about when and how to get published including the fact that with plays, the main author writes the story line, dialog is the secondary author. Above all else, Christians live to do all things to the praise of Him who died for us. Forgiveness? Absolutey! The church would be a better place, however, if the accountability of Matthew 18 was exercised as we are COMMANDED.

The Intern Lesson learned: Needy Young Singles

As the year began to draw to a close, and a considerable amount of growth in numbers and an eye on Christ as the purpose for our lives had occurred, one of the young singles said to me, "This always happens; the group becomes scattered, disconnected, and with almost no seeming purpose until an intern shows up and then we become united for Christ." I could view that as encouraging and motivating for me personally, but after years of further experiences, prayer, and study of the scriptures, I see it as a systematic failure in God's people, what we call the church.

The Intern Lesson Learned: Intellectual Elites or Common Folk

It was Easter time, and the pastor, a very nice man, and graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, asked me to share equal time with three other men from other churches to give one of four parts of the Passion of Christ. Before the morning service, we all sat in the pastor's office, prayed, and became acquainted specifically by naming the school we attended. I was the only one who did not attend a University. I chose to speak about the darkness that came over the land during the last three hours of Christ's time on the cross.

After the service, we came once again to the pastor's office. The first time, I had a minor feeling that I was not being looked at with the respect of a university student. Now, one of the participants, a pastor, said to me, "What school did you say you attended?" I thought but didn't say anything; what difference does that make? Even in Christian circles, men are forever looking at the things that do not matter and miss the One that does. I was told by one of the college students later, that there was alot of talk about my part at college the following week, meaning it was very good.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, "For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God."

The Lessons learned as Interns continually prove to me that I am very happy to know that at best I am only average.