Internships & Urban Church Planting
We seek to be a church that loves the seminary students in our community. Seminarians are normal people like the rest of us. Like the rest of us, they struggle to love their spouses, discern their calling in life, pay their rent and serve other people. We want to be a church in which seminary students and their families feel loved, supported and empowered.
Seminary Internships
Memorial actively partners with Covenant Theological Seminary and regional presbyteries throughout North America to provide supervised internships, to shepherd students through opportunities to raise funds, and to train and support students.
The purpose of an internships is not to use the student, but to develop the student. With internships, we recognize the potential to “use people to do ministry,” but we also see the opportunity to “use ministry to do people.” Each internship is individually crafted in an effort to prepare the student for his or her specific area of calling.
You cannot lead the church until you have loved the church. The best way to gain the maximum benefit while in seminary is to serve a local church, persevering in a commitment to one community of Christians throughout your entire seminary career.
“I learned more from my internship in the church than I did in the classroom.” Pastors, educators, counselors and other servant leaders are not merely trained in a classroom. They are developed through the hardships of life, challenges of ministry and experience seeing God change lives.
Volunteer Staff Internships are available in many areas: worship, mercy ministry, assimilation, youth, children’s ministry, community groups, outreach, etc. For more information, contact Associate Pastor Greg Johnson.
Urban Church Planting Internships
Memorial seeks to partner with other churches to plant Christ-centered, grace-centered missional churches throughout the St. Louis area. Statistically, church plants are the most effective means of evangelism in North America today. They also grow the resource base with which we can bring the Welcome of Jesus to the city and to the world.
Our Strategic Plan includes steps we are taking to prepare for future church planting efforts in urban church planting.
Memorial currently has volunteer Staff Internships in Church Planting and Revitalization, which give seminary students the opportunity to develop some of the skills necessary to plant new churches. An ideal candidate is in his first (or second) year of seminary, is pursuing an ordination-track Master of Divinity, finds it natural to pursue and gather people, and has an interest in church planting. For more information, contact Associate Pastor Greg Johnson.
