By Sarah Carlson, Arts Editor
Students interested in interning in a church ministry or missionary position can still submit resumes for interviews with churches Tuesday and Wednesday, said Robert Oglesby, instructor of Bible, missions and ministry and director of field education.
About 50 churches will conduct interviews in the east side of the Bean, and about 45 to 50 students have already submitted their resumes to be reviewed by the churches. Some churches will not give interviews at Bible Lectureship but are still accepting interns, and other churches will not have enough interns, so students of all majors should feel free to interview, he said.
Students can submit their resumes to Onstead-Packer Biblical Studies Building Room 245 by Tuesday. The interviews will be 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday and 8:30 a.m. to noon Wednesday.
Oglesby said the response rate from churches that employ students for a summer is almost always positive, and church leaders have been attending Lectureship to find interns for at least 10 years.
“That’s why they keep coming back,” he said, referring to the churches. “We see some of the same folks year after year because they like what our students do.”
Most of the churches will be from Texas, he said, though some will be from various places such as New York City; San Diego, Calif.; and cities in Florida. Two or three students will be accepted for a chaplaincy internship at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center. In addition to churches, students can interview for missionary positions around the world through World Wide Witness.
Bible ministry majors are required to complete an internship before their senior year both for educational experience and so if problems or conflicts occur with the student and the church during the internship, professors and staff can work with the student to analyze what went wrong and solve the problem before the student graduates.
For the non-Bible majors, who make up about 20 percent of the internship applicants, Oglesby said most are looking for a fun and enriching summer job.
“Most of them just have a great love and passion for ministry and working with children,” he said. “The more experience and more variety, the better off it is in the long run, to continue to learn.”
