The Bible, Missions, and Ministry department hosted an internship fair with 18 churches and ten organizations on Nov. 2. 

Prof. Robert Oglesby, the Director of Youth and Family Ministry, said this tradition has been happening since he came to ACU 22 years ago. He said it allows the 24 students who had interviews to find their internships in a day. These interviews only lasted 30 minutes and most students had six or seven interviews according to Oglesby.

“Bottom line is we try to make it easy for the churches to get with our students for internship jobs,” Oglesby said. “Our students can basically find their jobs in a day here, getting to talk to a lot of people at one time so we capitalize on the moment and do it all in one day.”

One of these students who interviewed with churches was Oscar Rocha, a sophomore music ministry major from Abilene. Churches and organizations weren’t allowed to offer the day of the fair because Oglesby wants his students to pray about their decision but Rocha said he has high hopes for his internship. 

“In an internship I would say that my main goal is to just gain more knowledge, experience, and wisdom,” Rocha said. “This way I am able to take things from what I see and integrate it into how I hope to do ministry in the future.”    

Several high-profile churches like The Branch, The Hills, and Hill Country Bible attended the fair as well as organizations like Lifeline Chaplaincy and Dry Bones. Lifeline Chaplaincy deals with life and death issues in hospitals while Dry Bones deals with the large homeless community in Denver.

“It used to be that all of them were Church of Christ churches but now our student body is a little different with more Baptist and non-denominational folks,” Oglesby said. “Some students want to do different types of ministry. It’s getting to be a wide spectrum of churches and organizations which is great.”