Every week on Tuesday, our former Lead Pastor, Bob MacGregor, would facilitate a discussion with the interns with the innovative title: “Intern Chat.”
Our group included both current and former interns, as some of us who had graduated stayed in the group because of its benefits.
Here are some examples of Intern Chat activities:
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A discussion on how to respond to an email Bob received from a stranger requesting “our stance on LGBT issues.”
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A debate on how to properly interpret an upcoming difficult text in a sermon series.
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A trip to a funeral home to receive instruction from the Director on how a pastor can best work with Funeral Directors.
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A visit to an elderly couple in a retirement home to take the Lord’s Supper, chat, sing, and pray.
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A visit to someone in the church who was sick in hospital.
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A series of discussions dealing with ethical questions.
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A short Bible study on the book of Acts.
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Feedback on an elder-initiated MAID policy, which included one of the interns making revisions, which would be included in the final draft.
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A discussion with our Financial Steward on a rental policy (e.g. should we allow community members and/or church members to rent our church building? For what purposes?).
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A discussion on dealing with disagreements between staff.
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A discussion on potential responses to increased government restrictions during the Pandemic.
For discussion times, Pastor Bob would tell us the topic with less than 24 hours notice. It was often something difficult he was working through. Bob would rarely offer his answer in the first thirty minutes and would ask questions in a Socratic style, which, at the time, made me wonder if he was arguing against me! His questions trained me in patience and discernment.
Regular meetings between the pastor and younger leaders aren’t the norm in most churches, but they should be for at least three reasons.
First, older ministers should pass on their wisdom to the next generation. This is a biblical mandate to pastors. For example, Paul says, “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”
According to this passage, some individuals should be identified as “able to teach others.” This identification can happen because of, and through, the regular modeling and passing on of wisdom that comes in the form of weekly meetings oriented around pastoral ministry practices and challenges.
Second, pastors should run an Intern Chat (or something like it) to make up for the lack of ethical discernment in pastoral ministry today. As Carl Trueman and Matthew Arbo have recently noted, there is an increasing need for Christian ethicists, and this is especially true in pastoral ministry. Some pastors have been trained to preach and to show empathy in counseling but lack discernment in how to advise on issues like social media, IVF, pronoun requests in secular workplaces, church building policies, and more.
Some ethical instruction can occur in preaching. However, the pastor is required to come alongside members in their day-to-day ethical living as well, and future pastors should be trained in this. As ethicist Oliver O’Donovan says,
“I don’t, I think, want to see a pulpit that is used to be highly directive in moral terms. But I want to see one that is searching, that does not allow the congregation to get away with not asking questions, not seeing difficulties that they need to see. But to do that, of course, you need a pastoral ministry that is capable of accompanying people in their life choices, imaginatively thinking what it’s like. And very often that is precisely not the kind of pastoral ministry we’ve trained.”
Lastly, pastors should run Intern Chats for the sake of friendship. To be clear, the weekly chats were not time for “catching up,” helping each other through our problems, or even sharing prayer requests (though we did pray). It was refreshingly devoid of ourselves and focused on the topic or task in front of us.
I say “refreshing” because, in the midst of a difficult week, I chose to still attend Intern Chat knowing it wouldn’t revolve around my life circumstances. Some pastors will drop everything to focus on personal problems, not realizing that the best thing might be to keep focusing on the mission. And even there, friendships flourish.
I’ll never forget when we were discussing how lonely pastoral ministry can be when Bob said something like, “Well, you are my friends, right?” It was an “aha” moment. A weekly meeting, even for just an hour over lunch, can instill a camaraderie with one another that lasts a lifetime. One of my fellow interns has now moved two hours away to take a role as an Associate Pastor, but we stay in touch, and I expect we will for a long time.
Ministry is hard. We shouldn’t just plug students into schools like machines requiring a software upgrade. They’re shepherds needing virtue, sages needing wisdom, and leaders needing friends.
I once falsely believed that growing in Christian maturity meant having more and more opinions that would make things clearer, more black and white. With the help of Pastor Bob, I better understand the grey challenges, and the questions to ask when facing them.
Thanks to Bob’s legacy, Intern Chats continue at our church. There is a temptation to devalue such conversations in our fast-paced world, but I hope more churches will adopt something like it for the sake of our future.
Keep on chatting. Keep on thinking. Keep on discipling.
