Just like any other organization, a missionary organization needs behind-the-scenes workers in order to function properly. People like accountants, graphic designers, and data analysts can use their skills to serve God’s kingdom and support missionaries on the field.
This summer a group of college students did just that at Cru’s international headquarters in Orlando, FL. They served in jobs related to their majors, and as an added bonus these jobs fulfilled a summer internship requirement toward their degrees. They also spent time each week doing evangelism and discipleship locally.
I helped train the Campus Innovation interns in both job skills (innovation training) and Biblical thinking (the Bible study I wrote for my seminary Capstone project).
Job Training
I was one of two trainers leading sessions on Innovation (in the business world, this is sometimes called research and development). Our interns were joined by those from another department and also by a staff member who is new to the Innovation team. Here are some of the skills we taught:
- Interviewing people and listening to discover their needs
- Brainstorming techniques to quickly come up with creative ideas to meet those needs
- Ways to narrow down your list of ideas to the two or three most promising ones to test
- How to quickly (and cheaply!) test an idea, seek feedback for improvement, and repeat the process as many times as needed to reach a viable product.
This training prepared the interns for the four projects they worked on during the rest of the summer, which included updating one of our most popular evangelism tools and planning a way to help young believers truly understand and internalize the gospel.
Biblical Training
It was a joy to lead the Bible study I wrote on Biblical Foundations for Creativity and watch our summer interns discover for themselves what God’s word says about creativity and wisely using it to serve others! Their feedback was positive, and gave me good ideas for a few improvements for next time! :-)
Praise and Prayer
- Praise for what God did in and through our summer interns.
- Pray that the summer interns will prayerfully consider joining us as staff members after they graduate college.
Thank you for praying!