Hugo Charteris gives a small church perspective on ministry trainees.
Why does your church take on Ministry Trainees every year?
At Christ Church Newcastle, we take ministry trainees because we think we’ve got some good training to offer. In fact great training because, as with most smaller churches, the trainee has regular access to the regular staff & key church leaders. So I take our trainees for a walk every week (whatever the weather) to chat through ministry and personal issues. I enjoy it and so do they. It's good training! They also get to experience and engage with a breadth of church life, not just one sector.
What are the advantages to the church?
One advantage for us in having trainees is being forced to explain, again & again, what we do and why we do it. It keeps us fresh and focused. Of course it’s always good to have more hands on deck, but actually for us nothing is dependent on a trainee, so his or her presence is a bonus not a requirement. We’re not filling a post but appointing a person – ‘person first, job description second’!
What do you need to think about before taking on trainees?
What we won’t do is take on a trainee because he or she can’t think what to do next. The role of trainee needs to be a positive choice not a fall back when other things don’t work out. We’re also very wary of disrupting a sensible career progression, preferring to appoint someone already qualified in a particular field, whatever that field might be.
For more information on the work of 9:38, check out their website.
