Blog

I had the opportunity to serve as the youth and arise intern at Irving Bible Church in Irving, Texas, located in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. As someone who grew up in rural Michigan, I tried to avoid going to a big city in Texas for seven months as a 21-year-old. I told God “no” and tried to run like Jonah did when God told him to go to Ninevah. When I actually got there, I had a lot of peace that this was where God intended for me to be, and that while there, I would grow as a young adult who is called to ministry. The staff members at Irving Bible Church never treated me as just an intern but saw me as a co-laborer in the harvest.

Each year, the Institute for Christian Thought and Practice sends ministry students who have just finished their junior year of college on a seven-month, full-time, full-semester college credit internship called PRIME. PRIME stands for “Practical Research and Immersion in Ministry Effectiveness.” Current students and alumni of our ministry degree programs agree: PRIME is life-changing.

Blake experienced ministry at a large church to be different than the way that he grew up. LIFEGATE is a contemporary, highly technological church that is also rooted in tradition. They record their own music but have liturgical elements placed throughout the entire service, showing the process of 2,000 years of ministry across the globe. Blake stated, “The way that you do ministry depends on the type of people that you’re trying to reach,” and LIFEGATE emphasizes this through their ministry.

I sat down with Lydia Welch and asked, “In what ways did you grow while on PRIME?” She responded, “I cannot possibly list the number of ways I grew during PRIME. I grew most in my reliance on God’s strength and grace, being flexible, and not taking everything so seriously.” She discovered that she could thrive in ministry as an introvert. Lydia is very quiet, but when she teaches, she has a lot of wisdom and passion that comes from the relationship that she has with the Lord. She learned how to talk to people and be friendly at work by getting to know people’s names and smiling at people as they walk by, even though she is naturally shy.

Avery is a homebody, so traveling eight hours away from home was very challenging at the beginning of her internship. As she spent more time in full-time ministry, she saw her capabilities and how God shaped her professionally and spiritually. Avery has always made relationships a primary objective for her ministry goals. Forming relationships with students and staff members allowed her to become more outgoing, causing her to be pushed outside her comfort zone.

Inah’s experience was very different from the other PRIME students because she was not in a church but rather serving with an organization overseas in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. She had the opportunity to learn Arabic and interact with the locals through tutoring sessions and to develop relationships through the organization she was serving with. Inah spoke to me about how being immersed in an environment where most people were not Christians pushed her to grow in her personal faith and understanding missions. She had to wrestle with the fact that the local people she was meeting weren’t going to change their beliefs, at least not quickly or easily. She began to ask herself, “Why do I believe what I believe?” This question pushed her to dive deeper into her beliefs and get better as answering questions about Christian beliefs that local friends asked her.

Bre had the deep conviction from God about going to the Los Angeles area to do her PRIME internship even though she had been fighting that idea for so long. When she made the decision to go, the moment of surrendering everything to God was intimate and special for her. She said, “I will always hold onto that moment forever because of how special it was.”

Seven Huntington University undergraduate students and two employees, together with a team of students and staff from Mississippi State University and staff from the M4 Institute, traveled to Momostenango, Guatemala, in May to complete several agriculture-focused projects.

Taught by Dr. Kevin Miller, Intercultural Communications is a course designed to push students out of their comfort zones and educate them on how to respectfully and effectively communicate. But why just read about how to communicate with cultures when there are so many opportunities in the Huntington and Fort Wayne area to experience them?

Warm and bubbling with passion, Kamphausen enthusiastically told me about the joy she has in her new position: “This is a job I’ve always wanted to do since I graduated from Huntington,” she said with a smile. Kamphausen’s official role in the Center for Spiritual Formation is to foster the spiritual formation of students through day-to-day ministry programs.