Millennials and internships

Matt Waldock of City Church Manchester on how to attract young graduates into short-term church work

You simply cannot avoid them!

Whether it’s social media comments, blogs, business articles or Army recruitment posters the subject of ‘millennials’ is everywhere. A dictionary definition is: ‘those people reaching young adulthood around the year 2000, most social networking groups are dominated by the millennial generation.’

They are set to be the main demographic in most cultures by 2025 and they are markedly different to the generations before them, particularly in their values and spending habits.

Most millennials are shunning the acquisition of material possessions, such as houses and cars, yet – with the exception of technology – they would rather purchase intriguing experiences and unique memories. As a result, the UK’s 17 million millennials have ushered in the era of the ‘experience’ economy, and though they expect to spend most of their life nomadically renting, they will be more technologically savvy and sophisticated than any generation before them.

The question of how to engage the emerging demographic with the mainstream workforce is a fair one: for retailers it’s about money, as the old industries give way to the new, but for everyone else it’s about attracting talent and retaining it.

Ministry trainees

Back in 2004, when I graduated from Lancaster University, the concept of ministry trainees (typically graduates who are willing to work for their local church but aren’t necessarily decided on full-time Christian ministry) was, to me, an entirely unknown quantity. I had set my focus on a career in the civil service until a friend encouraged me to apply to work for 12 months for a new church plant in Liverpool. Despite my initial reluctance it was a decision that transformed the trajectory of my life.

I did not begin a traineeship expecting to set a course in Christian ministry, but the year unexpectedly opened the door to a rich and full taste of church life that captured my heart to the point I concluded that there was nothing I would rather expend the best of time, energy and talent on, and no role that I would rather get up in the morning for. The traineeship was the gateway to full-time Christian ministry for me, as it has been for numerous others.

Well drying up

Since those heady years in the early ‘noughties’ it has seemed to me that in many places across the country this promising well has dried up.

The challenge of recruiting trainees was difficult long before the economic uncertainty of Brexit, which has prompted many graduates to seek safer waters in business graduate programmes which they accept immediately after university.

In some senses, graduate ministry trainee schemes have always appealed to those passionate about ministry and confident of a calling to such a vocation, or those with the financial means to explore ministry for a year. However, such is the level of gospel need in the UK that we need a correspondingly large pool of trainees to become the next generation of pastors, planters, leaders and church members, and this will mean adapting training schemes to be attractive to more millennials.

Making it attractive

So what might this adaptation look like for the millennial hordes of 2019?

First, one small shift, easily available to churches, is to change the title of the role from trainee to intern for the simple reason that ‘intern’ is the vocabulary used more commonly in the secular workplace and is more comprehensible to students who are weighing up a variety of options.

Secondly, ‘intern’ is more understandable, and indeed friendly, to recruiters scrutinising the post-university choices a candidate has made if internship does not lead to ministry.

Thirdly, the title rework can be a key mind-set shift for students comparing a ministry internship alongside graduate programmes with a FTSE 500 company; it is important that churches can make a credible case that graduates from their programme, like any other internship, would leave more skilled-up and competitive to the workplace than when they entered.

Valuing the experience

For a church to compete with the might of recruitment schemes provided by the likes of Price Waterhouse Cooper seems nothing less than a task of David versus Goliath proportions, but of course such a comparison should give us a gleam of hope.

A Harris Poll survey of US millennials in 2016 identified that not only do they value experiences, but they are increasingly spending their time and money accumulating more of them. 72% say that they would like to increase their investment in precious memories; this indicates a move away from materialism to a craving for ‘real life’ experiences.

Moreover, millennials are a demographic that highly values ‘authenticity’ and relationships, where 61% feel they can make a difference to the world just through their spending habits. When it comes to ‘real life’ experiences that contribute to the benefit of humanity, the great news is that the church is untouchably wealthy in these. For those seeking to forgo salary size for meaningful service, churches clearly need to leverage their significant market advantage.

One-to-one attention

Churches are also failing to capitalise on their capacity to offer time and coaching. The benefit I received from my own year as a trainee was the sheer amount of time that was patiently poured into me by the pastor to both disciple me and to skill me up.

With that in mind, at City Church Manchester we offer something few other graduate positions can offer, and that is approximately 50 hours of one-to-one coaching over the course of the programme.

All of these adaptations are straightforward for churches to implement, and significantly increase their attractiveness in comparison with secular opportunities. This is all supported by a report by Deloitte that concluded that the posts that are most attractive to millennials are those that: reward innovation; manage performance in a fair and supportive manner; accept risk taking; encourage flexible working; offer continuous training; provide career development opportunities. Internships take on a uniquely contemporary feel when they are bespoke for the people who are recruited and the value added to church ministries can often be surprising.

International travel?

Many churches have a secret weapon that is under-deployed when it comes to attracting ministry interns – the opportunity for international travel.

Over the last four years we have enjoyed building relationships with a number of churches across the world, from Dubai to Alabama. These partnerships have enriched the church and have been both an encouragement and support to us. One of the ways we’ve been able to deepen these relationships is by offering a four-week international placement to serve within one of these churches.

The opportunity to serve abroad is both appealing to prospective interns, but also contributes to City Church considerably through the experiences gained by the intern and the partnerships that are strengthened. This year we’re excited to be able to send interns to Nashville (Tennessee), Birmingham (Alabama) and Tupelo (Mississippi). This isn’t unique to City Church; many churches have mission partners across the world and it is common for church staff to join international teams. However, it is rare for these opportunities to be a central feature of the internship programme and advertised with confidence. This is a shame because, for the millennial generation, international travel experiences which go beyond exotic holidays are a show-stopping pull.

Catching the vision

I never imagined Liverpool would be more than a brief sojourn on my way to London. I stayed for more than 11 years and have never left the North West since I arrived at university in 2001. A significant part of the reason for this is that I caught the vision for more churches to be planted and revitalised in one of the most gospel-barren areas of the country. At City Church Manchester, our church- planting strategy depends upon men and women being similarly motivated, and committing their lives to serve as members or staff in these fledgling gospel outposts.

Fourteen years on from my own ministry internship, I still believe it’s the best way to for each successive generation to catch the vision too.