Reflections on Church Life over the Summer

Throughout my internship experience, I have worked on a lot of different projects, some that I brought to my team and others that were collaborative. I spoke in my prior blog post on personal contributions about the racial justice class that I helped develop and lead, and the subscription boxes to help build community in this time of social distancing. The subscription box was my idea and I developed it, purchased the items, created the social media posts to promote it, and delivered the boxes to the homes of people who signed up.

I also this summer helped host trivia nights for families and students. These trivia nights were very fun, usually provided to provide a night of fun for families rather than be educational. Along with these trivia nights, I was learning what ministry is. Ministry is community and relationship is ministry. Ministry means to be alongside people, sharing in their joys and sorrows, successes and failures. In order to do ministry this summer, all the staff at Trinity had get creative and be intentional about each moment. This kind of ministry was very rewarding to participate in and simultaneously learn about, as I am interested in entering church leadership in a long term capacity.

I also helped put together gifts for the graduated seniors and the eighth graders who are transitioning to high school under strange circumstances. These grad gifts were also meant to build ministry, as well as celebrate students for their accomplishments through this year. The students who have graduated from high school this year have missed out on a lot of normal celebrations and traditions of the transition to college. We were trying to bring them some joy, so we worked on developing a gift basket that would be useful in college but could remind them of the youth program they actively participated in while they were middle and high school students.

Overall, my experience was a learning experience about how to build community digitally and through unusual and non-ideal circumstances. I feel that I have seen leadership in action a field of work that I am passionate about and interested in working in for the long term.