Today's post is written by Jed Kaessner. Jed is a 2011 (MDiv) and 2013 (ThM) graduate and currently interns at Colonial Baptist Church in Virginia Beach, VA.

A long series of MasterCard commercials ran in which several items were listed with their prices, followed by the value of their corresponding memories: priceless. Their slogan was, "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard."

In a way, this is how I feel about the value of an internship with Colonial Baptist Church (CBC), host church for VBTS. CBC graciously offered me the chance to do an internship after graduating this year, and I jumped at the chance to get some actual, pastoral experience. It has been great to sit in on staff meetings and deacons' meetings to see how the administrative side of the church functions. It has been encouraging to engage various pastors and hear from them, sometimes about the mundane, sometimes about the joys, but sometimes about the deep valleys that inevitably come with ministry. It has also been eye-opening to see just how many people are involved in the ministry, and how many people are ministering silently behind the scenes. And, it has also been great to get hands-on ministry experience.

For all this, though, perhaps the greatest advantage has been the chance to see the internal workings of a grace church and how the grace philosophy gets worked out in practical ways---among the staff, with church members, and even with outsiders. While some aspects of a grace philosophy can be explained, there is no way to package all this into a classroom or lecture series--it just has to be experienced! Every church has its own culture, and every church will employ the grace philosophy differently, but seeing the grace philosophy at work at CBC has been without question the greatest benefit of my internship at CBC. 

The cost of seminary? Thousands of dollars.

The value of an internship? Priceless! Truly, ‘there are some things money can’t buy!’