The QuadW Missional Internship is a paid, 8-week summer service-learning internship offered at our 12 sites in cities throughout the U.S.

Our internships are diverse and primarily emphasize experiential and communal learning through hands-on practice and a relational focus. And because we don’t want our participants to have to choose between a life-changing summer experience and being able to pay tuition or bills, we provide a stipend of $2,000 plus free housing and most meals.

Read on to learn more about our primary components (what we do) and key values (why we do it). And while our components and values are the same from site to site, each site is unique — with special strengths, weaknesses, beauty, and struggle. To further explore which site may be the best fit for you, check out our website here.

THE WORK OF THE INTERNSHIP

The QuadW Missional Internship experience has six primary components:

1. Hands-On Missional Service

As an intern, you will be placed in a challenging ministry environment where you will do hands-on community ministry. This aspect will be a cooperative effort of pastors, congregations, and area agencies who focus on under-served populations.

2. Community Living

Truly living in Christian community is an incredibly challenging but deeply rewarding experience. During the summer internship, you will live and work with a large group of diverse college students, working out what it means to live our faith together. Over the course of the summer, you will likely develop relationships that will last a lifetime. As interns have shared in the past, “we arrived as strangers, but we leave as family.”

3. Spiritual Disciplines

Weekly worship together as interns and at host churches is an important piece of the spiritual formation. One of the other ways ongoing formation and disciple-making may take place is through a weekly “Life Transformation Groups” or “LTG’s” (groups of two or threes of the same genders who meet for the purpose of accountability, Scripture reflection, and prayer). Please note, whether through LTG’s or not, a significant piece of the spiritual discipline of this internship is a commitment to a weekly Scripture reading plan and journaling.

4. Mentoring/Coaching

Time with experienced missional leaders to process field experiences on a deeper personal level. This will occur in a team setting as well as one-on-one.

5. Equipping Sessions

This weekly training is to help you re-evaluate what it really means to follow Jesus, move beyond a consumer spirituality, focus on the needs of the world, and prepare to launch future initiatives that contribute to the transformation of communities. The equipping sessions will involve required weekly reading and reflection prior to the group gathering.

6. Next Step Planning

Developing concrete strategies and plans for the future so that what is learned through the internships is applied in the communities to which you will return. QuadW is meant to be much more than a summer-only experience. Past interns have gone on to initiate bold new ministries in their own communities and serve as agents of change in the life of their student-ministries and congregations.

OTHER IMPORTANT DETAILS

What are the dates for the internship?

Generally 8 weeks, but exact dates vary from city to city. So check out those site pages on our website to see exact dates, which will always start around the beginning of June and end in middle to late July.

Who is eligible to apply?

Anyone who will be age 18 to 25 at the time the internship begins.

What is the deadline to apply?

No deadline, but all our sites fill up each year and some fill up much faster than others — as early as December.

Special Note: COVID-19 and Our Current Plan

Physical presence is an important aspect of everything we do, both in community and mission, and we are committed to going forward with in-person internships for Summer 2021, if it is wise and appropriate to do so.

Whether this is the case will be based on local and national guidance from public health experts, and following the best practices of similar organizations.

Naturally, we will not know with any certainty whether an in-person internship is the best option until closer to the summer, but you should still apply now if you are interested in one of our internship spots. This is because:

• Our program spots fill up quickly.
• Just as with Summer 2020, our most likely back-up option would be an online version of our program, which was extended only to those who’d applied prior to our decision to move online.
• While our primary goal is to return to an in-person format, our online internships were a success (see what 2020 online interns had to say here [link to yearbook]), and each of our spots were full for the online program as well.