Growing up as a pastor’s kid, I got accustomed to the weird phone calls my father would often get. From requests to physically break up fist fights to complaints that the ex-stripper at church was still dressing too scandalously on Sunday mornings, a parade of calls marched across our phone. But the one my dad dreaded most was the “middle of the night something went wrong at the youth group retreat” call.
The chances of receiving this type of call may increase dramatically when your church hires a youth group intern. It’s possible your church never had one though. Maybe all your youth workers were beacons of stone age maturity, oak trees of wisdom planted deep within God’s earth to spread knowledge and gentle patience to today’s youth. But if you hang around the church long enough, you’re going to run into one.
Here are 3 things you can expect from the youth intern:
1. Stitches
Somebody is getting a Youth Group Scar or “YGS” if you will. (Pronounced “Yags” like “bags” but with a Y. I’m not sure where the invisible “a” comes from, my youth minister friends refuse to reveal their secrets.) Whether it’s a trust fall that goes wrong, a road trip church van game that goes amiss or a skit that goes spectacularly askew, at some point, at least three kids and one innocent bystander are getting some YGS.
2. Pranks
Youth group interns tend to be like Merlin when it comes to pranks. The creativity and frequency they put into something as simple as toilet papering someone’s house is stunning. Honestly, they are like Picasso in his blue period, using the trees in your yard like some sort of leafy canvas. I don’t know if I can fit another comparison into this paragraph, but trust me, the youth intern prank is a thing of beauty.
3. The Best Games
Youth group interns come up with the best games. Maybe they’re more deeply connected to the concept of “play,” or haven’t been weighed down with trying to juggle an anemic youth group budget, but for some reason, they can turn a rainy afternoon into the greatest game you’ve ever played. You might see a trash can on wheels, wiffle ball bat and squirt gun as an assortment of random items, but they don’t. They see “wiffle-mania,” the fastest, wettest, craziest game your church will ever know.
I was never a youth group intern but I did help out once at my dad’s church. Apparently the main help I provided was to dress up like Britney Spears in a horrible song parody that I hope never surfaces on Youtube. But despite that hot pink dance outfit nightmare, I’m a huge fan of youth group interns. Scott Hodge, one of my new favorite pastors, recently hired a 19-year old to help with music. He believes the energy and rawness that young employees bring is invaluable. I agree. I just hope if you do hire a youth intern, you go easy on him/her when your minister gets a midnight phone call like this:
“The stitches will be out in a week. I guess it’s true what they say, a baby raccoon’s cuteness is only equaled by its ferocity.”
