When School Credit Meets Global Missions

If you’re a student looking for internship credit, you could spend a summer at a corporate office fetching coffee and making copies — or you could spend it on the other side of the world sharing the Gospel while growing in your field of study!

Getting to travel and serve overseas is exciting on its own. The fact that you can do that while also fulfilling internship requirements makes it even better.

Internships by TEAM was designed for students who want to try out their skills and passions in an international environment.

Here are four ways you will benefit from choosing a missions internship:

Develop a more global mindset.

Missions internships will take you beyond the “touristy” parts of a host culture and let you immerse yourself on a raw, authentic level.

How are relationships different? How do you communicate ideas in a culture with vastly different values? What are the daily challenges of life? You’ll discover all this and more as you live and work abroad.

As a missions intern, you’ll also get the chance to work with mentors who are actively using their fields of study to spread the Gospel. TEAM missionaries come from diverse professional backgrounds, such as marketing, engineering, medicine and agriculture. They use their skills and education to share Christ in unique ways every day — and they’ll show you how to use those same skills in cross-cultural settings, too.

Enhance your marketability as a future employee.

As you step into a new culture, you’ll often find that the problems you face are different, and the solutions you would normally pick don’t work. That’s why a missions internship is great for cultivating creative problem-solving skills. Through it, you’ll learn self-sufficiency, open-mindedness, confidence, and humility — attributes that not only make you a great learner, but also a great leader.

Regardless of whether or not you are pursuing full-time missions, a missions internship is a great way to build a network of global contacts.

Internships by TEAM takes this benefit one step further by giving you the chance to work with a handful of missionaries. This will build your international network efficiently and strategically.

Test out your passions and interests.

There’s no better way to see if you want to do something than to actually do it. A missions internship gives you the chance to set aside your textbooks and put your knowledge to practical use.

Internships by TEAM provides a plethora of opportunities in fields such as translation, English education, cross-cultural ministry, international studies and more. As an intern on a small team, you’ll get your hands dirty in real work and problem-solving. Working in another culture, you may see applications of your skills that you hadn’t thought of before. And because you’ll be working with long-term missionaries, your work will have a long-term impact.

Grow in your faith.

Of course, one huge benefit of missions internships is gaining the opportunity to not only practice your skills on-field, but also to grow in your relationship with Christ.

“The trip… helped me to discover more about myself and how God has blessed and equipped me to glorify His name,”  said YoonCheol Shin, who recently served as a TEAM intern. “The [internship] program allowed for the exploration of different cultures and history, but most importantly, it became an opportunity for me to know more about myself through observing others.”

When you pursue a missions internship, chances are your supervisors will care about your work on a spiritual level. To them, it’s not about getting labor for the summer; they truly want to see you become the person God created you to be.

Ultimately, all these benefits will help guide you toward your main goal of deciding what you want to do after you graduate — and just maybe mid or long-term mission work is what you were made for! Internships by TEAM is a great way to find out. Just ask Hannah, TEAM’s manager of short-term ministry. She participated in two missions internships before graduation:

“Because of the broad range of experiences that internship offered me, I walked into my senior year feeling equipped and confident that I wanted to work at a missions non-profit. If it hadn’t been for these opportunities and the contacts I made, I don’t think I would have found my way to TEAM and been offered a job that fits me so well. I am a firm believer in intercultural internships, regardless of where your work leads you in the future. They’re investments that will take you much further in life than you can imagine.”