When I was in seminary, most students did their parish-based internships concurrently with two years of school (part-time internship), or else as a year taken between the second and the final year of school (full-time internship). The part-time option requires that you have an internship opportunity near school, which was true for many students, since we were in the Boston area, where congregations and internships abound. But failing that–or if, like me, you didn’t want your internship church to be around Boston (I lived in Vermont)–the beauty of the full-time internship before senior year was that you could go before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee before your senior year, begin looking for a position during your senior year, and potentially have a job waiting for you after graduation.
Also, since you were on leave from a degree program, you were still considered a student during that internship year, so that you didn’t have to repay debt during that period. Since the official guidelines on internship compensation were that it be, I quote, “High enough so that you don’t end up more in debt than when you began the year”–i.e., not by any definition an actual salary–this was important.
Judging from Bay Area students, this is now a rarity. They do their internship the year after they graduate. Since one can’t go to the MFC until after the midpoint of one’s internship, they can’t look for a job that year. So there they are in June, done with school, done with their internships, with their 1 from the MFC (congratulations!), and with over a year to go before they’ll have a position. What an insane system. What do they eat? An M.Div. leaves you with a huge debt and not a lot of qualification to do anything except UU ministry–and of course, it’s very hard to find a job that pays a living wage when potential employers know you’re going to leave in a year.
When I’ve asked individual seminarians about this trend, they’ve looked rather blank, as if they had no idea there was another option. Has something changed? Do seminaries, or churches, or the MFC, press for internship after degree? And if so, how do today’s students pay the rent during that thumb-twiddling year?
Sermons in Stones 
9 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 23, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Ms. M.
I think a lot of change has come because of the economics of the internship program “as we do it” in the UU realm. For some it’s better to pay tuition only while getting the MDiv, then do an internship and “get a job” while in a first search (or get lucky at the end of a search cycle) – rather than pay tuition (which is more than their stipend, and more than initial loan payments). And let’s face it, our elite system and dearth of scholarship options requires more and more seminarians to be independently wealthy or subsidized by a spouses job. Those of us who weren’t well-to-do or partnered did school, and internship, and CPE in 3 years, and still have mega debt after 10 years. 😉
LikeLike
September 23, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
If schools charge tuition during an internship year, that is a change. I think I had to pay something, but it was just a “continuation fee” of a hundred bucks or so.
I was partnered during seminary and got a fair amount of tuition help from the school and a bit of scholarship help from the UUA, but I still took out a gazillion loans to live on. What else could I do? I looked at the numbers and it was either that or take 20 years to finish my degree. But yep, the megadebt remains.
LikeLike
September 24, 2010 at 1:00 am
ogre
I think there are at least a couple reasons.
There’s a perception that the MFC wants to see people who are ready to be ministers. The costs and stresses involved in going earlier have gone up, with the expectation that going after a year or two would result in getting a 3. How can one be passed by the MFC as “ready” when one’s only done half of a mandatory degree and half of the internship? I suspect that the answer is that expectations have drifted (upward) and people have observed who passes when….
And of course, the requirements have only grown in order to be able to go before the MFC. Time and money to meet the expectations and standards–nothing’s gotten removed, so it takes more time and money to be ready enough….
Then there’s the fact that a large number of seminarians are partnered and have families. Putting off the internship as long as possible makes sense–it’s now 9 full months. That’s a major relationship strain, or it’s the strain and burden involved in abandoning life, jobs, etc. to move to the internship… knowing that it’ll be over in less than a year, and have to be repeated. Many seem to be opting to push all this out to the end so that there’s more time to prepare for the separation or the trauma of repeated moves. By doing it “late”–at the end–there’s only two moves necessary–to internship, and then to a church when one gets a call.
And then there’s the increasingly challenging economics of it. Internships are now 9 months of — at best — an inadequate stipend (and that level’s not met by many sites, and since an internship is obligatory, seminarians will take it anyway). If there’s no school afterward, it may be financially ruinous to do so, but at least at the end one can look for some sort of paying work, even while looking for a settlement. If one’s still in school… one takes the economic hit and still has to go back to finish the degree.
LikeLike
September 24, 2010 at 8:28 am
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
@ogre: Interesting point. Maybe the MFC’s expectations are higher than when I went (1999). The Regional Subcommittees on Candidacy weren’t in place yet. The MFC was always a very tough step, of course–they certainly seemed to want to see people who were ready for ministry–but maybe it is even tougher, or perceived as so, now that everyone who comes before them has had preliminary screening.
LikeLike
September 24, 2010 at 1:08 pm
ogre
Part of “harder” may be ratcheting up the bar–which is hard to prove or disprove, it being qualitative. But there’s also the quantitative side, the most recent example of which is the addition of an entire competency around sexuality and issues of sexual health and responsibility. That it’s a good idea isn’t really arguable. That there is additional time/work/expense as a result is also inarguable. And nothing, of course, is reviewed for removal, so the beast grows… incrementally….
At some point there really needs to be a very hard conversation about what should be on the “bare minimum” list to be able to be ready to *start* ministry, and perhaps the rest needs to be re-envisioned as part of continuing education and fellowship renewal, both in preliminary fellowship and beyond.
LikeLike
September 24, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
BTW, to go to the MFC, you had to be well past halfway through your degree. I had one semester left. Current policy on timing appears to be the same: “Candidates should be approximately two-thirds of the way through their preparation for ministry at the time of their MFC interview. Final evaluations of either Clinical Pastoral Education or the internship must be available by the time of the interview, with CPE preferred.” (Section 9 of MFC Policies, http://www.uua.org/documents/mfc/policies.pdf)
This conversation is more apt than I knew, since the MFC meets with candidates this week. Blessings on all in their journeys into ministry!
LikeLike
September 24, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Dan
Amy, I’ve been wondering the same thing. I suspect the RSCC requirement has the tendency to delay the whole process.
I would also say that the UUA’s fellowship system is probably too complex. I suppose that if you have solid project management skills and did up a PERT chart it would be easily manageable, but for the average intelligent layperson the complexity of the process makes it a serious challenge.
LikeLike
September 24, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Kim Hampton
As someone who is single and not independently wealthy, I have to tell you that looking for an internship was hell on earth. So many churches are looking for 2-year part-time interns that those of us who cannot afford to live on $500/month have very few options.
What I’m going to do during my gap year…start another degree program. It’s the only way I can keep the student loan monster off my back.
LikeLike
September 24, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Some months ago I promised a long post about the financial situation of ministers . . . It is terribly self-defeating, the way we expect prospective ministers to fund their own training. We could at least have a loan forgiveness program, like some states give to people who teach public school, but instead we make ministers take on a tremendous burden of debt and spend the first half of their careers (at least!) paying it off.
However, you can appease the student loan monster by requesting a deferment. They aren’t generally hard to get, though of course they will increase your overall debt since the interest keeps on a-racking up. Still, it’s cheaper than getting another degree.
LikeLike