“It’s important to have students and those familiar with student culture on the InterVarsity twentyonehundred productions communications team, said twentyonehundred production associate and intern coordinator Glenn Griffin during a recent chapel service at InterVarsity’s National Service Center. Effectively communicating the gospel to college students is one of InterVarsity’s highest priorities. An internship program helps twentyonehundred accomplish that goal.
Five twentyonehundred interns spoke on a panel at the chapel service. They were: Shelli Daniels, Winona State University, (Minnesota); Kimberly Stark, Appalachian State University (North Carolina); Courtney Letkewicz, Illinois Wesleyan University; Grete Bauder, Carnegie Mellon University (Pennsylvania); and Bethany Moyer, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. All are going to be entering their senior year in college this fall except Grete, who is a recent graduate. Intern Christa Ebert, North Park University (IL) was not able to participate in the chapel service.
Each of the interns talked about her ministry involvement on her campus.
- “At my school they don’t quite understand that you can be a creative thinker and you can be a revolutionary in your thoughts and be a Christian. The biggest need on my campus is for people to understand that being a Christ follower is revolutionary.”
- “There are a lot of people at my school who grew up in the church but have decided to pull away from that because they’ve seen a lot of hypocrisy. So a lot of what we try to do is show authenticity, that Jesus is more than just a religion. He’s someone that you have to have a relationship with. A lot of people get that confused.”
- “A lot of people at my school have grown up in a Christian home and once they get to school they go crazy. I speak from personal experience, I tried that for awhile too. Then a lot of people become parched. They’re hungry but they don’t want to go back to their parent’s religion. We try to show people that God is not a God of their parent’s denomination, he’s a personal God. He goes beyond whatever you grew up with.”
- “A lot of the work at our school was building community and pulling people out of themselves. Work and school work was their highest priority. We ended up asking, ‘What is that for? Why are you doing that? What are you going to do with that when you graduate?’ They were not thinking about their spiritual lives. We wanted to stop people from being apathetic and develop them into world changers.”
- “The 2004 election was a growing experience. We learned a lot about who we were as a chapter and what we were driven by. We learned that we don’t need to push our personal needs onto people. We started impact teams and made a big push for evangelism, relationship evangelism. We looked for people to start friendships with and developed friendships.”
Each intern also talked about what the experience of working with twentyonehundred productions meant to her.
- “I’ve known for a long time that I’ve wanted to use the gifts God has given me in art for him in some way. Being here has been really good for me, to see people who love God like I do and who long to see God communicated in a way that is relevant to students like me who are trying to find God.”
- “[Being a twentyonehundred intern] exceeded my expectations. They’ve actually let me do stuff. I like the collaborative team approach.”
- “I’ve gone through a lot of hard work and training. I want to dedicate that to God and what better way than to be here, working for him.”
- “It’s been a blessing in many, many ways. God has put me in a place where I know I want to be involved in missions.”
- “I didn’t know at all what to expect when I came here. It’s different from working with a big corporation [like I did] last year. I’m experiencing the body of Christ, with all of its talents and abilities. Working on the graphics team is awesome, it’s such a creative group of people.”
“It’s a true give and take,” Glenn said. “By having college students or those who have recently been in college as a part of our team, we receive expertise from the field. In return we offer them an opportunity to develop as Christian communicators and Christian artists. There are not a lot of places where that combination can develop.”
