It’s official. I’ve received approval from Fuller Seminary’s Field Education Office, and have registered for, a full-time ten-week internship (FE502) with Bread for the World. This fulfills the second internship requirement for my Master of Divinity. I am finishing up the first one (a part-time, three-quarter, church-based internship at Pasadena Mennonite Church) right now. The internship will run from June 18th to August 24th.

I will unfortunately not be able to make it to their national gathering in Washington, D.C., coming up in a couple weeks (too much money!), but I will be diving in head first via Bread’s Pasadena office, run by my friends David Gist (Regional Organizer – California) and Holly Hight (Outreach Organizer – Western Region and California). I will be doing a lot of theological education regarding hunger issues (including preaching as well as developing, testing, and partially implementing hunger-related Bible studies) and outreach regarding Bread’s advocacy work. For those unfamiliar with Bread for the World, you should check them out (and you can see their blog too). They are a uniquely cool organization, which works with churches and Christian leaders around the country to lobby the United States government to concentrate their efforts on specific hunger issues domestically and globally.

But, Pat, how does this relate with your vocational goals, you ask? First of all, I want to be connected with justice issues no matter where I end up. I never want to get lost in any career, forgetting the immense responsibility that I have as a disciple of Jesus and, frankly, as a “middle class” American. “Middle class” is in quotes because there is nothing “middle” about it in global perspective–no matter how poor I feel as a grad student, I am a rich Christian in an age of hunger. Secondly, this will help me develop my skills as an educator in developing lessons based upon my target audience, communicate to them in ways with which they can connect on a particular issue (hunger issues as related to the Bible and theology). Also, I hope to one day be a professor of undergraduate students, I imagine they’d be Christians studying the Bible, and I want to mentor these students and connect them to Bread and organizations like it, helping them integrate justice issues into their academic vocations.

I am sure the ten weeks will fly by and I don’t have any grand visions of single-handedly ending global hunger in that time period, but I’m sure I will learn quite a bit. Many thanks to David and Holly for taking me on, and to Pastor Katherine at Pasadena Mennonite who will continue theologically reflecting with me as I transition from one internship to the next.