God has used Todd Engstrom, the guy who disciples me, to call out my sin and lack of gospel shaped character in a way that has drastically grown my affections and allegiance to Jesus and decreased my view of myself.  I have seen the power of the gospel like never before in my life and those I talk to about what God is doing in me. I am much more free, joyful and humble than I ever could have imagined.  God has used the residency to teach me how to inspect every area of my life to see where sin is reigning and not the gospel of Jesus which has changed everything and brings everything back to Jesus.  The residency under Todd has taught me what it looks like to make disciples who make disciples who make disciples.

Over the term of my one year residency, I had the opportunity to observe how to effectively develop a ministry in all facets: financial, leadership development, execution, mobilization, staff oversight, and several other experiences. I am grateful for the opportunity to have been given a great deal of responsibility and flexibility in learning ministry, but also was given strong guidance, oversight, and correction when necessary. Through the practice of ministry, my personal theology was challenged and sharpened, and most importantly given a context for application of theological truth in the local church. Most of all, I learned about the depth of God’s heart, and how my spiritual gifts and talents could be best used to advance His kingdom in the city of Austin and beyond.

Through my residency, I’ve had the opportunity to learn to develop and equip missional community leaders in south Austin, and mentor leaders of leaders. Additionally, I have been focusing on mobilizing and networking the missional communities to participate in redemption and restoration in neighborhoods all over the city.

Overall, I have had the opportunity to capture best practices and hear great stories of life-transformation through missional small groups. I have grown in my knowledge of processes, resources, best practices, roles, responsibilities, and developing a reproducible system of leadership development and mobilization that will transfer well when I plant a church in the future.

One of the most challenging yet rewarding undertakings of my life. I’ve been stretched both emotionally and spiritually and have seen tremendous growth in my maturity. The internship has taught me my extreme dependence on the Lord and need to look holistically at how all the pieces fit together to make the church body move efficiently and effectively.

The content of what I’ve learned has been great. I don’t see how this could have been any better. I will not leave here wishing I would have heard about this philosophy or read about this idea somewhere. I’ve also really enjoyed the access to leaders I’ve gained who are outside The Austin Stone - the conferences, assessments, interaction with other leaders from outside of ASCC has been great. Finally, the learning environment (staff, retreats, day to day in the office) has been a great one to learn in. It really gives me a good picture of how to lead a staff and the overall “feel” I would love to have in a future church plant.

ALI has shown me the imminent need for people to step up and disciple those in their life, and it has made me drawn to a ministry to disciple others girls in need of the gospel and a better understanding of what it means to live on mission for Christ.  I have been challenged to go outside of my church bubble and get to know people who really need to hear and believe the gospel.  That is hard and uncomfortable for me to do because I am used to working with kids who want to hear about Jesus, so having to go out into the “real world” and connect with people who need the gospel has been hard and challenging but also very awesome. 

ALI has better equipped me with a greater, deeper understanding of how to truly be a disciple of Jesus. I thought I had a pretty good handle on what being a disciple looked like. However, ALI takes you deeper, truly showing you what it looks like to be a disciple, to live on mission in everyday life, or for me, being around high school students.  I now have a greater understanding of what it looks like to seek after God, to live on mission in order that Christ may be glorified, and a greater sense of taking ownership of my faith on a day to day basis. My internship has taught me that I am absolutely nothing without Christ, to trust God through all, know that he’s in control, and to follow him in every situation. If I want to make my life count for anything, I must surrender everything over to him and follow Christ from day to day, knowing that he will lead me where he wants me.

This internship has really shaken me in a good way, forcing me to learn to depend on God and to really believe that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. I have been exposed to sound theology that has opened my eyes even more to see just how beautiful and magnificent God is.  The teaching has caused me to reflect on my relationship with God and how I am living missionally. I think this internship has affected the way I live out my faith by reigniting a passion in me for the gospel that I have never really felt before, given me a different outlook on how I view God, my relationship with him, and what living missionally really looks like.

My internship grew me in that it gave me the opportunity to be a part of vision casting and the responsibility to see that vision come to fruition. Subsequently I feel that God used my experience at the Austin Stone to fuel a passion in me to earnestly seek out God’s vision in things that are bigger than just me and the discipline to bring others alongside to labor as God brings it about.