San Dimas
Team Description
Comunidad San Dimas in San Francisco is a ministry of tough love. We seek out gangbangers, addicts and dealers and invite them into our community by offering them true identity and freedom in Christ. For many of our neighbors, being stuck between two worlds is a harsh reality. We take to heart God’s call to love the prisoner, the immigrant, and the alien, and make them welcome.
The San Dimas team spends a lot of time in juvenile hall, playing pool in the garage with neighborhood friends, and just hanging out over pizza. We provide support for the community of volunteers that has risen out of the local community, and we network between many different churches and faith groups (including the San Francisco Organizing Project).
We jump on leadership potential and involve former gang members and crack dealers in Bible studies, English lessons, homework tutoring, and job-hunting. We’re also passionate about ecumenism (inter-denominational ministry) and overcoming differences within the community in order to strengthen the Body of Christ.
REQUIRMENTS
- conversational Spanish
- must be 20 or older
- learning attitude
- comfortable working with Catholics, Protestants & Evangelicals
- cross-cultural experience
- love dancing (you will by the end of the summer!)
- expert auto mechanic (just kidding…sort of)
- knowledge/desire to learn more about immigration law
- prayer walking through different neighborhoods in Oakland
- spiritual mapping different neighborhoods in Oakland
- listening & interacting to the community
- building relationships & bridges with different churches, ministries, and services
- growing and building our community and deepening our relationship with Jesus.
PREFERENCES
Outer Circle
Team Description
The Outer Circle seeks to love the transient community; gutter punks, hippies, train hoppers, home bums, and travelers that walk and live on the streets of San Francisco in Haight-Ashbury.
We invite the lonely, the outcast and the wanderer into restoration of their entire being by drawing them to Christ, giving them what we have, bringing them into community, and by being their friends.
We do this through spending time building relationships on the street, hospitality, traveling, encouraging the believers that we know, and by being available. We seek to be a prophetic voice and bridge from the street to our local churches.
Internship Description
This summer we invite you to join us for life in community and to embark with us on an exploration: not an exploration of something new but of the streets and neighborhood we have called home for the last thirteen years.
We feel like its time to know more of what this neighborhood historically has been like so we can learn from it and move forward into what God is doing in the Haight.
You will find yourself spending time on the street, getting to know the members of the Outer Circle, engaging with travelers, doing neighborhood research, and serving Jesus.
Oakland
A year ago, InnerCHANGE San Francisco San Dimas began to feel God’s putting Oakland on their heart. After a year of prayer and discernment, they felt God calling them to start a team in Oakland. At the moment, the InnerCHANGE Oakland team is just getting their feet on the ground. They are exploring Oakland, connecting with existing ministries, visiting churches, talking with and listening to people in the community, getting to know their neighbors, and asking the Holy Spirit to lead them in this new adventure.
The team comes with a heart for youth who have been caught up in gangs and drug dealing. We are looking at continuing to connect with youth through Juvenile Hall. We also have a heart for issues of ecumenism (inter-denominational ministry) and immigration.
Our team continues to ask God if this is the direction he has for this new start or if there is perhaps a new direction God has for us as a team. The summer internship will continue that exploration process and will be a time of helping the team to focus the vision even more clearly.
Your time will be spent:
We hope that you will come join us for the summer!
Miami
Urban Resurrection In The Grove
Team Description
Urban Resurrection (URez) invites you to discover why there’s no place like “Da Grove”. Located in Miami’s historical Caribbean Island community of West Coconut Grove, URez has an incarnational lifestyle and assumes a relational posture toward evangelism, discipleship, and leadership development. SummerXchange interns will aid in the development of a solid discipleship ministry focusing on Biblical manhood and womanhood; growing young men and women into maturity leading them from the captivity of drug, alcohol, and sexual abuse into freedom in Christ. These transformations are pursued through methods of Asset Based Community Development and Community Youth Development resulting in empowerment and growth within the context of community.
This internship will focus primarily in helping new believers to grow in maturity and Biblical understanding through life-on-life discipleship and weekly group Bible study; ultimately helping them to apply what they’re learning to life in a street/neighborhood context. It will also include working in the arts, sports and community development initiatives.
Responsibilities
Mentoring and discipleship, teaching a weekly Bible study for local leaders, and supporting the efforts of staff in their community development efforts.
Requirements
Maturity, flexibility, teachability, initiative, ability to develop and leverage relationships well, ability to teach Scripture well in a street/neighborhood context
Preferences
Artistic, Pastoral/shepherding gifting, leadership qualities, experienced in service among the marginalized.
Los Angeles
Internship Description
This internship will focus on those in our neighborhood who are often overlooked or lonely; indigenous Central American (Mayan) neighbors and those who live in local convalescent homes.
You will learn about Mayan people through building relationships with our friends and engaging with organizations that support them. You will also partner with local convalescent homes to develop simple ways to know, love and serve the residents.
Internship Will Include . . .
Prayer.
Partnering with local Mayan family.
Start building a friendship network among Mayan people.
Discover organizations that support the Maya.
Visit Mayan churches.
Spend time visiting friends in the convalescent home with us and by yourself, consider developing a simple ministry within convalescent homes.
Keep a journal.
Participate in team rhythms.
Meet with a mentor.
Requirements
You need to be conversational in Spanish, self-motivated, comfortable building relationships with people different from yourself.
You must be willing to befriend people who live in the challenging environment of the convalescent home (I’m talking bad smells, mental illness, unfriendly staff…basically “Jesus in his most distressing disguise”)
You must be flexible, we are a highly relational organization and task/schedules often take a back seat over friendship!
Come with a generous spirit!
