Introduction to Montreal intern reflections

**Over the next few weeks I would like to welcome some wonderful guest writers to The Community. Some of the interns of the Montreal Mission Internship will be sharing their reflections as they wrap up their time in this innovative program in the Diocese of Montreal. Rev. Rhonda Waters is part of the leadership team that works with this program and will introduce you to an experiment in mission. Watch for more reflections over the next few weeks to get a better idea of this program.—Laura Walton

The Montreal Mission Internship, run by the Montreal Diocesan Theological College (Dio), is a hands-on experiment in mission – what does it look like, how does it feel, what does it make us think about? Five very different young adults took up this challenge and designed five very different projects. They have each learned a great deal and those of us with the privilege of spending time with them have learned a great deal as well. The interns and their work have challenged us to think about mission in the broadest possible sense, to contemplate the ways in which God is already at work in the world and to be creative in the ways in which we can imagine joining in. They have asked good, hard questions about faith, about church, about community, and justice and truth and suffering and hope and relationships and the list goes on and on.

But the interns aren’t the only ones who have been experimenting with mission this summer. Dio and its funding partners, the Diocese of Montreal and the Anglican Foundation of Canada, have been experimenting as well. This internship has been an opportunity for us to think about how we reach out beyond our institutions and our traditional activities. These five interns were not hired in the hopes that they would become priests or even active (and donating) lay leaders in Anglican parishes around the city. Most of our time has not been directed towards formal educational activities, theological or otherwise. We have not used our lovely, if rather old-fashioned, college chapel for worship. Instead, we have entered into the conversation as learners in our own right, as seekers after God and God’s desire for our own lives and the life of our institution. Few, if any, questions have been answered. Yet we have all grown over the course of these weeks and I am confident that the full measure of that growth will not be realized until well after the internship is over.

As the internship draws to a close, we will be sharing reflections from each of the interns here on the Community. These reflections are summaries of sorts, but for a more complete picture of the work that has been going on, please visit Dio’s website where they have been blogging steadily all summer. In addition, the Rev’d Nicholas Pang and myself have each written reflections on the internship in various locations: in the Anglican Montreal (reprinted here), on the website of Christ Church Cathedral, and in the Anglican Journal Online. We hope that you will find all of these reflections thought-provoking and hope-inspiring, evidence that God is working in many wonderful ways to lead us into mission.

The Rev’d Rhonda Waters is a member of the Montreal Mission Internship program leadership team. Rhonda is also Associate Priest and Director of Education at Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal.