For many professions, a career begins with an internship, the opportunity as a young person to explore a calling and be mentored by those with experience in the field. This summer four Chicago-area Christian Reformed churches sought to create that opportunity for hopeful future pastors with a Ministry Residency Intensive.
Ben Ribbens, Mathew Lanser, and Daniel Stidham started working on the idea in November 2025. Ribbens, a former professor of theology at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Ill., wanted the program to offer a taste of parish life. With the other pastors, he imagined a summer program with discipleship, mentoring, and hands-on serving opportunities that could potentially address the issue of not enough students entering seminary in the Christian Reformed Church.
“Young people today either think the calling is too hard or too high,” said Ribbens, and he wanted to shatter that myth and show students the goodness of pastoral life.
For the inaugural program, Ribbens and others selected four students with whom they already had relationships, from Trinity, which closed its final academic year in May.
The 10-week summer intensive had three components. The interns met with pastors and shadowed them in ministry, they worked in church settings, and thirdly, the interns lived in a home connected to Ribbens and Lanser’s church, Faith CRC in Elmhurst, Ill. They shared meals, prayed and studied together, and explored their callings as a community.
“It’s not every day you get to live in a house with like-minded young people with an interest in ministry,” Ribbens said.
Funding for the project came from Classis Northern Illinois, Chicago South, and contributing churches so that interns were compensated and received no-cost housing. Calvary Church of Oak Lawn, and Faith, Grace in Garfield, and Palos Heights CRCs each hosted an intern. Pastors from other churches in the two classes also welcomed the students for pastoral dinners.
“My favorite part was sharing meals with pastors and getting to know them in their daily lives,” said Ricky Zamora, who participated in the ministry residency before heading off to seminary in California.
Sviat Tarasov, now an undergraduate at Wheaton College, had similar things to say. “The internship provided the reassurance that I love ministry,” Tarasov said. “I had the opportunity to preach my first sermon, I made connections with the other interns, and I loved sharing meals with pastors; that was my favorite. It was so wonderful to see them, not only preaching but being at home, watching them interact with their families, seeing how they talk to their children.”
Ribbens, who is now the Bible teacher at Elmhurst’s Timothy Christian High School and a teaching pastor at Faith CRC, hopes to see this program continue. He and the other pastors “are actively recruiting by going to Christian colleges and by talking with CRC pastors,” said Ribbens. “We encourage any pastor, elder, deacon, or parishioner who identifies a young person in their congregation who has gifts for ministry to encourage them to apply to the program.”
About the Author
Kendra Thompson is a wife, mother, writer, and administrative professional living in rural Iowa, where she and her husband are members of First Christian Reformed Church Sioux Center. You’ll find more of her writing at crylaughsnort.wordpress.com.