Internships

Cross-cultural internships is one of the best ways to discern if God is calling you to long-term missions.

The goal for summer internship program is for our interns to:

  • Grow in intimacy with God
  • Experience first hand what God is doing among the Bibleless

We strive to equip our interns so that they thrive in an overseas setting. We journey alongside our interns as they explore the Lord’s leading in their lives.

Internships

Multiple internships opportunities are available.
(two weeks of pre-field orientation and six to eight weeks overseas)

Caucasus (Linguistics)

The Caucasus Mountains are home to some of the most unique languages on Earth. This internship will provide an opportunity to experience the Caucasus region and learn about the many opportunities available there. Interns will participate in language learning, as well as have opportunities to visit different parts of the area, learning about the languages there. Activities could include supporting the local team through desktop publishing, linguistic data management, practical support for field personnel, and prayer. There are very few believers among the minority groups in this area of the world, so all activities, including translation, are considered secondary to building relationships and discipleship.

Focus

language learning, building relationships, discipleship, working as part of a multi-ethnic team, supporting literacy and translation efforts

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Individuals who love people and want to make disciples
  • Individuals who are open to developing strategies for how to impact communities with Scripture and to work alongside the majority language church
  • Students who are flexible and willing to do whatever is needed
  • Must be adaptable
  • Previous linguistic experience is helpful but not necessary

Caucasus (Business/ESL)

The Caucasus region consists of former Soviet republics that face unique economic challenges for marginalized and disadvantaged communities. This internship, implemented by our partner organization, provides an opportunity to experience the Caucasus and the work of the Business Development Centers (BDC). Interns will participate in language learning, contribute to the work of the BDC, build relationships with nationals, and visit different parts of the area. Activities could include supporting the local team through market research,practical support for field personnel, ESL activities, summer camps, and prayer.

Focus

Language learning, building relationships, business support activities, working as part of a multi-ethnic team, supporting ESL efforts, prayer

 

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  •  Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Individuals who love people
  • Individuals who are open to developing marketplace skills to be used for the Kingdom
  • Students who are flexible and willing to do whatever is needed
  • Must be adaptable
  • Possess an understanding of how business can have Kingdom impact

 

Deaf Group Internship (Dallas, TX USA)

Pioneer Bible Translators has recently launched efforts to begin translation work among the estimated 400 signed languages throughout the world. Our prayer is to eventually mobilize both Deaf and hearing teammates who are fluent in ASL to minister to Deaf communities who do not have access to Scripture in their language.

Interns will work alongside our resident Deaf and hearing colleagues as the Deaf Group prepares for future projects. They will gain experience in using a new translation tool, communicate with international Deaf people to research the needs of various communities, improve their ASL abilities, pray and worship with the Deaf community in DFW and be involved in community outreach with children and adults.

Focus

Mobilization, marketing, language learning

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Advanced in ASL
  • Flexible
  • Mobilizers

 While we are unable to pay a stipend for the summer, we may be able to assist with housing.

Diaspora Outreach (St. Louis, MO USA)

The Diaspora team in St. Louis works to disciple unreached refugees and immigrants from another world religion who have come here from all over the world.  Many refugees and immigrants come from places that are difficult for missionaries to access, providing an amazing opportunity to see them impacted by the Gospel.  The hope is that they would, then, begin to share with their friends and loved ones back home in spiritually impoverished places around the globe.  Working in tandem with partnering organizations in St. Louis, our team builds deep relationships in the refugee and immigrant community, helps to empower them, and uses media outreach strategies all for the purpose of engaging the refugee and immigrant community with the Gospel.  An intern would work alongside our team to build relationships and assist with ongoing ministry projects there.

Focus

Scripture impact, building relationships with refugees, media outreach, partnering with other ministries

Potential Opportunities

In addition to the aforementioned internship, the team is open to hosting an intern with specific skills in videography and/or social media to assist with the Media to Movements outreach they oversee.

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Disciple makers
  • Self-directed individuals who are comfortable taking initiative
  • A heart for refugees
  • Out-of-the-box thinkers
  • Those who are flexible and adaptable

While we are unable to pay a stipend for the summer, we may be able to assist with housing.

East Africa Internship

The East Africa internship will offer the opportunity to engage in one of the most vital ministries within the field of Bible translation –Scripture Impact.  This is an ideal internship for someone interested in discipleship making movements.  It will also provide the chance to observe Bible translation firsthand to see how the two things go hand in hand.

Some of the highlights from previous internships to this field include participating in Discovery Bible Study, staying overnight in a nearby village, showing the Jesus film and hands on discipleship through Scripture distribution. In contrast to some of the other internships, you will spend the majority of the summer in a more developed city, taking time to visit a couple of remote areas for shorter periods of time. You’ll be blessed by the opportunity to live and experience life with different missionary families.

Focus

Scripture Impact, discipleship, language learning, Bible translation

Potential opportunities

In addition to the aforementioned internship, the team is open to hosting interns with specific interests in support roles like IT, teaching missionary children, finance and administration.

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Individuals who are specifically exploring if Africa might be a place of long-term service
  • Individuals who have an interest in Scripture impact, discipleship, and/or support roles
  • Individuals who are open to developing strategies for impacting communities with Scripture and working alongside the local church
  • Individuals who love people and want to make disciples
  • Students who are flexible
  • Those who are willing to do whatever is needed
  • Must be adaptable

IT Internship (Dallas, TX USA)

The East Africa internship will offer the opportunity to engage in one of the most vital ministries within the field of Bible translation –Scripture Impact.  This is an ideal internship for someone interested in discipleship making movements.  It will also provide the chance to observe Bible translation firsthand to see how the two things go hand in hand.

Some of the highlights from previous internships to this field include participating in Discovery Bible Study, staying overnight in a nearby village, showing the Jesus film and hands on discipleship through Scripture distribution. In contrast to some of the other internships, you will spend the majority of the summer in a more developed city, taking time to visit a couple of remote areas for shorter periods of time. You’ll be blessed by the opportunity to live and experience life with different missionary families.

Focus

Scripture Impact, discipleship, language learning, Bible translation

Potential opportunities

In addition to the aforementioned internship, the team is open to hosting interns with specific interests in support roles like IT, teaching missionary children, finance and administration.

 

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Individuals who are specifically exploring if Africa might be a place of long-term service
  • Individuals who have an interest in Scripture impact, discipleship, and/or support roles
  • Individuals who are open to developing strategies for impacting communities with Scripture and working alongside the local church
  • Individuals who love people and want to make disciples
  • Students who are flexible
  • Those who are willing to do whatever is needed
  • Must be adaptable

Media and Communications (Dallas, TX USA)

Pioneer Bible Translators’ Media Arts and Communications (MAC) department is passionate about creating media that mobilizes believers to reach the unreached, Bibleless peoples through giving, praying or missionary service.

Using video, design, writing, and social media, the MAC team shares the stories of Bibleless peoples—how the power of God’s Word in their own language transforms individuals, families and whole communities. This summer, there will also be an opportunity to be part of a large animation project.

During this internship, interns will use their talents to help others discover how God could use them to accomplish His purpose.

Potential opportunities:

  • Animation Project—Bring storyboards to life. Unleash the creative potential of animation to inspire viewers to pray, give, or join the mission. Illustrators will work with our writers to turn rough storyboards into engaging visual art. They will create backgrounds and characters that enhance and explain the story, layered in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and ready for animation.  Animators will take the team’s illustrations to the next level through the magic of 2D animation. They will convey emotion through movement within the Adobe suite or Toon Boom Harmony.
  • Social Media—We hope to have multiple social media interns to help develop content and create social campaigns for the Pioneer Bible Translators family of organizations

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Individuals who are willing to work collaboratively
  • Individuals gifted with some experience in one (or more) of the following: journalism, videography, web design, graphic design, copywriting, photography, digital marketing, social media strategy, animation
  • Students must be willing to share a resume and/or portfolio of projects they have worked on in the past (even if the work is in the developmental stage) as part of the application process

While we are unable to pay a stipend for the summer, we may be able to assist with housing.

Non-Profit Accounting Internship (Dallas, TX USA)

Pioneer Bible Translators’ finance department handles the financial oversight and accountability for over 400 teammates.  In addition, they receive, disburse and wire money across the world while ensuring Pioneer Bible Translators stays within the legal parameters of both the U.S Government and the countries where Pioneer Bible Translators resides.  During the course of the internship, students will receive hands on experience in:

  • What it is like to work for a not-for-profit mission organization
  • Receipting
  • Disbursements/accounts payable
  • International wire reports
  • Expense reimbursements
  • Strategic prayer for the nations
  • Understanding how one’s giftedness in finance can impact unreached people groups

Most importantly, this internship will help individuals see how God can use their financial skills to facilitate Bible translation, international church planting and global evangelism.  If you have a desire to help the spiritually impoverished through your giftedness, this internship might be for you.

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Individuals who have had at least the introductory courses in accounting
  • Non-profit majors are welcome
  • Students who want to use their aptitude in finance to impact the nations
  • Individuals who are of the utmost integrity, honor and respect
  • People who can be entrusted with the resources of Christ’s global church
  • Individuals who are team players and pay keen attention to detail
  • Lovers of Jesus who are passionate about His mission

While we are unable to pay a stipend for the summer, we may be able to assist with housing.

Papua New Guinea Internship

During the course of the summer, interns generally split their time between 2-3 remote villages.  This internship offers the opportunity to learn a new language (Melanesian Pidgin), acclimate to and thrive in a South Pacific context, as well as participate in and observe translation, literacy and Scripture Impact.  Language learning is a very social experience on this internship, as it takes place during regular day activities, such as hiking, hunting, fishing, working in the nationals’ gardens, washing clothes or cooking.

Focus

Bible translation, literacy, village living, support work, working amongst individuals from animistic backgrounds, training nationals, survey

 

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Adaptable, humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Willing and able to live in remote contexts
  • Not afraid of physically strenuous situations (some villages are quite remote and require day-long hikes and long canoe rides to get to them)
  • Excited about learning new languages
  • Previous linguistic training is not required but is an asset
  • Disciple-makers

Recruitment Internship (Dallas, TX USA)

In order for people to get involved in the Bible translation movement, they need someone to tell them about the people groups who are still waiting. The reality is that many Christians have no idea there are entire language groups who do not have access to Scripture in the language moms are yelling at their kids in. They also may not know that the skill sets they possess are the very things our teammates overseas and in the U.S. are fervently lifting up to God. The Recruitment Team at Pioneer Bible Translators shares the plight of the Bibleless and churchless people groups around the world. During the course of an internship with the recruitment department, students will receive hands on experience in:

  • Sharing the stories of the Bibleless and those that work alongside them
  • How Pioneer Bible Translators uses spiritual formation as our methodology for helping people discover God’s will for their lives
  • Planning recruitment events
  • Communicating with people from a wide variety of backgrounds through email and phone/video conversations
  • Getting to know the various fields of Pioneer Bible Translators and each one’s unique needs
  • Understanding the wide range of skills and gifts needed in the ministry of Bible translation
  • The importance of prayer in Kingdom recruitment

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • People who are self-motivated and go-getters
  • Individuals who enjoy deep conversation and are good communicators
  • Disciple makers who love encouraging others in their pursuit of Jesus
  • People who practice discretion and can be trusted with sensitive information
  • People who aren’t afraid to ask hard questions
  • A sense of humor is a plus

While we are unable to pay a stipend for the summer, we may be able to assist with housing.

Software Development Internship (Location TBD)

What if you could use your passion and skills this summer to have a global, Kingdom impact? What if at the end of the day you could rest knowing that the code you wrote, tested, and deployed to production was now helping hundreds of missionaries around the world? What if the website you worked on helped mobilize this generation of God chasers to see how every individual has a part to play in reaching the unreached peoples of the world?

Through this unique internship opportunity, you will have the ability to get hands-on experience working alongside our software engineer as he designs, builds and maintains web applications and the underlying infrastructure needed to support them.

As part of supporting our worldwide team of missionaries, we have the opportunity to help Pioneer Bible Translators become more efficient, scale for growth and decrease costs. We can help facilitate this by solving complex problems programmatically through technology, automation and building internal applications designed to meet our specific needs.

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Individuals who are willing to work in a collaborative structure
  • Individuals who are flexible, open to new and challenging situations
  • Individuals gifted with some experience in one or more of the following:
  • Frontend Development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript – bonus if you have experience with React, Angular, SCSS, responsive design)
  • Object-Oriented Programming
  • RESTful Web Services
  • Database (MySql/NoSql)
  • WordPress
  • Server Administration

The location is to be determined.

While we are unable to pay a stipend for the summer, we may be able to assist with housing.

Diaspora Outreach (Dallas, TX USA)

The Vickery Meadow program, implemented by our partner organization, works to empower refugees through ESL/literacy, translation services, health education, and human language technology development.  This organization is also building a business development center for refugees of diverse backgrounds launching in the summer of 2022.  An intern with this department would come alongside their team in Dallas to engage with refugee communities and assist with current projects in which the team is involved.  While the internship work will be secular-focused, it will be an opportunity to build relationships and to further the work of our partner organization toward goals of enduring, holistic transformation.

Focus

Teaching ESL/literacy, language documentation and linguistic analysis, health education program development, media arts

What kind of interns are we looking for?

  • Humble, teachable, servant leaders
  • Linguists, ESL teachers and educators
  • Media arts specialists or health educators/workers
  • A heart for refugees
  • Out-of-the-box thinkers
  • Flexible, adaptive

While we are unable to pay a stipend for the summer, we may be able to assist with housing.

Pre-Field Orientation
Dallas, Texas

This two week orientation is designed to help interns prepare for their time on the field. During this time interns will receive:
  • Hands-on training in language acquisition
  • Team building opportunities under the direction and mentorship of certified life coaches
  • An introduction to cultural anthropology
  • Conflict resolution and spiritual formation coaching
  • Get to know Pioneer Bible Translators of Canada’s global team
  • Discover our vision to build a network of churches and to provide enduring access to the Word of God in the languages that communities understand best.
  • Various opportunities for participation – Bible translation demonstrations, literacy training sessions, disciple-making strategies, community development, and support ministries

On the field

The internships are organized to walk interns into the day-to-day life situations of our missionaries on the field.

During interships, activities are designed to help interns acquire a broader vision of God’s world, gain further insight into His heart for the unreached, and receive more data about the person God has designed each of them to be.

Frequently Asked Questions
What are overseas internships like?

Our internships are designed to be a microcosm for what a long-term missionary encounters, both in preparation and on the field. An intern’s summer is filled with both observational and hands-on activities to introduce them to the many facets of the Bible translation ministry (literacy, church planting, support work, discipleship of nationals, etc.). All of these experiences are part of an intern’s quest to see how God can use them in the wide range of ministries that Pioneer Bible Translators of Canada and its global partners offers.

Teams usually consist of 3-4 interns (generally college-aged) and a team coach. The team coach serves as a facilitator, leader and guide. Since we want interns to see a broad range of ministry and cultural learning activities, most internship teams travel to multiple ministry allocations throughout the summer. They will also rub shoulders with multiple missionaries, their families and the behind-the-scene activities that are at the heart of what it takes to be a missionary.

On any given day, one might:

  • participate in a literacy workshop with veteran missionaries
  • assist in a back translation or village check of a passage of Scripture
  • work alongside national translators as they edit, revise and discuss word usage in translation
  • practice language learning in an open market
  • go on a prayer walk
  • show the Jesus film
  • worship in a village church
  • go trekking (distributing Scripture) to a remote village
  • observe how the nationals incorporate various art forms into their worship
  • learn about the local culture and bond with nationals through hunting, fishing, drinking tea, picking peanuts, cooking, fixing thatched roofs, or whatever other adventure God takes you on

 

While it is NOT a requirement to know one definitely wants to be a long-term missionary, we ask every applicant to be OPEN to the idea of serving overseas as a vocational missionary. Applicants who are just looking for a fun experience or to participate in a short-term mission trip will not be a good fit for this program.

Can I Get School Credit?

Most likely. Pioneer Bible Translators has a long history of working alongside both Christian universities and state colleges to meet the academic and service-learning requirements each respective institution requires in order to receive school credit. We are open to dialoguing with your university to determine if one of our trips will meet their goals for your internship experience.

How Much Do Internships Cost?

Overseas internships range in cost from $4,500 USD to $6,500 USD. Internships withing North America can vary in cost. These budgets include the cost of training alongside our overseas teams, as well as living expenses. We are sometimes able to assist with low cost housing options, which keeps the cost much lower than our overseas trips.

Can I Raise Support For My Internship?

Absolutely. In fact, we highly encourage interns to get the full experience of being a missionary by going through the process of raising both financial and prayer support.

What Kinds Of Interns Are You Looking For?

We are praying for God to send us teachable, humble and servant-hearted followers of Jesus who are investigating how God may want to use them to impact and build his Kingdom.

How Do I Apply?

You can apply for an internship by contacting our recruiter via email or phone. After dialoguing with you about which internship allocation is the best fit for your interests, they will send you an information packet including:

  • An electronic application
  • Electronic reference forms
  • Sample budgets

Click here to send us a message. (Be sure to select the ‘recruitment’ category.) Or call us at (403) 874-7464.

Navigating next steps can be scary. Don't be held back. You were created for a purpose.

Contact a recruiter today

(403) 874-7464