MARYSVILLE – Orange and red stage lights glow from the front of the sanctuary at Turning Point Community Church.

The rest of the room is dark, and 15 recent high school graduates are moving silhouettes against the bright glare, jumping, dancing, raising their hands.

“Take, take, take it all, take, take, take it all,” they shout along with the recorded music.

The stage is empty. It’s 8 a.m. on a Wednesday.

The teens say their audience is God, and he doesn’t mind that they dance as though at a rock concert in a dimly-lit sanctuary early on a weekday morning.

They are interns at the 750-member church.

They’re not paid, but that doesn’t stop them from showing up early each day for worship.

From there, first-year interns go to classes – often taught by the second-years – with homework that involves doing an unexpected good deed or creating a video announcement to show at Sunday services. After lunch, it’s back to class, then on to the church youth group service. The day doesn’t end until after 10 p.m.

There’s no paycheck and they don’t get college credit.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Becky Buchanan, 23, a former intern. “It’s absolutely foolish, if you don’t believe in eternity.”

Churches around the country are offering homegrown alternatives to Bible college.

Instead of sending their high school grads away, some churches encourage the teens to stick around town and help out.

They’re training up their own people to be leaders, said Jeff Moors, Turning Point’s youth pastor. The internships are proving grounds.

“In a basic Bible college, what you get is a lot of head knowledge,” Moors said. “Here, we’re seeing the heart change.”

Working for the church

As soon as morning worship ends, interns file into a basement classroom.

Their class is called “Undercover.”

The previous week’s homework was to do something for a boss or parent that was above the call of duty, and the interns are eager to share.

One cleaned his parents’ bathroom.

Another tidied his area at work.

Buchanan, the teacher, nods, smiling.It’s not calculus or microbiology, but Turning Point’s leaders and interns say they’re gaining skills they’re unlikely to learn anywhere else.

“Would you rather go to school and get a degree from someone who says you can be a millionaire, even though he’s not, or do you want to sit next to someone who is a millionaire, and learn from him?” Moors said.

A year off before college makes sense for many high school graduates, said Brian Muchmore, director of Snohomish County Youth for Christ, an organization that links interns with churches.

The organization requires students to be enrolled in college to participate in the internship program, but Muchmore wants to start a new program for teens who aren’t sure whether college is for them.

Before spending money, they want to know if they’re really “called to the ministry,” Muchmore said.

The Rock Church in Monroe combines its internship program with extension classes through Portland Bible College, pastor Melinda Knight said.

Interns there pay $4,600 for nine months of leadership training.

“They can focus the year on making sure they know what they want to do,” Knight said. “They can really give that year to hearing God.”

Turning Point has a college, too: the three-year School of Ministry Arts, founded by Sacramento-based Radiant Life Church. It’s not accredited, but students earn a certificate they say is recognized by some churches.

If a student is serious about a life of church ministry, Moors said, that’s enough.

An unorthodox approach

Church intern programs are most often found among nondenominational, charismatic churches, said Dr. John Stackhouse, a professor of theology and culture at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C.

Such churches Sunday services’ highlight music, motivational sermons and technology as a way to appeal to a younger crowd.

“It’s a mindset that is suspicious of established institutions,” said. “There’s a correct sense that some academic training can be practically useless, but the mistake here is to think that you’ll do better Christian service if you’re ignorant.”

A pastor hopeful can’t learn everything he or she needs to know in an on-the-job internship, Stackhouse said.

Independent churches are more likely to have interns because they’re not saddled to the rigorous academic requirements of many denominations, said Edmund Gibbs, a professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.

That means the interns may learn practical skills alongside pastors who can draw in thousands of worshippers. But they may fall flat when faced with tough doctrinal issues, Gibbs said.

“We’ve got 2,000 years of Christian history, and surely that’s taught us something,” Gibbs said. “If we don’t know that history, we may be fated to repeat it.”

Still, internships promote personal spiritual growth and responsibility – something that’s difficult to teach in a classroom, Gibbs said.

“We need the best of both worlds,” he said.

Great things

Nicole Couch, 21, slings her white, pointy-toed boots up on a chair in a classroom at Turning Point, cranks up the volume on a mix CD she made when she first became a Christian (“Soft stuff,” she said; “I needed it then”) and sorts visitor cards from a recent Sunday service.

“New visitors get a personal-sized Alfy’s pizza delivered,” she said.

It’s the kind of thing Couch would have sneered at two years ago.

She grew up attending church alongside her mother, a Sunday school teacher. But in high school, “I tapped into the world,” she said.

Couch said she began dabbling in drugs.

An older sister repeatedly invited Couch to Turning Point. She finally agreed, but tried to sneak out quickly after the service. Moors saw her and pulled her aside.

“He said, ‘I want you to know that the Lord has great things for you,’” Couch said.

Couch was hooked.

It’s a story several interns share.

Emily Masten, 19, said she left behind “a bad life” when she became a Christian five years ago. Now, her photograph cycles through the masthead on Turning Point’s Web site.

Sean Cannell, 23, said he was expelled from a Christian high school for his behavior. He turns nostalgic when he recounts his “tricked-out” Honda Civic and his reputation as a “hot” Marysville deejay.

Then he deepens his voice.

“I used to have it all on a minor scale,” Cannell said. “Now, I’ve learned to live on God’s economy. I’ve got prosperity of the soul.”

Cannell works part-time for the church, teaching interns how to put together video announcements to air each Wednesday at youth group. He also works at a Red Robin restaurant.

Cannell doesn’t have any plans to get further education.

His wife of less than a year dropped out of the University of Washington in the middle of a master’s program because, Cannell said, God told her to attend SOMA instead.They’re not worried about their future.

“It’s impossible to serve God without risk,” he said. “A ‘safe’ Christian life is an inferior Christian life.”

Learning responsibility

The interns have been working for more than 11 hours by the time teenagers begin streaming in for youth group.

A band is playing onstage, and Couch, who is singing back-up, tilts her head back and throws her hands in the air.

“Our God reigns, our God reigns, forever your kingdom reigns,” they sing as the drums and guitar reach an emotion-packed crescendo. Interns throughout the room place their hands on teenagers and pray passionately over them.

It’s easy for Masten to connect with the teenagers. Two years ago, she was among them. Now, she’s married.

“I think being here, being in ministry, puts you in a place to get married early,” she said.

Buchanan, who teaches the interns, recently married a man sent by Turning Point to start a church in Canada.

“In church, marriage happens a lot faster because we teach and focus on purity in relationships,” Buchanan said. “I was brought to a place of maturity.”

Moors, 28, the youth pastor, is married with three children. He learned the responsibility needed to be a father by working full-time at the church, he said.

“It teaches work ethic,” he said. “That’s something this generation lacks.”

Daily miracles

Philip Engle, 19, a first-year intern, stood at the front of the sanctuary while the youth group’s band played. He shut eyes tight and clenched his fists.

A skater who was home-schooled through junior high, Engle is sure of just one thing about his future: “I want to be in a place where I can benefit the kingdom of God.”

He’s an intern because of the miracles, he said.

“Real stuff happens, stuff you can’t explain,” he said. “Every day, I see more and more.”

Things like a hundred or more teenagers worshipping God together. Someone who is not a Christian may not see the miracle in that, Engle said, but it’s there.

Another daily miracle is the overwhelming peace Engle said he feels just in knowing that he’s doing what he should.

“Even if your life’s the best, you still need Jesus, because the before that was so good, it’s not so good when you look back,” he said. “There’s nothing as good as being in the presence of the Lord.”

Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.