The Beginnings of the MAC Internship

The internship is a unique piece of the Muncie Alliance Church community, but the story of how it came about points to the essence of what we value most within our community. The story of how the internship began not only shows how God can take His fumbling children and create something beautiful that reflects Him, but also portrays the way most of the MAC distinctives emerge around here. Let's start at the convoluted beginning:

As the community fluxed and changed in the early 1990s, Senior Pastor Guy Pfanz was forced to take a cut in pay from the church. This led him and his wife, Judy, to start up a business in order to have a supplementary income. Having held a longtime interest in coffee, Guy started Guido's Coffee, a company that sells and services coffee and espresso equipment as well as supports clients through the process of setting up and running a coffee house—everything from what machine would best meet the capacity for their store or restaurant to where they could buy their coffee beans.

By the late 1990s, MAC was bursting at the seams. Twice on Sundays there would be over 250 people packed into a room meant for only 150. On Saturday nights there was a thriving coffee house ministry that was drawing people in from the surrounding community. As the attendance grew, so did the need for more room and more staff. Unfortunately, as the church enjoyed growth in some areas, the budget stayed dismally small.

As if there weren't enough problems to solve at that point, the Lord dropped a request on his heart, "Guy, I want you to start an internship. I want you to train young men and women for the ministry." The only practicality Guy could connect with God's request and the current state of affairs was that interns would come in handy as extra help around the church, but then again, interns are people, not pragmatic solutions to problems. In fact, this request only produced more questions without answers: How do we have time to start a new ministry when we are barely keeping up with the current demands of the church? And how are we going to support these interns while they're here?

Nearly a decade before Guy and Judy stepped foot in Muncie, they visited some friends, Chris and Nancy Williamson, who were attending Bethany College of Missions in Bloomington, MN. While the Williamsons were there, students were able to attend tuition-free as they were trained, sent out and then supported as missionaries around the world. They would go to classes from 8 to 12 in the morning and then in the afternoon, they would work around the campus or for one of Bethany's entrepreneurial ventures; off-setting the costs of overhead and upkeep. Some of these businesses included manufacturing lefse griddles, pop-up campers, producing audio and video products, opening Christian bookstores, and publishing and printing Christian literature.

Aha! Guy thought, This is a model we can adopt at MAC. At that point in time, Guy had helped set up over 40 coffee houses through his business, all of which had needed a place to buy coffee beans. If they had a roaster, the interns could learn about ministry in the morning and roast coffee to support themselves in the afternoon. Guy made a request, "OK, God, I'm not into this if You're not. And what I have to strive to start, I'm going to have to strive to maintain. I'm really not up for it. If You want this thing, You've got to make it happen. I'm asking you for two confirmations: I want a coffee roaster so that the interns can be paid while they are serving and learning, and I want a house for them to live in rent-free."

No answer.

Two weeks later, a man who had never attended MAC and whom Guy had never met before wanted to set up an appointment to ask him a few questions about the church. As they sat down across from each other, the man explained that his wife had read an article in Reader's Digest about a family who decided to give their Christmas to Jesus instead of buying each other presents. On board with the idea, he decided to surprise her, and was secretly interviewing potential candidates for the Christmas gift. When the subject of current needs arose, Guy only mentioned an espresso machine, thinking that a coffee roaster would be way outside the realm of possibility. Some in the church were toying with the idea of having a coffee cart in the dorms to serve students while they were studying, but the church couldn't afford to buy one.

That same day, the man's wife called, without knowing her husband had just been there interviewing Guy about the church and asked, "Are you that coffee church?"

"Well, some people say that," he answered, also not realizing that it was her husband whom he had just met.

"Do you have a coffee club? I wanted to purchase coffee club memberships for my relatives for Christmas."

"I'm sorry, but, no, we don't. But call us next year because we are praying for a roaster."

That night when her husband came home she said, "You know, I called that coffee church and they don't have a coffee club because they don't have a roaster." He took that as a sign from God and bought MAC a brand new coffee roaster.

Elated, Guy called up the District Superintendent and said, "Hey Fred, we got a coffee roaster! We're in the coffee business!"

"Well, it's really not our policy for churches to have businesses," he responded.

But as Guy told him the story of what he had been praying about the Superintendent said, "You know, that's God. What can we do to help see this vision fulfilled?"

"Sometimes when we plant churches, doesn't the district buy a house?"

"Yeah. Let's do that," he agreed.

And so, the district bought a house for the MAC interns from the money they had from selling A. W. Tozer's church—we call it the Tozer House. Each morning young men and women meet together to study the Bible and ministry and each afternoon they roast coffee to support themselves throughout the course of the internship. They live in houses rent-free and upon graduation, are in a better place financially to serve the Lord wherever He leads.

Here at MAC, we feel more like spectators watching the work of God.