How an unlikely internship led to newfound confidence in community and liturgy for a future pastor.
For most people, landing their dream job is the ultimate arrival. But for Mac Conn, it turned out to be a launching pad to something else altogether.
A college graduate in his late twenties from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Mac had always felt an inner draw to help others. That calling had led him to work in parachurch ministries, a group home, and finally as a teacher mentoring at-risk youth at Pike’s Peak Academy in Colorado Springs. Everything had worked out according to plan until Mac began questioning the plan.
“Teaching at-risk students should have been my dream job,” said Mac. “I had worked in nonprofits since graduating college. I had summers off, and I was serving a demographic I deeply care about. Plus, it was the most money I’d ever made. But for some reason, I just couldn’t shake this feeling that this wasn’t where I was supposed to be.”
The growing discontent within him was unnerving. He thought he knew himself so well, but now he wasn’t so sure. Then his girlfriend insisted that he accompany her to an “inkwell night,” a Christian arts event in North Carolina. Most attendees came to listen to poetry, browse art galleries, and network with other like-minded people. But Mac could not have been less interested in networking. Still, he reluctantly agreed to go and even forced himself to whisper a prayer asking God to guide his path toward anyone he should meet.
Little did Mac know how significant that small prayer would prove to be. The night was mostly uneventful until he was approached by a woman he had never met. She told him that she hadn’t wanted to come to the event either, but she felt like God wanted her to talk to someone and that someone was him.
“She started telling me things about my past that I knew she couldn’t have known. She said that God wanted me to know that he had seen and was proud of all the things I’d done since graduating college, but now he was inviting me to go do the thing I was called to do with my life, the thing I had been putting off. Then she got into my face a little and told me that everyone else took me more seriously than I took myself, and it was time to change.”
The stranger’s words hit home for Mac. In fact, the challenge that he did not take himself seriously enough was something he had heard from friends over the years. The conversation was undeniably accurate.
After returning home to Colorado Springs, Mac spent time in prayer and began unpacking the experience with trusted friends in his community and with his pastor. To his surprise, everyone he spoke to seemed to already believe that he had always been called to pastoral ministry. Finally, it was his turn to embrace what seemed so obvious to everyone else, despite his insecurities.
“I came to the point where I’d rather risk being foolish than disobedient.”
He informed the principal of his school about his decision to leave and began looking for the next tangible steps in the process. He had heard about the 3 Streams Institute at Wellspring Church, a large Anglican church in Denver. But he was a member of Restoration Anglican Church, a smaller congregation in Colorado Springs. Since he didn’t feel called to move to Denver, he had come to an impasse. Yet once again, it seemed he couldn’t escape his calling.
“After applying at Wellspring and contemplating a move I didn’t want to make, the 3 Streams leadership reached out to the rector at Restoration about doing something new and creative with my situation. Through their mutual generosity, they developed the first-ever satellite strategy that allowed me to become part of the cohort. I would do my hours and departmental training rotations here at Restoration, but then drive to Denver once a week to join the rest of the cohort at Wellspring.”
The 3 Streams Institute features three stages over three years: an internship, an apprenticeship, and a residency. For Mac, it meant experiencing the best of two worlds. He was exposed to a large church that had been established for many years, as well as a newer, smaller church just beginning to put down roots in its community. As he flourished in the internship, he began to realize how his past experiences had prepared him for a deeper appreciation of Anglican practices and traditions.
Mac grew up in the Church of Christ and even attended a Church of Christ college for four years in Arkansas. But he was initially drawn to liturgy because it seemed rooted in a stability of truth and practice that acknowledged feelings without being limited by them. He felt himself slowly being formed by the practices, regardless of whether he felt spiritual in any given moment.
“The thing I’ve found with liturgy is that the more I do it, the better it gets. It’s sort of like a dance. The first time you learn a dance, it’s not fun. You don’t know the steps. You’re not really dancing. You’re just trying to mentally do the tricks. But the more you do it, the better you become at it and before you know it, you’re dancing!”
For the first month, as Mac walked to the front of the sanctuary to receive communion and the priest looked him in the eye and said, “This is the body of Christ broken for you,” he cried every time. It wasn’t just emotion. It was a deeper connection to a foundational, transformational truth that could be trusted.
For Mac, as the internship stage of this process nears its end, he is confident that the next door of ministry will open when it should.
“For me,” he reflects, “when I first began speaking to the congregation, I did so with a quivering voice. But my time in 3 Streams at Restoration and at Wellspring has grown my confidence in the right things as I get to serve the people around me.”
“Yes, it has been very humbling, but also, God’s call to be more confident in him and who he has called me to be has never been more apparent.”
