Our Internship Blog Series continues with a post about the internship of Ikaay Ugbodaga ’24 at Church Anew, a ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Ikaay worked at Church Anew during Summer 2022. Church Anew is led by Matthew Fleming, Pastor of Teaching and Young Adults at St. Andrew.

For the past several summers, the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community at St. Olaf College has sponsored interns at Church Anew, a ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Church Anew is led by Matthew Fleming, Pastor of Teaching and Young Adults at St. Andrew. Church Anew’s mission is to “nourish Christian leaders to create vibrant communities of faith by setting a table of mutual learning and developing resources for a fresh witness in the world.”

Pastor Matthew expressed gratitude for each group of Lutheran Center interns Church Anew has hosted, saying that each year the students “come with curiosity and willingness to engage in our mission as they launch new initiatives at Church Anew.”

Pastor Matthew expressed gratitude for each group of Lutheran Center interns Church Anew has hosted, saying that each year the students “come with curiosity and willingness to engage in our mission as they launch new initiatives at Church Anew.” Particularly working with students from St. Olaf brings new insights about how to share a fresh witness to the world through social media and other forms of media. 

This past summer Ikaay Ugbodaga ‘24, a quantitative economics major with a concentration in finance, interned with Church Anew, working with them on marketing and database management. Ikaay learned about the internship through his advisor, who encouraged him to apply. As the marketing intern, Ikaay supported the mission of Church Anew by making sure that their communications reached a broad audience of Christian leaders, who could then take advantage of the programs and resources offered. 

In learning about the intentionality with which an organization like Church Anew thinks about its outreach, Ikaay expressed some surprise: “My thought process was ‘here’s the product we’re pushing – if people need it, they’ll get it.’ But that’s not how it works. You have to make people feel that they need something from you to really get your product to sell and that was an interesting shift I learned along the way.” Ikaay believes that having learned this will help him to inspire confidence in people he works with in his future work. Pastor Matthew mentioned that the care Ikaay brought to the design of weekly newsletters, blogs, and other communications built trust between Church Anew and Chrisitan leaders who rely on these communications for information. 

Further, as part of the internship Pastor Matthew met one-on-one with Ikaay several times through the summer to connect what he was doing at Church Anew with his own vocational discernment. Pastor Matthew and Ikaay talked about how, in all aspects of our lives, we must use the tools and gifts at our disposal to inspire confidence in people with whom we work and live. 

“Church Anew and the Lutheran Center bring people together from different backgrounds…I think my internship experiences ties in with the values of the Center because a lot of the marketing we did was focused on inclusion. We weren’t just targeting a specific demographic – we wanted to include everyone who wanted to participate.” – Ikaay Ugbodaga ’24

The Lutheran Center partners with Church Anew to provide summer interns from St. Olaf College because of this shared missional value: that trustworthy relationships between people of all backgrounds grounds us more fully in each of our individual identities. As Ikaay reflected, “Church Anew and the Lutheran Center bring people together from different backgrounds…I think my internship experience ties in with the values of the Center because a lot of the marketing we did was focused on inclusion. We weren’t just targeting a specific demographic – we wanted to include everyone who wanted to participate.” As Ikaay learned to inspire confidence and trust through his work at Church Anew this past summer, he will bring those skills and ideas to future work and interactions with people, hoping to build a more inclusive world.