Very excited about this post because I think it’s huge. Huger than huge. Two months ago I spoke at the Awaken conference at Mosaic. While there I spent some time with Steve Saccone who oversees their Protege Program. I also spent some time with their proteges. I fell in love with the concept. It’s a two-year internship that provides an incredible win/win scenario. The proteges get an amazing experience working on staff at Mosaic. And Mosaic gets a couple dozen staff members with lots of energy.

Long story short, we’ve been in conversations with Mosaic. They have given us their “blessing” to launch an east coast version. Definitely want to give credit where credit is due. We are borrowing lots of ideas from Mosaic, but we’ll come up with a very unique program here. And initially, our protege program will be a one-year experience. We’ll also do a few exchange experiences with Mosaic.

We’ll go live with applications in a few days.

I’m so excited about this on lots of levels.

First of all, we’ve always felt tremendous affinity with Mosaic. Love their approach to church. And on a personal level, Erwin McManus is one of those leaders I admire on lots of levels.

Second, we feel called to be a teaching church. Think hospitals and teaching hospitals. Teaching hospitals care for patients just like hospitals. But they are also intentional about training doctors. We really think this will help us raise us a generation of leaders. Give it a few years and we’ll have hundreds of proteges planting churches; serving on church staffs; and leading entrepreneurial organizations.

Finally, we view the Protege Program as our farm system. Think baseball. Every major league team has a minor league team. It’s their farm system where they cultivate players. As we continue to launch new locations throughout the DC area and around the world, we need people to step into those positions. I’m guessing most of our future hires will be proteges. And the ones we don’t hire will get an amazing experience. And hopefully it won’t hurt their resume either.

We’ll certainly share more details and let you know when the application and FAQ go live. But we’re looking to bring on 4-6 proteges in the fall.