Before 2021, Summit’s Gap Year ran as a single semester—then called Summit Semester. As students left, a common refrain emerged: the experience was beautiful, the people were unforgettable, and their understanding of the Christian life had deepened—but once they returned home, they didn’t know how to live it. Three months in the Colorado mountains taught them to love community, worship, and shared rhythms of faith, but only within the contained world of the lodge. The experience was often described as a glimpse of heaven—a taste of what Christian community could be. But a taste is not the meal.
We are not called to live forever in secluded, insulated communities. There is deep value in retreating for a season, but a life lived entirely apart cuts us off from the very people we are called to love and serve. The program hadn’t failed these students. In fact, it succeeded so fully that when the experience ended, they ached for it—and had no idea where to find it again.
I have been involved with Summit for over a decade. I was a student for the first time in 2014 and then again in 2015. I have since worked six summers and am currently on staff with the Gap Year program. Needless to say, I know Summit and its mission. I’ve sat in the hotel classroom countless times to listen to the wisdom from the stage. There have been times when I’ve felt I could give specific lectures because I’ve heard them so often. This is how I felt going into my time as a Semester student. In 2018, I had been on staff for three summers. I knew the answers, I could talk the talk . . . I just couldn’t walk the walk. At that time in my life, though, I would not have said that. My pride was too immense, and I wasn’t even aware enough to realize I wasn’t walking the walk. “What the heck?” I thought to myself when the opportunity arose to be a student. I had just finished college and had no plan. Three months in the mountains to delay having to make a big life choice sounded good, plus maybe I’ll learn something that I’ve somehow missed in the last 5 years.
I was wrong—in the best way.
The Semester and Gap Year programs overlap somewhat in their content but, overall, cover different topics of the Christian life. What I gained most wasn’t merely understanding as much as space: space to practice, to fail, to repent, and to begin again. Summit’s summer programs are exceptional learning environments, and staff do everything they can to set students up for life after they leave. But 2 weeks—even the best 2 weeks—are not enough to undo habits or form new ones. That’s not what the program is designed for, but that is what Gap Year is designed for.
Change does not happen the moment the truth is taught. Truth prepares the soil. The Holy Spirit does the slow, patient work of growth.
When students are invited into a shared life and a story bigger than themselves, that growth becomes sustainable.
We were made for experience and community. In the Bible, the Hebrew word yada is used over 900 times. Commonly translated as know or knowledge, this word has a deeper meaning than our English understanding of it.1 Yada knowledge is based on understanding through experience—something that a person can only fully understand through participating in it, not just knowing it with their head. This is why Scripture speaks of spouses “knowing” one another. It is a language of intimacy, not abstraction.
In his book The Familiar Stranger, Tyler Staton speaks on these differences regarding the Holy Spirit and Christian community:
Spiritual maturity is narrowing the gap between Kingdom promise and daily grind; between what I believe in my head and what I know in my heart, my emotions, and my bones; between the core beliefs I recite in creeds and sing in worship anthems and the core beliefs I live day in and day out. Spiritual health means that [the] inevitable gap between the story on the page and the story of my life narrows and narrows like a door creaking shut on a dark room until there’s barely a blade of light left. The Holy Spirit is the experiential agent of the Trinitarian God, narrowing the gap between biblical promise and everyday experience and leading to greater spiritual health and maturity.2
This is the main aim of the design of Summit Gap Year: creating a space for students to learn how to narrow that gap in their own lives.
In the fall, students are intentionally removed from the noise of “real life.” They live on a ranch an hour from any real town, they give up their phones, and they only really see each other during that time. This intentionality allows the staff to encourage the students to push into community and the Holy Spirit. The students are shown what exactly is available to them in the Christian life, and they are invited into a larger story. While the staff help them see how to live, the students are also in classes with professors who teach them how to think.
These two things, thinking and living, pour into and inform each other, leading to a deeper understanding of both.
In the spring, however, the training wheels come off. Students move to Manitou Springs. Phones return. The internet returns. So do distractions. They are encouraged to get involved in the community outside the Summit culture. Now that they’ve been shown what a good Christian life can look like, it’s up to them to build it for themselves. What was once modeled now must be practiced. When students only had the one-semester program, they still learned the “living and thinking,” but didn’t get to practice implementation with a guiding hand. Now, with an entire semester dedicated to implementation and integration, students can walk away confident not only in their faith but also in how to live it out.
Gap Year is not about preserving a mountaintop experience—it’s about learning how to walk back down and keep walking. It teaches students that Christian community is not confined to retreat centers or ideal conditions, but is something to be cultivated in ordinary places, among ordinary people, with patience and courage. The goal is not to escape the world, but to learn how to abide in it. By pairing formation with practice, Gap Year equips students not just to believe the story of the gospel, but to live it out—fully, imperfectly, and together.
By Isaac Hans
If you’d like to learn more about Summit’s Gap Year seven-month program, click here!
Formation Doesn’t Happen at the Speed of Scrolling. The world moves fast. College decisions, career expectations, social pressure—students are rushed into adulthood long before they’re ready for it. Many feel overwhelmed, disconnected, and unsure of their purpose.
But here’s the truth: You can’t accelerate your way into maturity. Formation requires space. Presence. Practice.
Summit Gap Year isn’t a pause from life. It’s an invitation to live differently.