What is a Christian Gap Year?
An intentional period of time devoted to personal and spiritual growth, focused life skill development, and direction-setting in an active ministry environment, with deep community and personal mentoring.
About Gap Year Programs
Gap year programs, gap semester programs, and service learning years — secular and faith-based — are sprouting across the US and around the world, particularly over the past decade. According to the Gap Year Association (secular), the number of young adults taking a gap year doubled to 130,000 in the 2021-22 school year from just a few years earlier. Most are independent programs run by a variety of organizations. Some are directly connected to colleges. But the original concept of a gap year involves taking intentional time between two seasons of life — usually between high school and college, trade school, military service, or entry into the workforce — to focus on personal growth and enriching experiences.
Some young adults use a gap year to unplug and float, to downshift pressure they feel about the transition to next steps in life. Others use a gap year to plug in… to grow and tool up for the next steps in life. The best Christian gap year programs focus on investing in young adults committed to plug in and grow.
What makes a program "Christian?"
Great question. Aside from the obvious, which we’ll address in a minute, the Christian Gap Year Association defines the essential aim of a faith-based gap year program is to intentionally steward the God-designed purpose and path of every program enrollee. That “why” flips the “what” of program design and delivery to one that is not focused on experiences as an outcome, but as a set of opportunities to discover, develop, and deploy on purpose, for a God-designed purpose.
What do we mean by that?
Discover Your Purpose and Path
Every young adult has a powerful and unique God-designed purpose knit together with an array of gifts, talents, personality, and life experiences. Christian gap programs prioritize discovering (and celebrating!) this unique design, and explore how it shapes or informs a young person’s path or direction.
Develop Essential Life Skills With a Biblical Worldview
Life skill development — from processing challenges and opportunities to decision-making, healthy relationship-building, applied critical thinking, personal spiritual formation, and leadership — is essential to thriving in the next steps of life, regardless of the young person’s path. Christian gap programs help young adults develop a toolbox for integrated active learning and growth that multiplies the value and impact of every step for the rest of their journey.
Deploy to the Next Steps of Your Journey With Confidence
Gap year experiences are great, but they are not an end in and of themselves. A key feature of the best Christian gap year programs is helping Christian young adults affirm and/or find the ideal next step in their pathway and successfully launch, whether to college, trade school, or the workforce. For students that step into college, discovering their purpose and path accelerates average graduation times and developing essential life skills improves academic and social outcomes.
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The Christian Gap Year Association is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
