High school graduation is always a time of great transition, during which students and their parents have to make the important decision: what comes next? What should they prioritize? What will their relationship with Christ look like as they get older?
This can be a trying time, but it’s not something that you have to face alone. If you’re not sure what comes next for your teen, a gap year program might be the best fit for your family.
At TENTMAKERS, we offer a Christ-centered gap year program, Year on Mission, and have extensive experience with helping families understand how it can change their teen’s future.
In this article you’ll find:
By the end of the article, you’ll have all the information you need to determine if a gap year program is the right fit for your family, and how to pursue one with TENTMAKERS.
When people think of taking a gap year between high school graduation and starting college, they might picture a variety of different things. Maybe it’s a year spent traveling, or living at home and working to save as much money as you can before starting at a college or university.
One thing we know for sure at TENTMAKERS is that a gap year is not just a “year off of life.”
The key to a successful gap year is intentionality. That year-long break should give you something you would not have had otherwise: experience, travel, and connection with others, something that is helping you plan, pray, and prepare for the future ahead.
What a gap year looks like to your teen might be completely different than it does for someone else’s, and that’s okay. The key is to ensure that there’s a level of intention going into it, so you’re not ten years in and still wondering what comes next.
Once your family has an understanding of what a gap year is and how to achieve it, you might start wondering what a gap year done well looks like.
At TENTMAKERS, we define a successful gap year as something that was done with intentionality. Make a list with your teen that outlines what they want to accomplish during their gap year, and how they’re going to make the most of this season of being single.
Determine how they're going to make the most of their time “off,” whether it’s traveling, studying, working, praying, or a combination. The difference between a gap year and a sabbatical is the level of intention. During a gap year, you're taking a season to plan, think, and pray about what's coming next.
At TENTMAKERS, our program leaders have spoken with teens who have taken successful gap years, and they always have one thing in common: goals and intention.
As their parent or guardian, you know your child best. This starts at birth: you start to figure out who they are as a person, what their personality is, what they’re good at, what they enjoy, and how God wired them. Get to know them as they grow up, before they’re teens who are no longer only doing what their parents are telling them to do.
We know that every teen is unique, and their needs and desires are different. If your child is more academically minded, if they're more interested in science, if they prefer to be outdoors, these are all considerations that can be brought into determining whether they would be a good fit for a gap year, because it will influence how they spend that valuable time.
Our culture is so used to doing college visits during Junior and Senior years of high school, which helps incoming college freshmen determine whether a university is the right fit for them. This line of thinking can be extended to gap years as well. What opportunities and internships and programs are out there, how could they benefit your teen, and are they the right fit? Weigh these opportunities the same way you would weigh the pros and cons of a particular university.
At TENTMAKERS, we offer preview weekends for our Year of Mission programs, so that teens and their families can see right away if the program will meet their needs, if it fits the kind of people they want to be around, and if it’s the experience they’re looking for. We know there are plenty of options out there, it’s just a matter of being open to them and making sure they’re the right fit for your family.
This can be hard to determine because everyone’s gap year looks different, but ultimately, a gap year done right will leave your teen with an experience they wouldn’t have had otherwise. For your family, that could mean cross-cultural experiences, experiences with other people, either your age or intergenerationally, or a hands-on experience. Another big indicator of success is that they come away from their gap year with a sense of team or community. Because, up until that gap year, whether your teen was homeschooled or public schooled, their community was chosen for them. Their parents said, “you're going to this school,” or, “these are your siblings, you don't get a choice.”
And then, during their gap year, they’re learning the kinds of people and communities they want to be surrounded by and work with.
Finally, a gap year should be hands-on. This can be through traditional academic classes, though they can find those anywhere. Ideally, the gap year would feature hands-on vocational courses or another unique experience that leaves your teen with lessons they would not have learned anywhere else.
TENTMAKERS Year on Mission is a gap year opportunity for young adults to invest a concentrated year of their lives to grow in strength as disciples of Jesus Christ in an environment of encouragement. Participants grow in compassion, character, and faith while developing the imagination, moral courage, and tenacity to lead in all walks of life.
Year on Mission starts with 40 days of training in the wilderness, which means that teens enrolled in the program are getting hands-on experience and engaging with a new community right away. They are going off and receiving training around foundational life skill sets, which are useful not only for that year but for the rest of their lives and can have a huge impact.
During Year on Mission, teens are learning how to be okay with themselves. When we think of time in the wilderness, it can often mean time in solitude, but in this case, it means time with community. Teens learn how to build a strong community where they’re affirming and loving one another.
Following the 40 days of training, Year on Mission attendees take what they learned and put it into practice by going into a church setting with a team of four other people. They then get assigned a trainer coach overseeing their team, guiding and directing them on how to best serve the church. This allows attendees to put their training into practice in a direct, hands-on way that pushes them out of their comfort zone in a safe, controlled environment.
At TENTMAKERS, we’ve seen first-hand that getting out of your comfort zone is where true growth happens.
By the end of Year on Mission teens will know:
Successful Year on Mission stories are some of our favorites to tell here at TENTMAKERS. While results can vary from person to person, we have seen some truly amazing things come from Year on Mission attendees.
Achievements include:
The biggest objections are time, money, and control.
Reservation #1: For most people, there is a sense of urgency: they think they know what they want, whether it’s going to college or getting a job, and they think they have to do it immediately. They don’t think they have time for something like Year on Mission.
However, we’ve seen firsthand that people who have taken a gap year have had better college experiences because they took that year to gain some life experience, build connections, and then go to college the way they’d always planned. Year on Mission can change your perspective, but teens have to be open to the experience first.
Reservation #2: The second objection is that the program is too expensive, especially if the teen wants to attend college afterward.
However, we’ve had attendees tell us that the 40-day training alone has been worth more to them than four years of college education, just because of how much they’re able to use it in their day-to-day lives. And, at the end of the day, the cost of Year on Mission is far less than that of even one semester at a four-year university.
At TENTMAKERS, we believe that if God is calling someone to a program like Year on Mission, He has a way of helping you make the payment work out. To assist with this, we make it easy for friends and family to make payment contributions to a specific person right on our website.
Reservation #3: The final thing that holds people back from Year on Mission is their need for control. They want to be in control of the people they’re with, the teams they’re on, and the church they go to.
However, to be successful during Year on Mission, attendees have to give up that sense of control and establish a sense of trust. God is in control, and He doesn’t negotiate. If He is calling you to the program, we encourage you to listen to that calling, and trust that it is going to work out the way it should.
There are 5 key reasons TENTMAKERS Year on Mission Director, Owen, encourages teens to consider Year on Mission:
Are you a parent exploring gap year options with your teen? Register now for Year on Mission or Year on Mission Preview Weekend to see if it’s a fit for your family. We can't wait to see you there!