UPPER TRACT, WV – You’ve probably heard about students taking a gap year between high school and college or starting a job. While it can be time to travel or avoid adulting, increasingly, students are using these gap years for intentional growth.
Christian gap years are popping up across the country. We visited one in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. A place where evangelist Steve Wingfield witnesses many miracles. It all started when a friend asked to show him a piece of property on top of a mountain.
“My response was, Jeff, I don’t have money for property—I’m a preacher. He said, I just feel like the Lord wants you to see it,” Wingfield told CBN News, and that led to opening Lodestar Mountain Inn.
“I call it the miracle on the mountain. It’s been unbelievable what God’s done. We’ve been given 10 tractor-trailer loads of material,” he says.
Lodestar first opened 10 years ago as a retreat center for pastors, first responders, and veterans. It now boasts a number of properties, each with their own miraculous stories. Wingfield even secured an old log sheep barn for the property.
“And so it still is. It’s a chapel, so the Good Shepherd is here,” Wingfield explains with a chuckle.
The ministry began shepherding the next generation of evangelists at Lodestar four years ago by adding a gap year program which draws students from across the country for nine months of intensive discipleship.
Students like Micah Derrick, who knew he wanted to spend a year after high school to grow in his faith.
“The community aspect is amazing. Generally, like believers that are pursuing Christ in a very different way. And that’s all they want—they just want to pursue Christ,” he explains.
The program teaches students how to discover and develop their gifts, how to recognize every moment matters, and teaches them how to live out and defend their faith—all tools they’ll use no matter which path in life they take.
Different experts are brought in every four weeks to teach subjects like leadership, evangelism, and apologetics. Students then practice what they learn here in their rural community. The third week they teach back what they learned and the fourth week they hit the road for intentional travel. By graduation in May, they’ve earned 27 college credit hours from Lancaster Bible College.
“Every aspect of this program is so intentional, with the ways they incorporate the Lord into it and just a purpose for every activity that we do. You can really tie it into seeing the Lord and giving Him the glory through it all,” Carson Miller explains. He completed the gap year several years ago and returned to serve as a resident leader.
It’s a year that truly stands in the gap of some startling statistics that show 70 percent of Christians ages 18 to 23 fall away from their faith.
“When I first went to college, one of the first things my professor said to me was, ‘I’m going to teach you the fact of atheistic evolution—there is no God.’ And I just feel like that happens so much, where students are maybe not with their families for the first time in their lives, and their faith is really tested and pushed,” Amy Wenger explains. She serves as associate director of the Lodestar Mountain Inn.
“We want to prepare them to share their faith, to defend their faith. We want to change that statistic so that 70 percent aren’t falling away,” Scott Wenger, president of Wingfield Ministries tells us.
Students say they have an absolute blast, despite having to follow some unconventional rules.
“In our program, we set the schedule. Students only have their phones on Saturdays, so we’re encouraging them to live with their eyes up, their heads up instead of buried in a phone screen. So there’s a little bit of shock that comes with that,” explains Scott Boyer who runs the gap year program with his wife Lindsey.
Gap year student Abby Beck tells CBN News she feels better without her phone.
“Because it just takes your time, and time is so important—and you don’t know how much of it you have.”
Like a number of students who’ve completed the gap year, Beck doesn’t believe she would be as close to God had she gone straight to college.
“I know it feels like you need to figure out what your purpose in life is, but I feel like you can find your purpose in the Lord, and then the other things will fall into place,” she explains.
As part of their education, students discover new places. This year’s class just returned from Turkey, where they visited the seven churches of Revelation. They’ve also spent time with the Navajo Nation in Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, and ministered to drug addicts in Pennsylvania.
“To take the intentional gap with intention to grow deeper in their faith—they’re making the choice to not just rush off to the next thing, but to actually slow down because they want to know Christ better,” explains Lindsey Boyer.
Pennsylvania high school senior Kara Burkholder plans to attend next year.
“It is beautiful, and it just feels perfect and right. There’s a purpose to be on this mountain, and I want to be a part of it,” she tells us.
Studies show a gap year before college can help students develop stronger leadership skills, make better grades, and stay in school at higher rates. And for Christian students, leaders say having a firm foundation on day one is key.
“The 18 to 22-year-old student—how do they stay in the faith in college? And the evidence is two things: they are in church on the first Sunday they’re at college, and they’re being discipled,” Scott Boyer explains.
“It’s vitally important. We need to see awakening and renewal come to America and the only way that’s gonna happen, I think is through the next generation,” Wingfield says.
