Wild Summers

I made all my biggest decisions about God in the summer. I decided to get baptized in the summer. I wish it was a more original story but it was a Thursday night at a summer camp with “I Have Decided” playing in the background. It was also a summer night when I decided to go in the direction of full-time ministry. There was a campfire and more stars in the sky than I could see on a typical night. Over the years, summer became the testing ground for these decisions. Something about the warmer sun and the freer schedule made me stare off into the distance of my future and either retreat or recommit, to following Jesus, to serving the church.

As an enneagram 4, I hate that these formative stories are so unoriginal. But they also make perfect sense. Of course young people get baptized at camp. Of course they change directions when the sun is at its brightest.

Through the stretch of our formative young adult years, summer plays the role of the biblical wilderness. Summer is when our rhythms shift, our settings change. There is a particular freedom to summer that is written in our bones. We remember the way it feels to explore, to play, to wander.

For students and young adults, summer can become the space to try on possibilities. You might travel, imagining a future where you live as a vagabond with a tiny house, or as a settled city-dweller in some walkable metropolitan. You might work on a farm, or serve overseas, or drive a giant hot dog across the country. Anything is possible, especially if it’s only for a couple months.

When you try on futures, you’re wandering like the Israelites, readying yourself like Jesus in the desert, in-between homes like Paul.

It’s not wasted time: it’s formative time. It makes us.

Spending a summer with Interyear gives you a chance to try on a life immersed in community, service, and wisdom. It’s a chance to change all your alarms and patterns. To wake up differently and spend a few months in a wider space. Practically speaking, you’ll get to try out working for a non-profit who’s serving the world, and you’ll get to be in community with fellow-desert wanderers. And at the end of the day, you can sit around the fire and see a clearer sky.