What is Summit?

Summit is our summer internship program where we bring together emerging leaders with promising potential from various language groups, cultures and neighborhoods to live and learn together in community. The purpose of Summit is to expose these youth to different ways of being, thinking, and doing. We introduce them to different ministries, leaders from various cultures and neighborhoods, and we teach them the basics of God, the Bible, and Kingdom living.

We had 5 Summit interns, representing 4 different neighborhoods, several partner churches and ministries.

Summit Standouts

Two things stood out to me as unique from this year.

All of our Summiteers were eager learners and avid inquisitors.

They asked A LOT of questions! Almost every workshop session was extended or took a significant detour because of a brilliant question.

In our orientation time, the first question was: “How can I live fully for Jesus when my church and my community is not fully supportive?

Talk about starting off with a bang! The questions didn’t get easier either: “How can we blend together energetic-Spirit-led worship through song and dance with Biblical teaching in our churches when our churches only opt for one or the other?

These questions have no easy answers, but I was encouraged by their boldness & confidence the questions belied. That is progress.

Another HUGE success from Summit was the role our residents played during Summit.

These residents are now halfway through their year-long discipleship program with EM. So much of Summit was spearheaded by our residents, playing roles including teacher and taxi-driver, cook and counselor, helper and healer, advocate and active leader.

After 6 months of training, they were chomping at the bit to pour into others what they have eagerly lapped up themselves. We counted the residents’ role as a win for our entire community, and we spent 45 minutes of our last staff meeting encouraging them.

Here’s a summary of what we said: