Gap Year with a Purpose

Vocational Bible College has welcomed a bunch of new students this year. So what sorts of people have started training in 2025? Meet Bethany Davey.

18-year-old Bethany Davey has chosen to intentionally invest in her faith during the year before she moves away from home for university. For her, that looks like a gap year through her church in Goulburn—part of which includes training through VBC.

Bethany has grown up in a ministry family; her dad is an Anglican minister who has served in a range of locations across New South Wales. She has had the privilege of being taught about Jesus from birth, but it wasn’t until she was in Year 7 of high school that Bethany made a conscious decision to give her life to Christ.

When Bethany was in late high school she attended a CRU camp that helped shape her decisions for the future. Someone running a workshop shared how they had decided to take a gap year to deepen their walk with Christ before beginning their career, and Bethany was quite struck by that.

“ I really wanted to invest in my faith,” Bethany explains, “and also grow in my ability to be a functioning member of a church as an adult, and not as a minister's kid—particularly with potentially moving away from home next year.”

So far, Bethany is really enjoying her training through Vocational Bible College for more than one reason: the first being the diversity of students.

“ You get lots of different perspectives, because you've got people from different backgrounds in the classes, whether it be from different church denominations or just different walks of life or people who came to Christ at different ages,” Bethany shares. “So you learn from them and their insights.”

She also appreciates the approach the trainers take to learning. Having completed her HSC not too long ago, Bethany loves that VBC cares most about imparting knowledge for real, practical ministry.

“Their goal is to help you do the best that you can,  which I think is incredible,” Bethany says.

What is most encouraging is that Bethany has put her hand up to serve in her church’s youth group this year—and she says she may not have done so without her training through VBC.

“It’s been confidence-building,” Bethany explains. “I’ve been learning more, but also being encouraged in the skills that I already have in relating to the Bible and applying it. It really builds you up and helps build that confidence.”

For anyone undecided about whether to undertake training with VBC, Bethany says it would be wise to make the most of the free trial period.

“I would really encourage people to take advantage of that: to give it a go, to meet the people in their classes, meet their trainers online, see what the classes are like, what the workload's like—which I've found very doable, even with other commitments.”

As for the future, Bethany isn’t sure yet which university she’ll be attending next year, but she’s confident that the investment in training this year will be worthwhile regardless.

“ I don't know to what extent God will use it in the future,” Bethany admits. “I'm hoping that I will be a very active member of whatever church I join when I move out of home, and that I'll be able to serve God really effectively there because of the training that I've had. I'm hoping to go back and lead Cru camps again next year, too, so I'll be much better equipped for that as well.”