Popular Searches
The view from Rev. Dr. Jason Santos’s home is breathtaking. His home sits on the southern San Juan portion of the Rocky Mountains in the most remote county in the lower 48 states.
From that vantage point, he reflected on an improbable spiritual journey that eventually led to the creation of a unique ministry aimed at welcoming hundreds of thru-hikers who pass through the tiny hamlet of Lake City, CO, where he serves as Minister of Word and Sacrament of Community Presbyterian Church.
Getting here was a winding path through countries, congregations, and challenges, which included seven years at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Lake City is considered a gateway community for the Continental Divide and Colorado Trails, two national historic trails that converge for 235 miles through much of the Colorado Rockies. Santos has led Community Presbyterian Church–the oldest Protestant church on the Western Slope–since 2020. During the off-season, he ministers to about 40 souls, but in the summer months, the congregation swells to almost 180.
“It’s like Northern Exposure meets Dirty Dancing here,” he joked. “We’re a residential summer community in a 400-person town in the mountains.” In addition to his small flock, he noticed a steady stream of hikers coming through town during the summer season, and it made him reflect on something he learned at Princeton.
“The way I boil down missional theology is you look out your window or your door, and whoever you see walking by is who you’re called to bear witness and minister to,” he stressed. Santos inquired if anyone was looking after the hikers. The answer was no. “Most saw them as vagabonds or kind of dirty and didn’t interact with them.”
In 2021, Santos began offering Sunday night meals in an annex building on church property. He put the word out on Facebook. The first night, two hikers came, but by the end of the season, the church had served over 200 hikers.
The following year, Santos opened the building a few hours each day as a respite center where hikers could rest and enjoy some fellowship. In addition to offering hot and cold beverages, snacks, toiletries, computer and printing services, a restroom, charging stations, loaner bikes, and a shuttle to get to and from the trailhead, this past year, after the town laundromat closed, they added laundry services for the hikers. “I told them, ‘We’re here to serve you.’”
The program has grown steadily year after year, serving over 1,000 hikers in the 2025 season. The ministry is also the subject of a Rocky Mountain PBS documentary short, which will be included in a longer documentary in 2026.
Rev. Santos grew up in a biracial home in Columbus Ohio, the son of a Filipino father and a German-American mother. Initially raised Methodist, his parents joined an Assemblies of God church when he was seven, which was responsible for his spiritual formation until the end of college. “It was a huge part of my formation, and while I disagree with a lot of their theology, I placed a great deal of value on their youth ministries.”
At age 14, Santos felt called to ministry, specifically youth ministry. He asked the principal of his high school if they could start a bible study. “He said, ‘Yes, but you have to lead it.’” From there, he was thrust into leadership at a young age, leading a bible study of over 50 for the rest of his time in high school.
Eventually Santos found his way to Bible college, and in 1995, he graduated from an Assemblies of God institution with an interdisciplinary degree in adolescent sociology and youth ministry, but with an eye toward law school.
During his final year in college, Santos became disillusioned with what he viewed as a disconnect between theology and practice in the Assemblies of God. He drifted away from the denomination, eventually focusing on a potential career practicing law.
After a six-month internship with an Ohio congressional representative, Santos realized ministry was his true path. The next several years were an odyssey of graduate studies, positions in ministry, and travel. “I’m a nomad,” he interjected.
His journeys took him to London, Chicago, and Germany. He earned a master’s degree in systematic theology and took his first job as a youth minister in the Presbyterian Church.
As Santos’ journey expanded across continents and denominations, he reached a crossroads: deepen his academic roots or continue in ministry. It turns out he was able to do both at Princeton Seminary.
Santos received a generous scholarship from Princeton Seminary, and it was then he committed himself fully to the Presbyterian Church. It was there that the nomad, who has visited 34 countries and most US states, found a home for seven years.
He received his Master of Divinity and Doctor of Philosophy degrees at the Seminary. “For me, it is the most important, most significant, most influential theological institution in the world,” he reflected.
There are more PhD professors teaching at theological institutions that came from Princeton Seminary, which means that the theology emanating from there is influencing countless other master’s and undergraduate students throughout the world.
He added, “It’s not about a particular theology or ideology, but in the rigors of thinking and what they’re taught. I look back at my seven years at Princeton as being some of the most formative years of my life.
“Who I am now as a minister is because of the formation I received at Princeton,” Santos noted, his voice cracking with emotion.
“Of all of the periods of my life, all of the places, all of the institutions of all of the organizations in my life, Princeton Seminary has formed me and shaped me for ministry in ways that I could never repay,” he stressed.
“Kenda Dean and Gordon Mikoski were my mentors, and they were phenomenal. I continue to be friends with them, and they continue to speak into my life.
At the Seminary, Santos, a married father of two, dove into campus life with relish, working for the Housing Office, Student Life Office, and serving as a dual degree mentor in the Academic Dean’s Office. He was a research assistant and a teaching fellow.
He had a small role in the inception of the Farminary, and he founded the Friar’s Poker Club–the longest-lasting poker club in the history of the Seminary.
“Some of the deepest friendships of my life came from those seven years.”
The summer before his final year in the MDiv program, Rev. Santos did an independent research project on the Taizé community in France. He eventually used that project as his writing sample for his application to the doctoral program at Princeton, and would eventually write a book on the subject, entitled A Community Called Taizé.
He added, “I came into Seminary with some skills that served me well, but Princeton gave me a theological framework.
As a PhD student, Rev. Santos researched alongside a cohort of eight other Timothy Scholars–doctoral fellows who were funded to study youth and young adult spiritual formation.
“It was a more communal approach to graduate studies, and it sort of rattled the traditional notion of doctoral education, which is fairly individualistic and often centered around your research cubby in the library. This idea of shared work was new. It was a budding way of doing theological education.”
After receiving his doctoral degree from Princeton, Santos went on to work in the Presbyterian Mission Agency in Louisville, KY. There, he quickly rose to oversee Christian formation for the denomination, guiding programs that spanned children, youth, young adults, older adults, and intergenerational ministries.
During his five-plus years there, he reconfigured multiple departments into a single, cohesive Office of Christian Formation, a model that still exists. He became one of the denomination’s leading voices on intergenerational formation, speaking at conferences and helping congregations rethink how all ages worship and learn together.
“PTS gave me a tremendous background for understanding what I did in the national office, to see Christian formation from a national scope, and to guide that process. PTS one hundred percent prepared me for that.”
Throughout his ministry, Santos has sought to develop new ways to teach, evangelize, and create community. He possesses a constancy of movement that never seems to ebb. One unique ministry sprang from his love of gaming.
“I’m a huge board gamer,” he enthused. “When I was in the national office, I designed some card games. In my last year, we launched a theology of play conference.” To this day, he runs a weekly board game at Community Presbyterian Church.
Yet after years of national travel and high-level strategy, Santos began feeling overwhelmed. His father died in 2018, and he longed for a more personal and direct form of ministry.
In 2009, Santos first applied for the pastor position at Community Presbyterian Church but ended up in a larger 4,200-member church in Seattle that ultimately didn’t work out. Ten years and three jobs later, he left the Presbyterian Mission Agency and accepted the call to serve at the same Presbyterian church he had applied to a decade earlier.
“I flew out, and we got the job and officially started in March 2020, right at the beginning of COVID.”
Five years later, his unique hiker ministry is thriving and has attracted national attention. “We’re told by many that along all the trails they’ve never seen this kind of hospitality.”
While Santos never seeks donations from active hikers, they have received over $10,000 in donations from supporters, many of whom are possibly former hikers, as well as a $10,000 donation from the national office for a new worshipping community, and $8,000 from the Presbytery of Western Colorado.
Word has spread among the hiking community that the Lake City Trail Hiker Center is a go-to spot, one where a stranger is not simply welcomed but experiences fellowship, camaraderie, and a respite from a physically and psychologically taxing experience.
According to Santos, the worshipping community has experienced a kind of renewal as they minister to this steady throng of visitors. They do not simply offer the hospitality of a hot meal and laundry services, but a true desire to connect with a group of individuals who are passionately pursuing a very personal goal.
Connections are forged. It is a reciprocal experience.
As he reflects on his seven years at Princeton Seminary, Santos understands he received more than two degrees, but a framework for seeing the church as a living, intergenerational body. That vision has guided his leadership in roles ranging from national programs to his tiny mountain congregation.
Princeton taught me to think more critically about theology and the practical aspects of the Church. Most seminaries don’t really teach you the things you need to know about actually doing ministry in a context.
Last year, Santos visited Princeton Seminary for the ten-year reunion of the Farminary and the 30-year reunion of the Institute for Youth Ministry program. It was a profound moment.
“As I walked the streets of Princeton on the first night of my arrival, I had tears rolling down my face because, to me, it’s holy ground.”
