"Even though immediate scenes are almost always more engaging than narrative summary, be careful not to convert all your narrative summary into scenes. Narrative summary has its uses, the main one being to vary the rhythm and texture of your writing. Scenes are immediate and engaging, but scene after scene without a break can become relentless and exhausting, especially if you tend to write brief, intense scenes. Every once in a while you will want to slow things down to give your readers a chance to catch their breath, and narrative summary can be a good way to do this." (Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, p12)

Ross's take: I think most writers intuitively recognize that dutifully following the advice to'show, don't tell' does not mean doing away with all narrative summary in favor of live scene, nor does it mean putting every single thing that happens on stage and in front of reader' eyes.  But many writers do struggle with finding the right balance between showing and telling, and in utilizing the narrative summary to best effect.

The first challenge is to make the writing summary itself engaging, but that's a topic for another day.

An approach that I think is really helpful in connection to this point is considering narrative summary as sort of a fast-forward button within a scene.  Most scenes have natural ebb and flow of tension, and in dialogue scenes especially there's often a period where the conversation wanders to spans that aren't particularly engaging or live-scene-worthy.

I'd much rather read a short paragraph summarizing a couple struggling through first-date small talk about things readers already know than have to sit through the mundane Q&A.  (i.e. They chit-chatted over a carafe of wine  about their jobs and lives and how after several years of marriage they had both come to be fifty-something and single again...)

Once the conversation has gotten interesting again, say with--"oh, seven kids and four ex-wives, huh? That's really something." then you can pick up with live dialogue.

The inclusion of a couple of these 'fast-forwards' can help the pace of a scene considerably and contribute to the sense of balance and pleasing rhythm good scenes tend to have.  It can also help the author keep the camera on what's most interesting, which strikes me is a fundamental point of the authorial courtesy. Jesse Steele explores this in her reflection of Sol Stein's advice on this topic here.