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In the mid-1990s, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary raised tough questions about the state of youth ministry in the American church.
Does youth ministry work? Are congregations taking it seriously? Is the academy paying attention to it?
That student, Kenda Creasy Dean, a former pastor who had enrolled in a PhD program at the Seminary, believed that helping young people develop their spiritual lives was among the church’s highest callings. Yet she was uncertain whether any of those questions could be answered with an unqualified “yes.”
The Seminary’s then-president, Thomas W. Gillespie, stepped in with advice and fundraising support.
“He basically said: ‘Get a bunch of people together and do what needs to be done that nobody else is doing,’’’ Dean recalled.
She did just that, working with her faculty advisor and mentor, Professor Richard R. Osmer, to launch the Seminary’s Institute for Youth Ministry (IYM), a combination think tank, research hub, and resource network that this year is marking its 30th anniversary.
“We wanted to communicate that youth ministry wasn’t just something that belonged in the church basement,” said Dean, who served as IYM’s inaugural director before joining the Seminary’s faculty. “If the church traffics in anything less than deep spiritual conversation with young people—conversations about who you are and why you are here—then it just doesn’t have traction.”
It soon became clear that she was onto something.
A few years after the launch, the renowned German theologian Jürgen Moltmann showed up at the IYM’s annual Forum on Youth Ministry to deliver an extraordinary lecture on the dark years of his own youth in Nazi Germany.
Seminary faculty members were stunned.
“They were like, ‘Jürgen Moltmann is here? For a youth ministry forum?” Dean said. “That really put us on the map and told people we weren’t messing around.”
Megan DeWald, the current IYM Director, agreed.
“From the start, the IYM was boldly claiming that theology and youth ministry belong to each other,” DeWald said. “Thankfully the leaders at the time understood that this could make a long-lasting impact in the wider ecology of the church and the ecology of the academy.”
The IYM carries out a multipronged mission that includes fostering research into youth ministry; providing outreach, training, and support to professionals and volunteers in the field; and serving as an incubator of ideas and innovation.
Through its annual Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry, the IYM brings scholars and practitioners from across denominations together for several days of learning, reflection, and support. With programs like the Certificate in Youth and Theology, the IYM has brought its expertise to congregations nationwide, from the Pacific Northwest to the plains of Oklahoma and downtown Manhattan.
Recently, a growing number of laypeople have been seeking out IYM’s programs.
“We are seeing more and more people who were asked to help out with a Bible study once, and two or three years later, they’re like, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t have any answers to these questions, and I am responsible for these kids,’” said IYM Assistant Director Liz Moore. “They’re coming to us to get training and the equipment to feel empowered.”
The anniversary will be celebrated throughout the year with special programs and themes. From April 29 to May 2, the IYM will mark the milestone with lectures, workshops, and a celebratory banquet at its annual forum. An IYM reunion event, the “30th Anniversary Bash” will take place Dec. 5.
Dean, who will be one of the two principal lecturers at this year’s forum, said that the impetus for her involvement in the IYM goes back to her days as a United Methodist pastor. She noticed then that youth ministry was too often a predictable mix of movie nights, icebreakers, and other social events with little or no theological content.
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“There was mostly spiritual boredom,” said Dean, who serves as the Seminary’s Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture. “Young people didn’t want to waste their time on something shallow, and neither did I.”
One Princeton Seminary student at the time who found the IYM’s message particularly compelling was Tony Sundermeier, MDiv ’03, an aspiring minister who had majored in theology and youth ministry at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. He said that much of the available training material on youth ministry back then focused on technical matters, such as how to run a youth group.
The IYM was a breath of fresh air, said Sundermeier, who continued engaging with the institute as he built his ministry. Today, he is senior pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, one of the prominent congregations in the region.
What was amazing about Kenda, and what the institute took on, was this deep commitment to theological reflection about youth ministry. That was really appealing to me.
That commitment influenced how he trained his youth ministry leaders – both staff and volunteers.
“So much of the success of youth ministry rises and falls on competent leaders,” he said. “We trained our leaders around this concept of youth ministry being a theological practice. And as a result, our leaders were really mature and well positioned to care for the spiritual lives of our students, whether they were small-group leaders or giving talks or leading in worship.”
Today, Sundermeier’s church in Atlanta has two full-time directors overseeing youth ministry. One of them, Lauren Ghighi, is a 2024 graduate of Princeton Seminary who worked at IYM as an MDiv student.
“It’s full circle,” Sundermeier said. “It’s so cool that a generation later I am serving alongside someone who also was influenced by Kenda and the work of the IYM.”
Learn more about IYM’s upcoming events in celebration of their 30th anniversary.
