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In the mid-1990s, a Princeton Seminary student raised hard questions about youth ministry in the American church.
Does youth ministry work? Are congregations taking it seriously? Is the academy paying attention to it?
That student was Kenda Creasy Dean, a former pastor in Princeton’s PhD program. She believed helping young people grow spiritually was one of the church’s highest callings. Still, Kenda felt unsure that any of those questions could receive a clear “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 made that vision real by working with Professor Richard R. Osmer to found the Institute for Youth Ministry. The Institute serves as a research hub and resource network, and today celebrates 30 years of innovation.
“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, Jürgen Moltmann visited the IYM’s Forum on Youth Ministry. While there, he delivered a powerful lecture on the dark years of his 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 follows a broad mission that supports youth ministry nationwide. The Institute encourages innovative research that deepens understanding of youth work. Additionally, it offers outreach, training, and support for leaders and volunteers.
Through its annual Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry, the IYM gathers scholars and practitioners from many denominations. There, they spend several days learning, reflecting, and supporting one another. Moreover, through programs like the Certificate in Youth and Theology, the IYM shares its expertise with congregations nationwide. Its reach extends from the Pacific Northwest to Oklahoma’s plains and even 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. April 29 to May 2, the IYM marks 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 will serve as one of two principal lecturers at this year’s forum. Moreover, she traces her IYM involvement back to her years as a United Methodist pastor. At that time, she noticed that youth ministry often relied on movies, icebreakers, and social events with little theological depth.
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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.”
At the time, one Princeton Seminary student who found the IYM’s message especially compelling was Tony Sundermeier, MDiv ’03. Moreover, he was an aspiring minister who had studied theology and youth ministry at Eastern University. He explained that most youth ministry training then focused on technical tasks, like running 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.
