Emma Worrall’s Heart for Youth Ministry

Over the years, Emma Worrall, MDiv/MACEF ‘23, has worked with youth — a demographic she’s always been drawn to — in several capacities. She’s worked as the interim youth leader in a church, a paraprofessional in formal education, an assistant, a camp counselor, and educator at a drama school, and as a teacher and mentor for a nonprofit.

For Worrall, this love for young people was always present. “I realized I was naturally able to relate to or connect with children, youth, teenagers, and young adults. I just know that when I’m working with them, those are the times when I feel most alive.”

What wasn’t always known to Worrall was how her ministry would manifest. For years, she was told by community leaders and loved ones that she had a spark for ministry and that it was an avenue she should pursue. But Worrall wasn’t certain about the way it would happen.

Growing up, Worrall didn’t have many interests that could manifest themselves in a career, but she was always drawn to history. School was a struggle because early on, she was diagnosed with a learning difference. This made it difficult for her to think about the future because she didn’t know if she was going to graduate. However, at the age of 13, a former pastor — and the first person to encourage her to go into ministry — recognized the call on her life and gave her an opportunity to preach her first sermon.

“I wasn’t against going into ministry, but I just didn’t see how I would go into ministry,” says Worrall. “I wasn’t sure that was something I wanted to do. It was kind of always underlying.”

This underlying idea of ministry was with Worrall while she pursued an undergraduate degree from Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania where she studied political science and prelaw and while she studied at Northeastern University in Boston where she graduated with a degree in international relations with a focus in global health and development, specifically in Sub Saharan Africa. At the time, Worrall was a volunteer at Heart for People, a nonprofit that her best friend Sarah Harrs founded in 2012 with the assistance of Worrall’s spiritual mentor and their teacher, Kim Padfield Urbanik.”

Through her work with Heart for People — which partnered with schools that served the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable population of children — Worrall led sermons, built relationships with youth, taught essay writing, and collected interviews from stakeholders to curate multimedia stories that eventually created a sense of connection. It’s also where she learned how to be a person, she says.

While there were many lessons to be taught, Worrall found herself to be the one learning from those she served. She learned about how similar people are and who God is from the students based on their stories, she recalls.

“It was a really great balance and mixture of me learning from the students and me also dabbling in different areas of ministry that wouldn’t look like normal ministry,” Worrall says. “That was life-giving for me in many ways, and I realized this is a direction that you’re being pushed in, but you keep ignoring it. You can’t run away from it.”

One of those visits to Uganda was extremely emotional. Worrall was exhausted after facilitating 10 hours of interviews with families one day in particular. When she returned home, she went to God in prayer. “I said I don’t know what to do with this, I don’t know what to do with these feelings and I don’t know what’s going on,” says Worrall. “I felt this pull to go into ministry and I felt like I was getting in the way of whatever it was God wanted to do.”

It was this moment that affirmed she should start the ordination process. With the help and prompting of her spiritual mentor Rev. Urbanik, who graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1991, Worrall’s ministry began to bloom. Rev. Urbanik not only encouraged Worrall along her journey, but she was also a pivotal mentor and founder of the Christian Drama School in New Jersey, which is where Worrall learned a lot about God.

When it was time for Worrall to decide where she’d attend seminary, Rev. Urbanik suggested a visit to Princeton Seminary. That wasn’t Worrall’s first visit, however. Worrall ventured to Princeton Seminary a year earlier to explore. “I wasn’t expecting to go here for seminary, but I did walk around with this sense of safety and home. When I visited with my spiritual mentor, that was affirmed again. And this feeling of safety and home continued throughout my seminary experience.”

Additional confirmation came from a word spoken by Dr. Sonia Waters during a lecture about the pastoral care of women in which Worrall received revelation about this idea of sitting with people and meeting them where they are versus having a theological debate about right and wrong. Then at chapel, she held hands, sang, and danced with others, including Dr. Waters.

Worrall’s time at seminary was not without obstacles, especially at the start. Just prior to attending seminary, she contracted typhoid e coli, malaria, and a different infection simultaneously while in Uganda. Then, she went into septic shock. After the near-death experience, she returned to the United States and 10 days later, she was at Princeton Seminary.

“My experience at seminary was very much based around dealing with the trauma of almost dying and all of the health issues that came afterwards. In those times, I thought, ‘Where the heck is God?’” she says.

With the help of the Dean of the chapel, professors, and friends, Worrall deconstructed and reconstructed her theology of who God is, what to say to people who are suffering, what do these situations say about God, what your actions and your words say about who God is, and how community is a way of shouldering life’s burdens with one another.” In those times of feeling alone, she also knew her professors and supporters amazingly handled her with care, offering an ear to listen and support where needed. They were God’s presence to her, showing her how to give grace to herself, she says. “The highlight for me was learning about how God’s presence was with me in the people around me.”

This tough start eventually served as an opportunity for Worrall to experience God in a new way.

“If everyone’s made in the image of God and reveals who God is to you, they’re not only showing me different ways that God is like, but they’re showing me that I am always surrounded by God because God is in all of these people around me who are caring for me and comforting me,” Worrall says. “That’s how I explained my time at seminary. It was just this constant learning of who God is based on the people around me and also feeling God’s presence in the people around me. It is beautiful.”

The New Jersey native’s field education experience at Urban Promise Trenton was enlightening. As the Bible instructor for camp, she served K-8 students and split the day into virtual and in-person programming. Here is where she leveraged her experiences at the Christian Drama School, creating a curriculum based on the question Jesus asked, who do you say I am? Each week was themed and included a different answer to that question, as well as a dance.

At completion and after building relationships with youth, Worrall struggled a bit with transitioning. “One of my biggest takeaways from this in terms of ministry was we’re called to places for a certain season, but the ministry is going to continue without me there.”

Worrall was recently hired as the coordinator for Children, Youth, and Young Adult Ministries at her home church, Denville Community United Methodist Church. She’s thrilled to have found a safe space where she can minister as someone who lives with a chronic illness and she’s also excited to return home to a community she helped foster.

“I’m really excited to work with people who were my students and who are now my coworkers and partnering with them in ministry.”