Join us for our 2025 Simpson Lectures
with Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean
on NEXT GEN MINISTRY
as part of our East Coast Theology Summer School
June 10-12, 2025, on-site in Wolfville and live online.
The Good News of Shipwreck: Doing Ministry on Malta
Between cultural shifts in religiosity (especially in the young), plummeting budgets, and changes in churches themselves, many of our flocks feel stuck, spent, and exhausted—and so do we. Yet these cultural realities, coupled with shifts in “next generation” faith, offer new opportunities for ministry that were unimaginable even five years ago, as we learn to anticipate the “new thing” God is doing. The 2025 Simpson Lectures will explore the “unknown shores” on which churches currently find themselves, the importance of young people to this moment, and why an experience of “shipwreck” might be just what the church needs.
LECTURE #1: Welcome to Malta: Innovating on an Unknown Shore
LECTURE #2: Canaries in the Mine or Prophets on a Hill? Seeing Our Future through Young Adult Faith
LECTURE #3: Let’s Not Save the Church: Why Sacred Formation Is Still the Job
About Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean
Kenda Creasy Dean is an ordained United Methodist pastor and the Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she works closely with the Institute for Youth Ministry and the Farminary. She currently serves as the senior strategist and principal investigator for three major PTS initiatives: the Polaris Young Adult Leadership Network (to support and connect young Christian leaders), the Ministry Collaboratory (to support congregations working with young adults), and the Teaching Spiritual Entrepreneurship Initiative (a 9-seminary initiative to create more entrepreneurial/creative faith leaders). Kenda is the author of numerous books, including Innovating for Love: Joining God’s Expedition through Christian Social Innovation, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, and The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul-Tending in Youth Ministry with Ron Foster and Megan DeWald (the 25th anniversary edition was updated and released in 2023). Recently named the 2024 Distinguished Leader in Innovation by Wesleyan Impact Partners, she co-founded Ministry Incubators in 2014 with fellow PTS alumnus Mark DeVries to support theologically-responsible innovation and sustainability in ministry. A graduate of Miami University (Ohio), Wesley Theological Seminary (Washington, DC), and Princeton Theological Seminary (New Jersey), Kenda has pastored churches in Arlington, VA, College Park, MD, and Kingston, NJ. She and her husband Kevin love hanging out with their hilarious grown kids and digging their toes in the sand on the Jersey shore.
