The Seminary's grant research profile has grown while focusing on a number of strategically important fields of study. Use the interactive directory below to learn more about research projects.
- March 2024
The Polaris Young Adult Leadership Network seeks to cultivate community among young adult Christian leaders, amplify their ministries in a variety of local contexts, and inspire other young adults to lead from their own Christian faith. The network will begin in 2023 with a fellowship program. Fellows ages 23-29 will be nominated from across the country to participate in a year-long leadership acceleration cohort to build relationships with each other and strengthen their local ministry projects. Participants will receive coaching and subgrants to accelerate local ministry projects along with funding to visit leaders who have sparked their Christian imagination. An array of publicly available opportunities will also be available for young adults to hone their leadership skills, discern their calling, and amplify their stories in public life. Alongside work with young adults, the network will engage an extensive research and mapping project to learn from organizations who serve and inspire young adult Christian leaders. Learnings will be publicly shared so that pastors, parents, educators, and young adults themselves can better understand the landscape and scope of vibrant Christian leadership among people in their 20s.
Kenda Creasy Dean, Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture
Abigail Visco Rusert, Associate Dean of Continuing Education
Shari Oosting
- October 2023
Teaching Spiritual Entrepreneurship in Theological Education is a grant project that seeks to make spiritual entrepreneurship and its corollaries (Christian social innovation, social entrepreneurship, changemaking, etc.) more available in theological education. The TSE Project seeks to identify gaps in theological schools’ current offerings around entrepreneurship; to explore, design, and test pedagogical models for teaching spiritual entrepreneurship tailored to theological education settings; and to expand the resources — and pedagogical confidence — of schools hoping to enter this conversation with their students.
Project Director
Kenda Creasy Dean, Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture and faculty liaison to the Institute for Youth Ministry
Project Coordinator
Larissa Kwong Abazia
- December 2022
This project centers the faith, resilience, and politics of first-generation Asian American Christians in order to broaden our theological imagination and understanding of Asian American religious and political participation in the U.S. The majority of Asians in America are foreign-born. Yet in many of the studies of Asian American Christianity, the faith and practice of these first-generation Asian Americans are subordinated to their more assimilated, second, third, and fourth generation counterparts. How should we understand the faith, practice, and politics of first-generation Asian Americans? This oral history project will consist of 50-60 interviews of first-generation East Asian American Christian immigrants in their native language, spotlighting their unique religious experiences and political orientations.
PROJECT LEADERS
David Chao, director of the Center for Asian American Christianity
Easten Law, assistant director for academic programs for the Overseas Ministries Study Center
- December 2021
The Ministry Collaboratory @ Princeton (the Collaboratory) disseminates findings and creates resources emerging from Princeton Theological Seminary’s recently completed young adult innovation hub, The Zoe Project (2017-2021). Various strategies for young adult/congregational collaboration will be tested in 90 congregations clustered in 30 different communities. The Collaboratory will also develop a suite of learning tools to help young adults and congregations empathize, collaborate, and innovate together more effectively.
SENIOR FACULTY STRATEGIST
Kenda Creasy Dean, Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture and faculty liaison to the Institute for Youth Ministry
- November 2021
The Isaiah Partnership: Pastors Leading Innovation will test two models of pastoral leadership formation that foster innovation and change in, with, and through congregations. These models will inform how Princeton Theological Seminary prepares students in degree and non-degree programs to lead innovation and catalyze change in their communities and by mobilizing lay persons in congregations. Concurrently, this project will engage Princeton Seminary faculty in creating a theological framework for innovation and change leadership, in which innovation is understood as participation in God’s “new thing” in Jesus Christ (Isa. 43:19).
PROJECT LEADER
Abigail Rusert, Director of Program Design and the Institute for Youth Ministry
- September 2020
Under the leadership of Rev. Joanne Rodriguez, Hispanic Theological Initiative director, this project aims to strengthen and advance an online, peer-reviewed bilingual presence for articles and book reviews of Latinx scholars.
LEADER
Joanne Rodriguez, Director of the Hispanic Theological Initiative
“What I like about working in an international church is that I’m always reminded that I’m a foreigner, that the land is not mine and I’m just a passenger on this journey.”