So to figure out if Edwards invented Youth Ministry we have to first define exactly what it is that Youth Ministry is.  Agreeing with Mark Cannister, for our purposes we will assume that youth ministry is the ministry of the church aimed at those in the period of human development sociologically defined as adolescence.[1]  Youth Ministry is both missiological and educational and must attempt to do both of these tasks.[2]  Mark Cannister outlines a timeline for youth ministry in the United States and begins it with the context of the Great Awakening of the 1740s as a backdrop, however he credits the actual beginning of youth ministry to Robert Raikes in the 1780s.[3]  However as we examine the social setting of Jonathan Edwards’s ministry (which we will do over the next two Fridays) and his initiatives in response to the changes that were taking place (in three Fridays time), we will see that in fact Edwards plays a key role in the development of youth ministry around forty years prior to Raikes. It seems that Jonathan Edwards was in fact faced with ‘adolescents’ whom he had to both educate in the Christian faith and do ‘outreach’ to.[4]


[1] Cannister, ‘Youth Ministry’s Historical Context: The Education and Evangelism of Young People’, 77.
[2] Cannister, ‘Youth Ministry’s Historical Context: The Education and Evangelism of Young People’, 77.
[3] Cannister, ‘Youth Ministry’s Historical Context: The Education and Evangelism of Young People’, 77–79.
[4] The term “adolescence” is generally thought to have arisen as a sociological phenomenon during the 19th century. It is therefore argued that Youth Ministry cannot have begun until sometime during this period. However as will be shown in this paper, it is clear that in Edwards’s Northampton a very similar social phenomenon was occurring. This allows us to consider the development of youth ministry in his era. (For adolescence discussion see: Cannister, ‘Youth Ministry’s Historical Context: The Education and Evangelism of Young People’, 81–82).