Becoming the Youth Pastor He Wished He’d Had

When Giovanny Panginda opens up about his work as a youth pastor—as well as for the Fuller Youth Institute—it’s easy to see his passion for serving and shepherding the church’s emerging generation. He ministers to youth at not one, or two, but four churches in the LA area, explaining that such an arrangement isn’t unusual among the Indonesian American immigrant community, which is tight-knit and often shares pastors across the region. Panginda himself grew up in church—with uncles, aunts, cousins who serve as pastors, worship leaders, and Sunday school teachers. For all that, it may be difficult to believe, he actually resisted the idea of entering ministry for many years.

“I didn’t want to be a pastor. I didn’t want that life,” he says. “Looking back, I was probably running away from calling.”

Panginda studied psychology and sociology in college and went on to work in fashion and marketing. (Although even then, he was already volunteering as a leader for his home church’s youth group.) When, after a few years, he felt burnt out and sensed a call toward something different, a series of conversations and both opened and closed doors led him to realize that the things he actually cared about doing lined up with a life of ministry: to help people through their struggles, to walk with others in their joy and their pain, to be a safe and caring presence. He applied to Fuller to pursue his MDiv.

Panginda didn’t have to wait to finish his degree before he began to see the fruits of his studies. Already volunteering with the youth at his church, he found the lessons he picked up in his Fuller classes made an immediate impact on how he pastored the kids. He laughs when he admits that coming to seminary sooner would’ve spared him a good deal of grief. He talks with fondness about classes with professors like Dr. Scott Cormode and Dr. Tommy Givens, which taught him about the intersections of faith and pop culture, about belonging and identity, about wider understandings of scripture. In class, he received tools he could use in his ministry with his kids: He found new approaches to involve the more introverted ones in his youth group. He learned strategies to get students excited about scripture like they hadn’t before. He gained a wider understanding of how to engage with kids in holistic and multifaceted ways, recognizing all of who they are.

Panginda recalls a conversation he had with a parent, informed by what he’d been learning at Fuller about the importance of integrating psychology and theology. He suggested that her child might benefit from therapy, which would not replace pastoral and spiritual care but go hand in hand with it. Despite the parents’ initial resistance, he was grateful when she opened up to exploring new ways to help her child.

Panginda says encounters like these are what he loves about being a youth pastor. He wants kids to have the safe spaces and safe people they need. And he likes acting as a bridge between kids and parents when needed, fostering safety and trustworthiness in his kids’ lives. Panginda explains that he himself did not have a youth pastor when he was a boy, and now he is glad that he can be the sort of youth pastor he wished he’d had.

He’s thankful for the ways his time as a Fuller student helped him pursue his call. And even now, working full-time at the Fuller Youth Institute, he’s finding that he continues to discover new and innovative approaches to youth ministry which he can apply in real time.

To anybody considering seminary, Panginda would say that he admits there are costs. Seminary takes time; it takes money; it takes effort. Yet Panginda likes to reframe the question: “What would it cost you to not go to seminary?” He thinks of the stark contrast between his experience in ministry before and after Fuller, and he’s thankful for how his seminary education has made all the difference to him and to the many kids he serves.