Kjersten (Kurty) Darling is a Visiting Professor in Children, Youth, and Family. She finished her PhD in practical theology at Luther Seminary in 2025. Previously, she taught at Bethel University in the Western Humanities and Theology departments.

Kurty’s dissertation was titled, A Crisis of Meaning: The Gospel and the Evangelical Imagination. Her research focuses on formation, hermeneutics, and biblical imagination. Coming from a background in biblical studies, she utilizes interdisciplinary thinking to examine how narratives of the good shape faith communities into being.

A licensed minister in the American Baptist church, Kurty is drawn to the integration of academic study and faith formation as a key element of theological education. She is a Yale ‘Life Worth Living’ Fellow and currently serves as associate director of the Theological Turn in Children’s Ministry Project, a project funded by the Lilly Endowment seeking to richly and theologically ground church life around the person of the child.

Kurty lives in Minneapolis with her husband and four children.