Mark DeVries

Mark is an Executive Coach for the Director of the Missing Voices Project along with overseeing the Ministry Architects coaching services for participating congregations.

Mark is the founder and president of Ministry Architects, the co-founder of Ministry Incubators and the Center for Youth Ministry Training, and the founder of Justice Industries. Mark served as the Associate Pastor for Youth and Their Families at First Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee for 28 years, where he continues to serve in a volunteer capacity. Mark is the author of a dozen or so books, including Sustainable Youth Ministry and Family-Based Youth Ministry, and the co-author of Sustainable Children’s Ministry and Sustainable Young Adult Ministry. Mark and his wife, Susan, co-authored a marriage book (with their good friends, Robert & Bobbie Wolgemuth) entitled The Most Important Year in a Woman’s Life/ The Most Important Year in a Man’s Life. Mark has offered ministry training and consulting across the United States and in more than a dozen countries, working with a wide variety of denominations (as well as non-denominations). He has taught courses or been a guest lecturer at more than 20 different colleges and seminaries, including Duke Divinity School (Durham, NC), Princeton Theological Seminary (Princeton, NJ), and Vanderbilt Divinity School (Nashville, TN). Mark graduated summa cum laude from Baylor University in Waco, Texas with a B.A. in English and Greek in 1980, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1986 with a senior concentration in Youth Evangelism. Throughout his years spent in Waco and Princeton, Mark was involved in youth ministry—working with Young Life both in Waco and in Montgomery, New Jersey, and serving on the youth staff at the First United Methodist Church in Waco. Upon graduation from Princeton, he was awarded the first Robert Boyd Munger Youth Ministry prize.

Mark and Susan have been married since 1979 and make their home in Nashville, TN. They have three grown children: Adam, Debbie, and Leigh, and four grandchildren: Parish, Nealy, Liam, and Jack.