The first five research questions for this current study are contained in Phase 1.
These research questions sought to explore the relationships between select demographics, Table 9. Youth ministries and churches
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std.
Deviation Average attendance in
weekend worship service(s)
at your current church 46 180 9600 3107.72 2226.87 Average weekly attendance
in youth ministry (Middle School and High School Sunday School/small groups combined)
46 28 1400 394.74 328.49
Association. After phase 1 is discussed and its findings displayed, a report and description of commonalities discovered by the qualitative research of phase 2 are presented.
Phase 1
The data was gathered by the online demographics questionnaire and MLQ (Form 5X) in phase 1. The data was analyzed with SPSS and appropriate statistical analyses were conducted on specific data. This section utilizes the five research
questions as the structure for data presentation and analysis. The following tables show how the data breaks down to address each of the research questions.
Research Question 1: What is the ministry tenure of youth ministers affiliated with Metro Youth Minister’s Association?
The ministry tenure of youth ministers affiliated with Metro Youth Minister’s Association was measured by the number of years served in full-time youth ministry. The descriptive statistics summary showed that the mean tenure among the 46 youth ministers affiliated with Metro Youth Minister’s Association was 10 years and 3 months with a standard deviation of 7 years. The maximum years of tenure of any of youth ministers was 35 years while the minimum was 1 year (see table 11).
Table 11. Number of years in paid full-time youth ministry
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Number of Years in Paid Full-Time Youth Ministry
46 1 35 10.24 7.02
Research Question 2: What relationship, if any, exists between select demographics and ministry tenures of youth ministers affiliated with the Metro Youth Minister’s Association?
Pearson’s correlation coefficient was calculated to examine the relationship of
the continuous measured demographic variables of age entered ministry, current age, number of years in paid full-time youth ministry, number of children, number of churches served, and length of stay at current church.
There was a moderate negative correlation between tenure and age entered ministry (r (44) = -0.40, p = 0.01) (see table 12). There was a strong positive correlation between tenure and current age (r (44) = 0.93, p < 0.001 (see table 13).
Table 12. Relationship between tenure and age entered ministry Age Entered Ministry
Tenure Pearson Correlation -0.40*
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.01
N 46
*Significant at α = 0.05
Table 13. Relationship between tenure and current age Current Age
Tenure Pearson Correlation 0.93*
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.00
N 46
*Significant at α = 0.05
There was a moderate positive correlation between tenure and number of children (r (44) = .43, p = 0.01) (see table 14). There was a moderate positive correlation between tenure and number of churches served (r (44) = .68, p < 0.001) (see table 15).
Table 14. Relationship between tenure and number of children Number of Children
Tenure Pearson Correlation 0.43*
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.00
N 46
*Significant at α = 0.05
Table 15. Relationship between tenure and number of churches served Number of Churches Served
Tenure Pearson Correlation 0.68*
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.00
N 46
*Significant at α = 0.05
There was no significant correlation between tenure and length of stay at current church (r (44) = .21, p = 0.16) (see table 16).
Table 16. Relationship between tenure and length of stay at current church Length of Stay at Current Church
Tenure Pearson Correlation 0.21*
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.16
N 46
*Significant at α = 0.05
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to examine the relationship of tenures of youth ministers affiliated with the Metro Youth Minister’s Association with the categorical measured demographic variables of gender, marital status, level of education attained, and mentor history. All of the 46 youth ministers in the sample were male.
While married youth ministers tended to have longer tenures than single youth ministers (M = 10.6 compared to M = 2.3) because of the small number of single youth ministers in the sample no valid comparison could be made.
There was no significant difference between tenure and marital status (F (1, 44) = 2.79; p = 0.10) (see table 17).
Table 17. ANOVA of tenure and marital status
Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Between
Groups 132.24 1 132.24 2.79 0.10
Within 2088.70 44 47.47
The mean comparisons showed that youth ministers that have attained an undergraduate degree in a ministry related focus or major (M = 12) have the highest tenure as a full-time youth minister. The next highest tenure was youth ministers that have attained a graduate or seminary degree (M = 10). Youth ministers that have attained an undergraduate degree with a non-ministry related field (M = 5) and high school diploma or GED (M = 6) have the lowest mean years of tenure as a full-time youth minister (see table 18).
There was no significant relationship between tenure and level of education attained (F (3, 42) = 1.47; p = 0.24) among the sample of youth ministers (see table 19).
Table 18. Relationship between tenure and education attained
N Mean Std.
Deviation Std.
Error 95% Confidence
Interval for Mean Min Max Lower
Bound Upper Bound High School
Diploma or GED
4 6.38 3.86 1.93 0.23 12.52 3 11
Undergraduate Degree (Non- Ministry Related
Field) 4 5.27 5.46 2.73 -3.42 13.96 1 10
Undergraduate Degree (With Ministry Focus
or Major) 10 12.35 10.81 3.42 4.62 20.08 1 35
Graduate or
Seminary Degree 28 10.75 5.53 1.04 8.61 12.90 2 23
Post-Graduate or Doctoral Degree
Other 00
Total 46 10.24 7.03 1.04 8.16 12.33 1 35
Table 19. ANOVA of tenure and education attained Sum of
Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Between
Groups 210.44 3 70.15 1.47 0.24
Within
Groups 2110.49 42 47.87
Total 2220.93 45
There was no significant correlation between tenure and number of youth ministry classes taken in college and seminary a (r (42) = 0.20, p = 0.21) (see table 20).
Table 20. Relationship between tenure and number of youth ministry classes taken in college and seminary
Number of Youth Ministry classes taken in College and Seminary
Tenure Pearson Correlation 0.20*
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.21
N 44
*Significant at α = 0.05
All but one of the youth ministers surveyed had mentors that encouraged and coached them on their ministry journey. One of the youth ministers did not respond to this question.
Research Question 3: What is/are the predominant self-perceived leadership style(s), according to the MLQ (Form 5X), of youth ministers affiliated with the Metro Youth Minister’s Association?
The majority (93.5 percent) of youth ministers affiliated with the Metro Youth Minister’s Association self-perceived a transformational leadership style. The remaining youth ministers (6.5 percent) self-perceived a transactional leadership style. No youth ministers surveyed self-perceived a Laissez-Faire leadership style (see table 21).
Table 21. Leadership styles
Frequency Percent
Transformational 43 93.5
Transactional 3 6.5
Laissez-Faire 0 0.0
Total 46 100.0
Research Question 4: What relationship, if any, exists between self-
perceived leadership style(s), according to the MLQ (Form 5X), and select demographics of youth ministers affiliated with the Metro Youth Minister’s Association?
Logistic regression models were created and a Wald test was conducted to determine the relationships of select demographics and each of the leadership styles.
There was no significant relationship between leadership style and any of the following established demographics: age entered ministry (Wald [1] = 0.00, p = 0.99), current age (Wald [1] = 0.43, p = 0.51), number of years in paid full-time youth ministry (Wald [1] = 0.16, p = 0.69), number of children (Wald [1] = 0.79, p = 0.38), number of churches served (Wald [1] = 1.59, p = 0.21), and length of stay at current church (Wald [1] = 1.85, p = 0.17). Comparison of the predicted values from the model to the data collected from the youth ministers confirmed the lack of relationship to leadership styles (χ2 [6] = 9.16, p = 0.17).
Discriminant function analysis disqualified the remaining demographics—
gender, marital status, level of education achieved, and mentor history—as predictors for leadership style (see table 22).
Table 22. Remaining demographics
Step Tolerance Min.
Tolerance Sig. of F to
Enter Wilks’ Lambda
Research Question 5: What relationship, if any, exists between self-perceived leadership style(s), according to the MLQ (Form 5X), and ministry tenures of youth ministers affiliated with the Metro Youth Minister’s Association?
The mean comparisons showed that youth ministers who have a
transformational style of leadership (M = 10) have higher tenure as a full-time youth minister as compared to youth ministers who have a transactional style of leadership (M
= 6) (see table 23).
Table 23. Relationship between tenure and leadership style
N Mean Std.
Deviation Std.
Error 95% Confidence
Interval for Mean Min Max Lower
Bound Upper Bound
Transformational 43 10.47 7.19 1.10 8.26 12.68 1 35
Transactional 3 6.94 2.92 1.68 -0.30 14.19 4 10
Laissez-Faire 0
Total 46 10.24 7.03 1.04 8.16 12.33 1 35
Despite the low number of self-perceived transactional leaders in the youth ministers’ sample, ANOVA was calculated to examine the relationship of tenures of youth ministers affiliated with the Metro Youth Minister’s Association with their leadership style(s). The within groups variance was greater than the between groups variance so that, with the small sample size, there was no statistical significant relationship between tenure and leadership styles (F (1, 44) = 0.70; p = 0.41) (see table 24).
Table 24. ANOVA of tenure and leadership style Sum of
Squares df Mean
Square F Sig.
Between Groups 34.93 1 34.93 0.70 0.41
Within Groups 2186.00 44 49.68
Total 2220.93 45
Summary of phase 1. The main purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between leadership styles and the ministry tenures of youth ministers affiliated with the Metro Youth Minister’s Association. Specifically, the goal was to assess which type of leadership styles youth ministers utilize during their youth ministry careers. With this assessment, interrelationship among leadership styles of youth ministers and tenure of youth ministers was investigated. Furthermore, the relationship between select demographics of youth ministers and their tenures was considered in this phase. A summary of the findings is provided.
The average tenure of the youth ministers who participated in the research was 10.24 years. The gender of all of the sample youth ministers was male. The majority of these youth ministers were, at minimum, college educated and had taken an average of six youth ministry classes. The majority of these youth ministers were married. The majority also had mentors coach them in their ministry career. The average attendance in their worship service(s) was over 3,100 while their youth ministries’ Sunday schools averaged almost 400. Over half of these youth ministers (52.2 percent) served on staff at a multi- site church. Lastly, the majority of the youth ministers (93.5 percent) rated themselves as transformational leaders.
Furthermore, the research showed a negative correlation between tenure and the age youth ministers entered youth ministry. The significant negative correlation shows that the tenure is lower for youth ministers who have a higher age entering the ministry.
However, there is a positive correlation between tenure and current age. The tenure is higher for youth ministers with a higher current age. Moreover, tenure is higher when the youth minister has more children. Another positive correlation was found in regard to churches served. The tenure is higher when youth ministers have served multiple churches.
The research showed that married youth ministers have higher mean years of tenure.
style of leadership (M=10.47) have higher tenure as a full-time youth minister as compared to youth ministers who have a transactional style of leadership (M=6.94).