Research Question 2: Level 2 Maintaining Commitment 145 Research Question 3: Level 3 Maintaining Commitment 148 Research Question 4: Level 4 Maintaining Commitment 152. NORC National Opinion Research Center NS YR National Study of Youth and Religion PDYM Targeted Youth Ministry SBC Southern Baptist Convention . I wish there was enough space and time to thank everyone who contributed to the development and completion of this research.
However, I would not neglect the opportunity to thank some of the most influential. First, I want to thank my wife, Emily, and our sons, James and Cooper, for supporting, encouraging, and challenging me to pursue the highest academic credentials I could achieve. You are my greatest ministry endeavor and a source of constant motivation to be the best husband, father and leader God will grace me to be.
I am also grateful to my parents, Jim and Lisa, for cheering me on and providing financial support at the beginning of this research. I pray that this work will embolden the church to never stop fighting for the souls of those who have graduated from our youth council.
RESEARCH CONCERN
An analysis of current research on youth ministry retention and dropout revealed a significant gap in statistical data regarding various levels of youth. What is the relationship between different levels of youth ministry engagement during high school and level of actual local church involvement. Retention is the process of assimilating active high school youth ministry participants into the life of the larger post-youth church ministry.
The Bible is clear about the role of the church in the community of faith - it is absolutely vital and indispensable. As such, many of the principles and models of youth ministry have borrowed their ideas from the disciplines of missiology and church growth. Duffy Robbins, professor of Youth Ministry at Eastern College, was one of the first to articulate a youth ministry model for popular consumption.
The importance of the unspiritual points to the fact that in a sound Primary philosophy there can be a significant number. Admittedly, Burns's diagnosis of Primary is correct because much of the literature is silent on reaching out and involving the family in the teenage discipleship process. The critical findings of this study are groundbreaking in the quest to outline the phenomenon of post-primary retention and dropout.
In the second half of the twentieth century, social scientists devoted a lot of resources to the study of adolescents. First, a review of the relevant literature revealed a substantive gap in the field of job retention. Each of the participants of the expert commission had extensive experience working in the field of youth pastoral care.
To achieve this goal, the researcher contacted each of the 112 SBC megachurches in the ACP database that had identifiable youth ministry structures. This retention statistic was completed for each of the four levels of involvement in youth work. The research questions for the current study were designed to assess the validity of the claim that a majority of evangelical Primary graduates leave the church after graduating from high school.
The vast majority (92.8%) of survey participants who reported having done Level 4 Primary remained actively involved in their local church as young adults.
Level 2 Level 3 Level 4
Specifically, it was found that measures of involvement were lower than measures of involvement in youth work. This relationship, while not causal in any way, seemed to indicate that the extent to which survey participants committed to their Primary during high school somehow influenced their decision to remain involved as a young adult. In fact, there was a linear progression of retention: as survey participants increased in their level of involvement in youth work, the corresponding retention rates increased.
In addition, analysis of data for the entire set of youth ministry engagement levels yielded an overall retention rate of 88% for sample participants. The research design used for the current research study was specifically tailored to the goals and desired outcomes for a thorough investigation of. 162 create a survey instrument and construct a research design that would help obtain the best possible data to answer the research questions.
The last part of this chapter considered the strengths and weaknesses of the study design. The variety of platforms used for survey invitations was a clear strength of the survey design. Face-to-face contact with youth pastors, email invitations, and online social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace resulted in a relatively large sample size in the absence of a database of Primary graduates.
The creation and use of levels of engagement in youth ministry and actual church involvement proved to be extremely valuable in assessing retention levels. While spiritual growth and development is not an exact science, these nuances will undoubtedly assist future researchers in quantifying and analyzing church retention in a way that is true to the objectives of youth ministry itself. Most survey participants who did not complete the survey stopped at this question and did not continue with the rest of the survey.
It would undoubtedly be beneficial to increase the sample size and geographic scope of the sample churches. If more churches of different sizes from different regions of the country were identified as meeting the dynamic criteria, the results and generalizability of the data would be strengthened. The results showed an uneven distribution of survey participants from twelve sample churches and an uneven distribution of respondents according to the level of commitment to youth ministry.
CONCLUSIONS
The researcher examined the relationship between various levels of high school youth ministry involvement and current levels of church involvement in an attempt to obtain an accurate retention rate. To what degree, if any, are young adults who demonstrated Level 1 commitment levels to youth ministry during high school currently committed to a local church. To what degree, if any, are young adults who demonstrated Level 2 youth ministry engagement levels during high school currently involved in a local church.
To what extent, if any, are young adults who demonstrated Level 3 commitment levels to youth ministry during high school currently involved in a local church. To what extent, if any, are young adults who have demonstrated Level 4 commitment levels to youth ministry during high school currently involved in a local church. To what extent, if any, are demographic variables significantly related to levels of youth ministry commitment and current local church involvement.
What is the relationship between the different levels of involvement of the youth ministry in the high school and the current involvement of the local church. A thorough review of the precedent literature identified five basic levels of youth ministry programs that target teenagers at different levels of spiritual readiness and growth. Consequently, this research question revealed that those teenagers who were regularly involved in youth service during high school and felt committed were likely to remain actively involved at relatively the same level as young adults.
172 From these results, the researcher came to the conclusion that the demographic variables examined in the present study have little or no bearing on either of the youth ministries. Although the extent and nature of this relationship cannot be determined from the available data, a relationship was nevertheless observed between the level of youth ministry commitment during high school and the current level of church involvement for the young adults in this study. Furthermore, and most importantly for the present study, an overall retention rate of 88% across the levels of youth ministry commitment was observed for the sampled churches.
The implications for the current research study on the discipline and profession of youth ministry were numerous. Surprisingly, a survey of current levels of church involvement among youth ministry graduates yielded higher than expected data. Since higher levels of engagement in youth ministry yielded correspondingly higher percentages of retention (92.8% at the level of Engaged Disciple), some of the perceived shortcomings of youth ministry may not be philosophical—the problem may be involvement.
