A few months ago, I started a big research project as a part of my research cohort with Great Commission Research Network and in partnership with National Network of Youth Ministries and One Hope. I’m currently running a large-scale survey for youth leaders in the US and reading a ton of books, articles, etc., and will soon be interviewing several youth leaders.
Initially, some of this research will be used in an academic journal article I’ll be submitting this fall, but I’m certain that God will use it in a number of other ways. I wanted to provide a summary of the research project below, so you know how to pray but I also want to ask that you share it with youth leaders you know who serve in churches and parachurch organizations (like NNYM, YoungLife, FCA, YFC, etc).
When a youth leader is thriving, they are flourishing, prospering, and generating fruit in their relationship with God, partnership with the larger church, and consistently making disciples of teenagers. NNYM’s vision is to help youth leaders thrive, and our mission is to create collaborative spaces for youth leaders to be personally encouraged, professionally equipped and spiritually strengthened for faithful and effective ministry with the next generation.
It is my belief that one of the most telling signs of a thriving youth pastor is longevity. Therefore, my goal is to discover what are the top factors that contribute to youth pastors having a longer tenure and then use these findings to help churches and parachurch organizations put things in place to achieve these results more often, ultimately helping youth leaders thrive, increase their average tenure, and have a larger impact on teenagers.
Currently, there is very little large-scale research that has been done on youth pastors, especially discovering what helps them thrive. So if we want to see every youth leader thrive, we need to know the things to look for and what we need to do in order to support them.
It is my hypothesis that one of the factors will be regularly participating in a collaborative youth leader network. This will be a follow-up to NNYM’s previous research with One Hope in 2011 that seemed to indicate that youth leaders who are involved in a network have a 2.5x longer tenure than those who are not.
In summary, my goals are:
- To discover the current average tenure of a youth pastor (potentially at each church/ministry and overall) in the United States.
- To discover factors that contribute to a longer tenure (what has led them to stick with it). This will also serve as a follow-up to NNYM’s 2011 research that told us leaders who were involved in a network had a 2.5x longer tenure. I want to find out if this is still the case.
If you are serving in youth ministry, please fill out the survey linked below. And if you know other youth leaders, please encourage them to also fill out the survey.
If you want to hear more about the why behind this research, I recently released a short podcast episode and an even shorter video that I’ve linked to below.
Steve Cullum 