Date

12-19-2023

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

Chair

Kevin Gift

Keywords

College Ministry, Doctor of Ministry, Thesis, Church Revitalization, Mentoring, Outreach

Disciplines

Christianity

Abstract

College students’ declining attendance and participation at Thankful Baptist Church is a growing concern for the congregation and its leadership. For over one hundred years the church has had a strong outreach to the students at Paine College, a local HBCU and private Christian institution. However, over the last five years Thankful Baptist Church’s outreach to Paine College students has declined significantly. This research project implemented training for ten outreach volunteers and six weeks of mentoring for ten Paine College students to revive the declined college ministry to Paine College into an active ministry which attracts and retains college students and implements methods to ensure the continued viability of this ministry. Data was researched from the online library system of Liberty University to discover trends in college outreach ministry, compared with data from current books and journal articles analyzing outreach programs and ministries that have been successful in mentoring and discipling college students. The intervention questionnaires, interviews, and data journals were used to determine issues of concern, effectiveness of the research project and the results of the research project. This research will be helpful to other churches with older congregations as a model for revitalizing their congregation through outreach to college students. The results of this project demonstrate that as an intervention it can be scaled up or down depending on the size of the church, and available resources to mentor, disciple and attract college students to connect with their local church.

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