Date
3-2022
Department
Rawlings School of Divinity
Degree
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (EdD)
Chair
Gary Bredfeldt
Keywords
Church Drop Out, Church Retention, Emerging Adults, Youth Ministry Commitment, Church Involvement, Youth Ministry
Disciplines
Leadership Studies | Religion
Recommended Citation
Idol, Derik Wade, "An Assessment of Dropout Rates of Former Student Ministry Participants in Self-Identified Evangelical Churches with 500-2000 in Weekly Attendance" (2022). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 3428.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/3428
Abstract
Over the last quarter-century, there has been a consistent call to reconceptualization and at times reject the youth ministry task resulting from the universally accepted church dropout statistic post-high school graduation. In 2008, Brandon Shields presented a falsification study that disproved the theory that high school graduates are leaving the church at a rate of 70-90% at Southern Baptist Megachurches. The purpose of this study was to examine the claim that 70-90% of youth ministry graduates are leaving the church by researching 17 self-identified Evangelical churches of 500-2000 in average church attendance. The research design was a quantitative replication study of the Shields (2008) study. The researcher found a significant correlation among emerging adults in the sample population between current levels of church involvement and previous youth ministry commitment. The data revealed an overall retention statistic of 95.4% for the 502 participants in the research study with 74.3% of the participants having a current level of involvement in the moderate to high-level category verifying Shields findings. Emerging adults with previous youth ministry commitment are not leaving the church.
