Date
5-20-2026
Department
Rawlings School of Divinity
Degree
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (EdD)
Chair
Deidra K. Jackson
Keywords
Discipleship, Problem, Reality, Preferred Future, Mission, Vision, Leadership
Disciplines
Christianity | Education
Recommended Citation
Bailey-Kindell, Mamie Masella, "Discipleship: Attracting, Retaining, and Discipling Young Adults in Beauty Spot Missionary Baptist Church Fayetteville, North Carolina" (2026). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 8433.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/8433
Abstract
The partnership of young adults as well as their active involvement in God’s Kingdom work is a key issue facing Christian discipleship within churches in the 21st Century (Allan & Allan, 2020). The young adult congregants had been missing from the sacred teaching, preaching, and discipleship development training within congregations. What seemed only a temporary phenomenon had become a startling realization that reflected the demise of discipleship among the young adult congregants within churches. Christian leaders had wondered when the young adult congregants would return to the gatherings for spiritual worship, refreshing, and spiritual development (Barna Group, 2019, October 21). Christian leaders are debating, collaborating among themselves, and analyzing their spiritual platforms to determine the shifts in methodologies that would hasten young adults return to discipleship as active partners. The focus of this praxis project was to ascertain effective strategies and methodologies that helped to attract, retain, and disciple young adult congregants into mature followers of Christ within Beauty Spot Missionary Baptist Church (BSMBC) in obedience to the discipleship mandate (New International Version, 2011, Matthew 28:19). The primary theory supporting this praxis project was the Situational Leadership Theory by theorists Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard with supporting theories; Transformational Leadership Theory by James McGregor Burns; and Servant Leadership Theory by Robert Greenleaf in order to develop a curriculum platform that was intentionally engaging, holistic, transformational, and attractive. This praxis project served as scholarship for this researcher’s requirement in the Doctor of Education (EdD) in Christian Leadership Dissertation-in-Praxis with a Cognate focus in Ministry Leadership program.
