What percentage of student leaders walk away from their faith/the church within one year of graduating high school as compared to the percentage of students who were simply regular attendees of a youth group that walk away from their faith/the church?
I have heard absurdly high statistics on the number of students who leave the church shortly after graduating high school, and I think it would be valuable to do research on this question to see what the common factors are for students who walk away compared to those who do not. It seems that this question would be most beneficial with extensive questioning over a broad and large number of students and would have greater value as a longitudinal study of several years.
I think the value in researching this question would be to give greater support to the value of student leadership within youth ministry. What might be of even more value is seeing the importance of building a culture of “student leadership” within youth ministry,
if the factors that help students form a solid foundation in their relationship to Christ are also
common or even unique to factors found in student leadership.
Some words that would need to be defined include “student leaders”, “walk away” and “the”. For students who respond to the research questions, student leaders would need to agree with a generic level of commitment to a student leadership program, and all students
would need to agree with a basic set of Christian beliefs. I believe this would keep the researching focused sharply on what we’re after.
Some questions to look to answer through the research include:
Why did these students walk away? Are the reasons for normal Christian students greatly different than those of Christian student leaders? Would the students themselves say that they have left their faith/the church, or have they simply been absent in attendance?
Regarding all the students who do not walk away, are there any factors that are unique to the student leaders that are not present in the other students?
For example closer relationships with adults, more extended time with youth pastor, more training in Bible knowledge…
There might also be added value in doing this study over a great length of time, like five to ten years, to examine such questions as: How many of the students who initially walked away eventually come back to the church?
Of those who eventually come back to the church, what percentage of these were once student leaders?
Do a great number of students walk away a year or more after graduating high school, and what percentage were once student leaders?
I don’t really know if this is a feasible research project or not, but it seems like one that could
produce results that would be extremely relevant to not only how we do student leadership, but even youth ministry! It’s probably not worded correctly and it probably has some major loopholes, but there it is.
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