FORT WORTH, Texas (BP)–Registration opened Feb. 1 for the SBC Youth Ministry Survey, designed to be a comprehensive guide for Southern Baptist churches across the nation to garner crucial, fresh information about teens, their families and youth ministry.
The free survey will be open for people to complete online April 1-8. Coordinators are particularly seeking churches to help provide input from youth, parents of youth, youth ministry volunteers and youth ministers.
“Churches and individuals tend to keep doing what they have been doing unless something prompts them to change,” said Richard Ross, project coordinator and professor of student ministry at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. “In some churches, if attendance is OK, if parents and teens are reasonably happy with activities, then no one is motivated to think carefully about how ministry should be changed in the future.”
The survey consists of 125 queries designed to measure each group’s attitudes on subjects such as Christian doctrine, spiritual discipline, parent and youth relationships, and youth ministry leadership. Participants will remain anonymous.
Ross expects the survey to provide churches with “more startling information about their teens and families than they have ever known,” and he hopes, in turn, that it will be valuable in motivating churches to change.
The youth portion of the survey asks students to respond to statements like “Verbal fighting is a frequent occurrence in our household,” “I have had an online conversation with sexual content with someone in the past year,” and “When I am feeling badly, I cut my skin on purpose.”
“To be honest, I believe many churches will experience some shock and awe when they first see their survey report,” Greg Mathews, student minister at Southside Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., said. Mathews has taken the lead in building Internet support for the survey.
Many parents, whether they are Christians or not, don’t truly understand their teenagers, Robert Tavares, youth pastor at First Baptist Church in Gallup, N.M., said, noting, “Parents get too caught up in their own lives and fail to realize that they need to stay engaged in their teens’ lives through high school and beyond.”
After the survey closes, each participating church will be able to download a full report April 10. It will show the responses of their congregation separated into groups but not identifying individuals who took the survey. Ross said the downloadable reports also will provide information for conducting a workshop that will assist key leadership in addressing those issues.
“We are giving participating churches a process for moving from new facts that may be distressing toward positive ministry changes,” Ross said. “Hand-wringing is not the goal. Substantive change in student ministry is.”
Tavares said the church “needs to see youth as an integral part of church life and not just some ministry we do on the side.”
During the months of April and May, participating churches will hold Vision to Action Workshops, which will bring key parents, youth and leaders to the table to set a positive new direction based on the information gathered from the survey.
“A free online manual will be available for each church which will not only show them how to conduct the workshop but guide them through every step of the survey process, from beginning to end,” Ross said.
Another key component of the survey is that while churches are studying their local data, Southern Baptist leaders also will be studying the results.
State conventions will be able to post on their websites the statistics from their states, and SBC entities will have access to national figures in order to determine effective directions for student ministry within the convention. Participating churches will be able to compare their results with statewide and nationwide results.
“While churches are implementing changes based on their data, those of us who try to guide youth ministry at a national level will be looking carefully at national statistics,” Ross said. “We will know far more about the youth and families of the SBC than we have ever known. Agencies and schools can then make more of their plans based on facts rather than hunches.”
The survey is the result of more than two years of intensive work and cooperation between student ministry leaders at SBC seminaries and churches. Church registration for the April 1-8 survey, at www.sbcstudents.com/annualsurvey, runs through the end of March.
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