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A total of 424 high school students from across America constituted the sample for this study. They came from student leadership teams ranging in size from six to 51 and represented youth ministries with official rolls from 80 to 850. Attendance at the largest weekly events for these groups ranged from 35 to 350. The study included 6 Baptist churches, 3 Evangelical Free churches, 1 United Brethren, 1 Free Methodist church, 3 YFC chapters, 1 Young Life program, and 7 independent and/or community churches. They were variously located in Texas, Indiana, California, Ohio, Massachusetts, Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, and Pennsylvania Most of these students (57.8%) came from Christian families where the parent or a key family member led them to Christ. Another 17% gave their lives to the Lord Jesus through some kind of outreach event or program. Only 4.3% of the respondents came to put their faith in Christ as the result of the efforts of another teen. When asked to choose from among options the most important thing they did as student leaders, 42.9% picked "encouraging others", 15.9% said "upfront leadership", 15.4% marked "sharing your faith", 13.2% indicated "inviting friends", and 6.5% chose "leading a small group." Only 3.2% of the responses were "plan meetings/activities." It was clear that the biggest obstacle students had to sharing their faith was their own fears (49%), although another 33.8% indicated that their busy schedules were hindrances. An additional 10.6% noted that their lack of training was their biggest barrier to peer evangelism. Students also had a chance to choose which person was most helpful to them as they had grown in their evangelism responsibility. Youth pastors (22.5%), Christian friends (17.1%), and their own experiences (14.6%) were cited as most helpful. It is worth noting to observe that only 3.5% indicated that their parents were most helpful in this area of development. A bit of a different twist on helpfulness was offered when students were asked to indicate what resources were most helpful as they attempted to reach their friends for Christ. Other friends (25%) and trips/retreats (21.3%) were the top responses to this question. Only 2.7% reported that big conferences were the most helpful. Finally, the characteristic most directly relevant to this study was derived from the self-report question asking student leaders to indicate the number of their friends with whom they had played a key role in helping come to Christ. Though coming from groups where teen to teen evangelism was fairly common, 12.9% of these student leaders could not identify any students with whom they felt they had had such an influence. The largest number of student leaders could identify one to three friends for whom they had played a key role in their conversion (65.6%). At the top end of this evangelism effectiveness were those who could identify four to eight friends (17.9%) and even more than eight friends who they had helped draw to Christ (3.6%). To summarize, 87% of the students we had surveyed were influential in helping at least one of their friends come to Christ. Given that the various approaches to data collection led to different types of analyses, there were a number of strong findings which are supported by a convergence of these data. Most notable is the consistent vision and activity focus of those student leaders who were most effective at reaching their friends for Christ. First of all, data support the conclusion that student leaders largely view evangelism as a task to do rather than a natural but intentional outcome of their relationships with non-Christian friends. While this insight emerged first from interview data, it was supported by the near total absence of behaviors that correlated with the statement “I do some things just so I can build friendships with classmates who aren't Christians.” In other words, there is virtually no predictive relationship among student leaders who engaged in this behavior with the same amount of frequency. Perhaps the inherent relational nature of a teenager's world combines with the high school social structure to almost assume that--at least in the minds of our student leaders--the only thing necessary for evangelism is to focus on their responsibilities or tasks related to conversion. Enough of a relational base exists through activity co-mingling to support this task orientation. It was also important to discover that those students who were most effective in reaching their friends for Christ did not primarily invest themselves in program or event planning as a part of their student leader responsibility. The data support the conclusion that if a student was frequently planning events there was no guarantee that she or he would be reaching more peers for Christ, praying more frequently, or being involved in church more often. One of our most exciting findings was discovering a pattern of behaviors which was common among evangelistically effective student leaders. This pattern clustered around three activities: praying, inviting, and telling. We have begun to label this functional “job description” for effective student leaders as the Student Leader Three-Step. Statistically significant differences (one-way ANOVAs, Scheffé post-hoc tests, p < .05) were reported in the praying patterns between student leaders who were the most evangelistically fruitful and those who were less so. For example students who reported that they had not helped anyone come to Christ prayed only about monthly for opportunities to tell someone about Jesus (m = 3.33). Those who had helped one to three friends become Christians were more frequent with such prayers (about weekly, m = 4.07). But the students who were most effective in peer evangelism, those who had helped more than eight of their friends come to Christ, prayed for such opportunities a few times weekly (m = 4.93). Similar trends were found among students with regard to their prayer for a particular friend's salvation. The most robust finding in this area was the predictive nature of praying with others for friends to come to Christ. Those who could not report any evangelistic fruitfulness typically prayed with others in such causes less than monthly (m = 2.80), the majority of student leaders who influenced one to three of their friends for Christ collected with others to pray at least monthly (m = 3.393), and those who reported their key role for four to eight of their friends in coming to Christ prayed in this way on a weekly basis (m = 3.92). There were also strong correlations between a number of prayer behaviors and activities of inviting and telling. This finding is very clear. Evangelistically effective student leaders engage in frequent multiple strategies of evangelistic prayer. The more frequent their prayer, the more fruitful their evangelism is among their peers. Students who are most influential in the salvation of their friends were also those who most frequently employed a variety of inviting strategies in order to help accomplish the evangelism task. As the table of frequency means below indicates, there were statistically significant differences (one-way ANOVAs, Scheffé post-hoc tests, p < .05) among student leaders classified according to their evangelism effectiveness. The direction of this finding followed the same pattern as that established in praying behaviors; that is, the more frequently student leaders engaged in inviting behaviors the more likely they would be to help a greater number of their friends come to Christ.
2 = seldom; 3 = about monthly; 4 = about weekly; 5 = few times weekly Evangelism effectiveness and frequency of inviting behaviors The third element in the 3-Step trilogy of student leader effectiveness centers around how often students were involved in telling other students about Jesus Christ. This quality clustered around the following two items in the forced choice surveys: “I tell my non-Christian friends what my personal relationship with Jesus Christ means to me.” and “I explain to non-Christians how they can begin a relationship with Jesus Christ.” As with praying and inviting patterns identified earlier, the analysis of these items revealed statistically significant differences (one-way ANOVAs, Scheffé post-hoc tests, p < .05) among student leaders classified according to their evangelism effectiveness. These frequency means are reported in the table below, and as can be observed reveal a marked difference in the frequency of these telling patterns among students a varying degrees of evangelistic influence.
2 = seldom; 3 = about monthly; 4 = about weekly; 5 = few times weekly Evangelism effectiveness and frequency of telling behaviors A clear picture of the “task focus” for effective student leaders emerged out of the data for this study. Is there a similar clear picture for adults? Yes, though the data constructing such a picture proved to be a combination of information gathered from students through all of the means of collection we employed. Adults who wish to maximize their own role in bringing about effective student leadership must possess a clear vision of their task, be catalyzing models of faithfulness, offer themselves as responsive resources, and facilitate key programs. Clear vision. While student leaders see evangelism as a task, adults dare not see student leaders solely as evangelism jobbers. Rather, adults who were most helpful had a holistic picture of the development of student leaders. They didn't simply use them to accomplish ends, no matter how eternally worthy. They invested in these student leaders so that they might grow in maturity and faithfulness. Wise adults could then expect that the task of peer evangelism would flow (almost) naturally and necessarily from a student leader's healthy relationship with God. Models. Student leaders who reported that they saw adults lead other to faith in Christ were more likely to reproduce that evangelistic behavior themselves. The more often such adult modeling was seen, the greater the evangelism effectiveness experienced by student leaders. As this behavior was modeled, the student leaders in our study reported that an atmosphere conducive to overcoming personal fears (the greatest obstacle to evangelism) was created. In other words, adults could help address student fears by their own fear-conquering willingness to evangelize. There is a transitionary agenda here also. Our research indicated that, as effective as adults were as models inspiring teens to evangelize, other teens were dynamically more effective as models among their peers. Thus, while adults may need to initiate evangelism efforts in order to “set the stage”, they must be on the lookout for ways to pass on the primary modeling responsibilities to teens who will—inevitably—be more effective. Resources. Student leaders need the opportunity to develop their skills of praying, inviting and telling. Many of those in our study considered the adult leaders of their ministries as valuable resources, persons they could count on when they wanted to invite their friends to talk with someone about Jesus. Adults should see this as a valuable role to play in the evangelistic development of student leaders. In this way, and in others adults offer themselves as valuable resources in the crucial growth student leaders must experience with regard to the 3-Step. By providing training, encouragement, structures, and opportunities that help student leaders pray-invite-tell more often, adults supply a crucial resource role to their teens. Programs. One of the most significant findings of our research which directly speaks to the structures and programs adults provide for student leaders is the relationship between frequency of meetings teens had with adults for life-accountability and these teens' evangelistic effectiveness. Student leaders who met weekly with adults for these purposes were significantly more likely to be fruitful in their peer evangelism than were those who met monthly or less. These mentoring type of structures did not necessarily need to be one-to-one; most often they were small groups. In addition, adults serve their student leaders by taking on the responsibility of providing appropriately Christian programs of such consistency that the student leaders might have great confidence as they invite their friends. Finally, student leaders in this study routinely cited the important and central role that adult instruction from the Bible played in their own development. One of the interesting findings of this study, one which was stumbled upon, is probably best treated at this point as a strongly supported hypothesis requiring additional research and exploration. As the research team visited the various youth ministry sites, we began to discern differences in the stories which made up the collective faith histories of each group. We postulated that the youth groups in our study, all very healthy by normal youth ministry standards fell into one of the following four categories, so determined by carefully listening to the content of their answers in large group discussions, timed team responses, and individual interviews. Stage 1--Love Flowing Stage - a loving and caring atmosphere is established such that most youth group members and visitors readily affirm its presence. Stage 2--Peer Encouragement Stage - peer ministry is so common that students easily cite specific “one anothering” examples of teens in the group helping each other grow in their faith. THE BIG GULF - a significant change from these earlier stages takes place and is observable in dramatically different language used to report the activities and evangelistic efforts of the group. Stage 3--God at Work Stage - in the midst of the group an atmosphere of expectancy is present such that students report repeatedly about the common (even normal) intervention of God in their lives as He answers prayer in powerful ways. Stage 4--Evangelism Expectancy Stage - reflecting a subtle change from stage three, students continue to see God at work but the atmosphere of expectancy has been extended and sharpened so that students now look forward to seeing how God will next use them to reach others for Christ. After these stages of vitality were developed the research team discussed each youth ministry visited and assigned it one of the stage designations above. Subsequent one-way ANOVAs and Scheffé post-hoc analyses were then conducted, controlling for the effect of this stage designation while testing each evangelism behavior. Moderate support was found for the hypothesis that student leaders whose groups were in the higher stages would display a greater frequency in their peer-evangelism related behaviors than would those students who were members of lower stage groups. The presence of the “big gulf” seemed to be verified by these statistical tests, while the differences between groups in stage 1 and stage 2 were never statistically significant. The same non-significant difference existed between groups in stage 3 and stage 4. Clearly, the concept of stages of vitality which might predict evangelistic effectiveness for youth groups deserves further, more focused, study before it is widely discussed. |
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