YOUT 510
Youth Ministry Interview Project Assignment Instructions
Overview
This project is going to give you the opportunity to have conversations with various people who are or could be impacted by a youth ministry. This will give you the chance to hear different perspectives (adults and young people) about youth ministry from some who have had interaction with the church and some who might not have had that interaction. You will also analyze their responses to the interview questions to find common themes from which to draw conclusions about a better approach to youth ministry.
Instructions
You will complete 3 different student ministry interviews (9 people or couples). These are not surveys but conversations you must have with these people. You can conduct each of the 3 interviews listed below as group interviews if you wish. It is okay to do these over the phone as a last resort. FaceTime or some other visual communication tool is also acceptable. Do not use any type of instant messaging or email to complete this assignment. Use the questions below to guide these discussions:
Interview 1: The first interview will be with 3 parents (one parent or couples from each family) of current teenagers who regularly attend a youth ministry. Ask the following questions and feel free to elaborate:
What do you expect from a youth ministry?
What do you expect from the youth minister (both personal and corporate)?
How would you evaluate your student’s current youth ministry?
Why do you think that studies reveal that most students who are raised in church and regularly attend a youth ministry do not remain after graduation?
If you could communicate anything to youth ministers without fear of rebuttal, what would it be? Please be brutally honest!
Interview 2: The second interview is to be with 3 high school or college students who used to attend church but have dropped out. Ask the following questions and feel free to elaborate:
How did you get involved with church and the youth group?
Why did you stop going? Do you still practice your faith?
In your opinion, what changes need to be made to youth ministry and churches in order to retain students like yourself? What would it take to get you reconnected?
Are your parents still involved in church?
If you could communicate anything to youth ministers, churches, and youth ministries without any fear of rebuttal, what would it be? Please be brutally honest!
Interview 3: The third interview is to be with 3 unsaved middle or high school students. Ask the following questions and feel free to elaborate:
How do you describe your religious background and church involvement if any?
To you, what is God like? Describe God. If they do not believe in God, don’t ask questions c-e, but ask, “To you, what is important in life?”
What do you think is important and not important to God?
What do you think it takes to be straightened out with God?
Describe what the name “Jesus Christ” means to you?
If you were to attend a church or youth group, what would be important to you?
From your perspective, what are some of the major problems you see with churches and youth ministries?
Make sure to keep your interviewees anonymous. You should still introduce them while maintaining their anonymity (i.e., This was a 20-year-old college junior who quit attending church shortly after moving away to college). There is no need to reference these conversations with footnotes or bibliography entries.
Do not provide a verbatim account of these conversations. Instead, summarize the answers and identify common responses from your interviewees. It is fine to quote responses that really stand out or help you make a point. After summarizing your conversations, include about a page of conclusions you have drawn from your interviews. Explain how these responses coincide with the things you have learned in this course about the practice of youth ministry. You should support your conclusions with various material from our course (books and video presentations), meaning you should have a multi-entry bibliography.
This report should be 4–5 pages long: 3–4 pages for the interview summary (you will have to be concise) and about a page for your conclusions. Do not include personal commentary or draw conclusions in your summary section. These page counts do not include the cover sheet or bibliography.
This assignment is to be formatted in Turabian.
Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.
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