Proposal: Exemplar Study on Young Adult Faith-Based Leadership Programs (YAFBLPs) 


Executive Summary 

Future of Faith will conduct a year-long, story-driven exemplar study of select Young Adult Faith-Based Leadership Programs (YAFBLPs) in campus and young-adult ministry contexts. We will spotlight places where young adults lean into new works of ministry and name the “secret sauce”: the relational practices, conditions, and adult mindsets that empower emerging leaders. These programs, often positioned alongside higher education but outside traditional church or campus ministry systems, support students in navigating the school-to-work transition while grounding them in robust expressions of faith and calling. 

Rather than surveying the field at large, this research will center on a curated set of exemplars. These may include gap-year programs, post-baccalaureate fellowships, residential study centers, and embedded internships, all offering alternative forms of education rooted in spiritual formation and relational mentoring. The study aims to identify transferable strategies that can be adapted to strengthen campus and young adult ministries within a variety of local church, denominational, and parachurch settings. 

The project will engage three interdependent groups within each YAFBLP: 

  • Participants: young adults currently or recently involved in the program 

  • Program Staff: those who design and facilitate formation 

  • Adult Mentors or Volunteers: those contributing to long-term relational and vocational investment 

The research will follow a Sacred Listening approach that allows findings to emerge through deep attention, dialogue, and iteration. By focusing on exemplars rather than a comprehensive landscape scan, this project emphasizes what is working. These models often broaden discipleship beyond private belief or church attendance, incorporating civic, familial, and professional dimensions. They offer theologically rooted, context-specific practices that prepare young adults for ministry roles and for whole-life Christian witness. 

This project prioritizes narratives that spark imagination. The intention is to surface adaptable design patterns, so leaders, congregations, and partners recognize themselves in the stories and can make inspired decisions. The study views each ministry as an ecosystem of young adult participants, program staff, and the adult supporters around them (boards, donors, alumni parents, local champions), and traces how those relationships and power-sharing practices cultivate initiative. 

Project duration: ~12 months

Key Focus Points for the Project 

Imagination and inspiration: Stories that move leaders to say, “We can do that here.” 
→ Vivid stories, potential profiles and a synthesis that translate practices into adaptable patterns, with language designed to ignite action across settings. 

An ecosystem lens: Understanding participants, staff, and adult supporters together. 
→ Methods and deliverables explicitly map these three groups and show how their relationships, beliefs, and behaviors release leadership. 

Three audiences: Professionals and denominational leaders, local churches and lay leaders, and an academic/theological audience. 
→ Outputs tailored for each audience, with a shared backbone so insight travels well. 

Depth over generality: Story-first inquiry with light support measures. 
→ Interviews, story circles, and on-site observation carry the weight; brief pulse checks serve orientation and future trending. 

A multi-year runway: Year 1 that seeds follow-up. 
→ A concise multi-year arc revisits earlier cohorts, captures learning-from-the-learning, and traces practice adoption, while keeping Year 1 focused. 

Purpose and Value 

  • Illuminate credible models where discipleship, vocation, and leadership development converge. 

  • Translate those models into adaptable practices for ministries and denominational partners. 

  • Equip boards, donors, and local champions with a supporter mindset that shares power and releases young adult leadership. 

  • Create the foundation for sustained learning that grows year by year. 

Core Learning Questions 

  1. Empowerment: Which practices and conditions consistently lead young adults to initiate and sustain new ministry? 

  1. Design: Which rhythms, structures, and mentoring approaches cultivate identity, belonging, purpose, and agency? 

  1. Supporter mindsets: Which adult beliefs and behaviors build trust, share power, and release leadership across generations? 

  1. Pathways: How do programs guide the school-to-work transition while deepening commitment to Christian community and service? 

  1. Transferability: Which strategies travel well across regions, traditions, and institutional settings? 

Sample and Nominations 

Cohort size: 6–10 exemplars. 
Diversity targets: five U.S. regions; program type (gap-year, fellowship, residential center, embedded internship); institutional setting (adjacent to universities, church-based, parachurch); tradition; participant demographics. 
Nominations: A joint long-list from Creighton’s network and Future of Faith partners (e.g., CRU, RUF, YFC, Young Life, NFCYM). We will request recommended sites per region from key networks, apply mutually determined criteria, and finalize the sample during Months 1-4: Discovery & Design.  

Sacred Listening Methodology 

Sacred Listening is Future of Faith’s mixed-methods approach to research and evaluation. It integrates sociological rigor with relational inquiry, so findings are credible to scholars, usable by leaders, and clear to practitioners. The design is intentionally both formative and summative, by supporting real-time learning during implementation and providing actionable reporting at key milestones and close. 

We begin with Objective Mapping, a brief but focused co-design step that clarifies decision-uses, audiences, indicators, and guardrails while aligning to partner frameworks and context. From there, we tailor instruments and gather data through complementary modes (quantitative measures alongside qualitative approaches such as structured interviews, listening sessions, observation, etc.). Analysis integrates numerical results with narrative evidence, attends to subgroup differences, and invites participatory sense-making so those closest to the work interpret emerging patterns with us. The study culminates in a concise, decision-ready synthesis that names what’s working, where gaps remain, and what adaptations the evidence supports, without losing the texture of lived experience. 

In short, Sacred Listening treats research as an act of careful attention and shared discernment as we listen deeply, analyze responsibly, and return insight in plain language so organizations can learn as they go and act with confidence at the end. 

Methods (Story-First, Ecosystem-Focused) 

Each ministry is a web of relationships and roles, including participants, program staff, and adult supporters (board members, donors, alumni parents, local champions). We attend to how these people interact: the rhythms staff design, the mentoring and power-sharing that supporters practice, and the leadership actions participants take. The goal is to see how the relationships, resources, and decisions among these groups work together to release young adult leadership. 

  • Participants & recent alumni (per site): story circles plus in-depth interviews; brief pulse check for orientation (identity, belonging, purpose, agency; mentoring cadence; leadership actions). 

  • Program staff (per site): design/operations interviews or surveys; theory-of-change conversation; artifact review (rhythms of prayer, study, service; mentoring scaffolds; placement structures). 

  • Adult supporters (per site): interviews with board members, donors, alumni parents, and local champions; mapping of supporter beliefs, practices, and power-sharing.