Valuegenesis has more notoriety than the entity which gave birth to it. Project Affirmation came from the educational department of the North American Division, with a goal to renew Adventist education for the 90s. One of its four taskforces dealt with faith, values and commitment (“How can we be assured that by sending our children to Adventist schools they will come out Adventists").
An impasse developed when the representative taskforce held diverse understandings of what Adventists should believe and, especially, how they should behave. The age-old problem of standards quickly surfaced. If a committee could not come to agreement on this issue, what hope would there be for agreement among all North American Adventists?
The seeds for Valuegenesis had been planted. Steps were taken to develop and fund an extensive questionnaire regarding Adventist young people in North America. Data from the 465-item survey have yielded numerous reports, doctoral dissertations and focus groups. Valuegenesis has become a buzz-word to reveal that one is “in the know." The Hancock Center for Youth Ministry at La Sierra University has made Valuegenesis a foundation for its services, including the Valuegenesis Short Form survey, several books and family worship materials.
One of the significant contributions of Valuegenesis from the outset was a focus beyond simple denominational loyalty that included faith maturity. A moderate score in the 70-75 percent range for denominational loyalty brought more joy than the embarrassingly low scores of faith maturity-22 percent have high faith maturity with no significant faith development throughout the adolescent period from grades 6-12.
What can be done to improve these scores? Valuegenesis identifies 41 “effectiveness factors" that correlate with denominational loyalty and faith maturity; 20 relate to the home environment, 12 to the local church, and 9 to the school environment.
While scores for the home environment show more good news than bad, one key area for improvement is family worship, an experience many families have not been able to coordinate with their current lifestyle. Materials currently are being developed at La Sierra's Hancock Center so that families can obtain creative resources for short, significant, spiritual sharing on a regular basis.
While less than 25 percent of the effectiveness factors occur in the school setting, the educational branch of the church has been the most aggressive in responding to Valuegenesis. Virtually every conference education superintendent, or an appointee, has been trained in a grass-roots “visioning" and “vision-to-action" process in which local schools, churches and/or communities can implement planned changes over a 3-to-5 year period.
The area needing the most improvement in the educational branch is the quality of religious education programs. School personnel are expected to provide worships and other religious programs, despite their limited preparation time and inadequate religious education training. Gil Plubell, of the North American Division's Office of Education, has approved the development of the Worship Ideas Newsletter, sent bimonthly to all academy principals, deans and Bible teachers.
Without question the weakest link is the local congregation. Of the 12 effectiveness factors in this arena, the 2 most important are a warm, caring environment and a thinking environment.
Who is responding at the church level? Hardly anybody. Few pastors have made young people a high enough priority At most, half of the Adventist churches in North America have volunteer youth leaders; less than 1 percent have youth pastors. The majority of conferences lack fulltime youth directors, and only one union, Southern, has a youth director.
These data on the church are alarming, but few youth leaders exist to respond. Everybody's business has become nobody's business. We can rant and rave about the terrible data and the obvious decline in youth ministry, but i's somewhat like ordering an absent tenant to pay his rent. What good is it to serve notice when nobody's home?
Valuegenesis won't make change happen. It is only an evaluation tool that we will either respond to or ignore. Those who take initiative for a long-term planned change, whether they be a family, local congregation, school, or conference, will be the ones who truly hear today and change the status quo. Those who listen but don't act will be the foolish ones who hear the warning today but their young people, and their entire church, will be gone tomorrow (Matt. 7:24-27).
A subscription to the Worship Ideas Newsletter is available for $9.95/year by writing to Piece of the Pie Ministries, 1017 Andy Circle, Sacramento, CA 95838.