The Investment-Evidence Gap Analysis — Should Conferences Redirect Youth Budgets?

Executive summary

The Adventist church operates one of the largest faith-based education systems in the world — 10,364 schools serving 2.33 million students — and the evidence linking Adventist education to faith retention is among the strongest in the denomination's research portfolio. The Minder study documents a 47.4 percentage point retention advantage for complete Adventist K-12 education (98.2% vs 50.8%). Yet conference budgets typically allocate significant resources to youth programming (camps, events, ra...