You're looking at a preview. Every chart and story here shows what the finished report will look like, but the numbers are preview data, not real survey results. As ministry leaders take the survey, real results replace them.
Add your ministry →State of Ministry asks ministry leaders 43 questions about discipleship, teaching, events, volunteers, families, environments and planning, then turns the answers into a free public report anyone can explore.
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The survey follows the seven areas of the Grow strategy. Tap one, then narrow it to churches your size. Every bar is computed live from the preview data.
marks everyone, so you can see how churches this size differ.
Longer reads, each built around one question worth sitting with. Every figure is pulled straight from the data, so the stories rewrite their own numbers as real responses arrive.
Nearly a third of leaders plan the entire ministry year alone. What travels with it is harder to see.
Most ministries teach spiritual habits. Far fewer come back to them.
How far ahead teaching gets planned, and why the calendar isn't really the problem.
We asked leaders to describe the room a brand-new kid walks into. They were honest.
Why ministries run events, where the ideas come from, and what makes them hard.
The three things leaders hear when they ask for help, and the one that's easiest to answer.
Ministries built for kids and parents rarely ask kids or parents to help plan them.
Part-time leaders are paid for part of the week. The exhaustion isn't part-time.
Men and women earn about the same when they're paid. Whether they're paid at all is another story.
Not years of service. Church size explains more of the gap than anything else we asked about.
Tell us a little about your church. We'll show how ministries like yours answered, next to everyone else. Nothing you pick here is saved.
Every answer to every question is open. Filter, compare, and download whatever you need.
All 43 questions, grouped by area. Filter by role, church size, region, setting, pay and more.
Open the explorer →Pick a question and break it out by anything: size, role, region, tenure. See who's different and by how much.
Compare groups →Ministry compensation by role, church size, tenure and state, with a tile map of all 50 states and DC.
Open the Pay Lab →Fifteen findings — one comparison each, two minutes each. Every claim was tested twice: once raw, then again holding church size and volunteer status constant, because those two things drive most answers in this survey at once. Nine findings we went looking for failed that second test and are published as rejected rather than quietly dropped.
Three in ten ministries never train their volunteers. Those leaders report more exhaustion, more discouragement, and more doubt about their own faith.
Three in ten leaders are the only voice in what gets taught. Making that call is the job — but the leaders making it with nobody to consult report more strain.
One in five ministries has no planning process of any kind. Against those who run a real annual session, the exhaustion gap is eight points.
Only 16% of leaders let parents shape what gets taught. Where they do, reported parent engagement is twelve points higher — the largest positive gap we measured.
One in five ministries includes the kids in annual planning. Those ministries report better parent engagement too — the effect carries past the students themselves.
When senior leadership sits in on ministry planning, the ministry leader reports less burnout. It is the clearest protective factor in the survey.
One in five leaders looks nowhere for new ideas. They are markedly more likely to feel pressure to grow the numbers.
Eighteen percent of leaders tried nothing new in twelve months. Burnout among them runs ten points higher than among monthly experimenters.
Eight percent of ministries have no regular way of talking to families. Their leaders report the highest exhaustion gap in the survey — eleven points.
Twenty-seven percent name being too busy as their biggest planning obstacle. They are the leaders most likely to feel under-resourced.
Leaders who listen to ministry podcasts report less exhaustion, fewer resource complaints, and are meaningfully more likely to say they're doing okay.
The cheapest volunteer appreciation tactic in the survey tracks with a five-point drop in the leader's own discouragement.
Training volunteers monthly rather than annually is associated with a leader who is five points more likely to say they're doing fine.
The ministries running five or more major events a year report less exhaustion than those running two or fewer. This is the opposite of what we expected.
A third of leaders plan teaching a week at a time or not at all. The thing that tracks with it isn't exhaustion — it's doubt about their own faith.
Everything above is a preview built on generated responses. Your answers are what turn it into the real picture of kids and youth ministry, and every leader who reads it afterwards benefits.