Financial Stewardship Habits of Southern Baptist Millennials: Motivating and Inhibiting Factors- A Mixed Methods Approac

Millennials, ministry, mission, and money all converge in this mixed-methods study about the factors motivating Millennials to give to their churches. Understanding these factors will be important for churches to recognize the critical elements to include in stewardship education in their churches. Millennials give less to the church as a percentage of income than older generations, and evangelical churches have reached fewer Millennials as a percentage of the population than any other generational cohort. Those factors, combined, form the basis for the need for this mixed methods study exploring the giving habits of 594 Southern Baptist Millennials who are connected with churches making up the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia. More than 600 churches were invited to participate in an electronic survey of individuals born 1980-1998 who are connected with these churches. Responses from this group yielded a variety of statistically significant findings of factors that motivate these individuals to give to their churches. The conclusions of this research are hopeful and encouraging as Millennials are a generous generation. They reported that obedience to the Bible, worship, and support for the church influenced their decisions to give. This research found value in three types of education as influencers in millennial giving. Formal, post-secondary education; parental education through instruction and modeling; and local church stewardship education, formally and from the pulpit were all found to be motivating factors in millennial giving. The future funding of missions for Southern Baptists was determined to be one of the more significant findings. Southern Baptist Millennials favor decentralizing funding of missionaries over giving to the Cooperative Program. Online recurring giving results in far greater giving in actual dollars than other frequencies of giving. Married Millennials give far more than do single Millennials in a statistically and practically significant manner. This research also concluded that giving increases with age.