| The Church faces a great challenge to fulfill the requirements for the Great Commission and global evangelism. Two thousand years have passed since Jesus Christ commissioned believers to be witnesses for Him and the fields remain ripe for the harvest. Therefore, the Church must use all available resources including the younger generation. This research asserts that the younger generation, Generation Y, will respond and become involved if the Church meets seven objectives that include utilizing correct leadership constructs and research-based Holy Spirit-led strategies. The primary focus of this qualitative grounded theory dissertation is to determine which leadership constructs are applicable for leading and mobilizing a team of 12 American Generation Y evangelical Christians into global evangelism. A review of the literature reveals characteristics regarding Generation Y, the biblical foundations for missions, effective evangelical and theoretical frameworks for leadership, student involvement in the history of missions, strategies utilized historically to mobilize young people for missions and evangelism compared to contemporary leadership strategies for the task, and a proposed communication model for cross cultural communication of the gospel. Using metaphors from the world of agriculture and practical applications for Generation Y, the cutting blades model of communication explains the relationship between effective communication strategies of the gospel and an increased global harvest. This dissertation is divided into five chapters: (a) the introduction includes a statement of the problem, the context for research, purpose, scope, rational, the guiding relational hypothesis, research questions, and the definition of terms; (b) the literature review and model explicating strategies for leadership, mobilization, and communication techniques to spread the gospel with Generation Y; (c) the research design and methodology using the grounded theory tradition to develop concepts related through statements of relationships, which constitute an integrated framework, and triangulation as a means of processing and collecting the data through observations, questionnaires, and interviews; (d) the data discussion, analysis, and results encompasses the literature review, results from observations in the field, questionnaires, and interviews analyzed by using the grounded theory coding procedures of identifying categories and properties; and (e) the emerging combine leadership theory, conclusion, and recommendations. |
