A study of the relationship between ministry satisfaction and spiritual maturity in children's ministers serving in Southern Baptist churches

Problem. The problem of this study was to determine the relationship between ministry satisfaction of children's ministers serving in Southern Baptist churches as measured by the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS) and specified predictor variables of spiritual maturity, as measured by the Spiritual Assessment Inventory (SAI). The specified predictor variables of the SAI are Awareness, Instability, Disappointment, Grandiosity, Realistic Acceptance, and Impression Management.;Procedures. The Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS), the Spiritual Assessment Inventory (SAI), a brief demographic questionnaire, and a qualitative component question were distributed to children's ministers participating at the 2009 LifeWay Kids Conference in Arlington, Texas, October 12-15, 2009. Of 413 attendees at the conference, 178 completed the instruments, and 149 were eligible to participate in the study. Data from the completed instruments were used in the regression analysis to test the null hypotheses.;Findings and Conclusion. Stepwise Multiple Regression analysis showed that the variables Instability, Grandiosity, Realistic Acceptance, and Impression Management of the SAI were not significant predictors of satisfaction in ministry. However, the statistical analysis showed that the variable Awareness was a significant, positive predictor of ministry satisfaction and that the SAI variable Disappointment was a significant, negative predictor of ministry satisfaction. This indicates that children's ministers who scored high on the Awareness variable tended to report more satisfaction in ministry and those who scored low on the Disappointment variable also tended to report more satisfaction in ministry.