Valuegenesis is the largest research project undertaken thus far to assess the attitudes of Seventh-day Adventist young people. Few can talk about youth or even the church today without referring to this landmark study. Valuegenesis gets lots of attention, but it seems too mammoth to go beyond one or two statistical studies chosen to justify what ever point a speaker wants to make.
We have needed a comprehensive report on the Valuegenesis study. Faith in the Balance is just that. In his easy-reading style, Roger Dudley presents the data along with implications and commentary. Good news and bad news receive equal treatment. Anecdotes introduce and provide occasional breathing room in this corpus of numbers. At times the reader will experience a sense of swimming in a whirlpool of statistics, with the potential of misquoting from memory or using data out of context. Dudley includes correlations of various measures, but always with a disclaimer that a correlation is not proof of causation. In other words, just because a high thinking climate at church correlates with the value of service does not mean that it causes the value of service to be high. They only appear to go together.
Faith in the Balance represents the first in a series of Valuegenesis books being published. The format includes wide margins with highlights, discussion questions, reviews, and related quotes in the margins.
If you are weary of being told what Valuegenesis says and want to know for yourself, you can obtain your own reference guide. You will find it at Adventist Book Centers, or you can order it through the Hancock Center for Youth Ministry at La Sierra University.
