Abstract:
Behoeftes van en bediening aan universiteitstudente in Suid-Afrika: ‘n Empiriese studie (Needs of and ministry to university students in South Africa: an Empirical study) is an empirical study conducted in the student congregations of the Reformed Church in South Africa, the Dutch Reformed Church and the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa. The primary research question that this study answers is as follows: What are the ministry needs of Afrikaans-speaking university students in South-Africa? The research problem that necessitates this study is that there is a lack of understanding and knowledge of the ministry needs of Afrikaans-speaking student members of the Reformed student congregations in South-Africa. There is little research on student ministry in the South African context to support student ministers in their respective ministries. The goal of this study is to determine who the present-day student is and what the reality in which they live looks like in order to determine the ministry needs of Afrikaans-speaking university students so that they can be ministered in more meaningful and effective ways. The theoretical framework underlying the research is Richard Osmer’s four tasks of practical theological interpretation, namely the empirical descriptive task, the interpretative task, the normative task and the pragmatic task. Chapters 1 and 2 serve as the introductory chapters for this study. Chapter 2 entails a literature study of the origin and history of student ministry in South Africa. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are the empirical descriptive chapters. Chapter 6 entails a literature review of student ministry and faith formation. Chapters 7 and 8 comprise a literature review on the psychological development of the student to understand the developmental phase of the student. Three sets of empirical research have been conducted for this study. The first is quantitative research done by means of a questionnaire that was sent to the second-year students of the selected congregations. The second is qualitative structured interviews that have been conducted by the researcher with 11 of the students who have completed the questionnaire. Thirdly, more qualitative structured interviews have been conducted with 17 of the student ministers across South Africa. The qualitative data from the interviews were analysed by using ATLAS.ti. From the empirical data, the following three ministry needs of Afrikaans-speaking university students were identified: the need for faith formation, the need for mentorship and the need for faith community. The data also shows that the students and student ministers differ about the importance these needs and understand the contents of each need differently.
