Petr Činčala

The Impact of Leadership on Church Health (I)

Let us suppose that you are part of a church that wants to be healthier and growing. Perhaps your church is at a crossroads, looking for a pastor who matches the congregation and would fit well in an empowering leadership team. What kind of pastor do you look for? What leadership style do you look for? What spiritual gift mix should the pastor have?

The Bible gives us many clues and many paragraphs could be dedicated to depicting a biblical profile of a pastor for a healthy growing church. For the apostle Paul, style was very important (1 Cor 4:17). The main purpose of this set of articles, however, is to see how the findings of our NCD worldwide database correspond with the Bible.

As you may know, the NCD questionnaire for pastors contains questions that are not directly used for calculating the scores. They are there to give us additional insights and answers. For example, question 75 asks pastors to check labels that describe their leadership style (i.e., authoritarian, partnership, democratic, task-oriented, people-oriented, goal-oriented, serving, relationship-oriented). That is our primary focus for this article.

In my research, I separated the styles from each other and created a variable for each style. Then I ran simple tests to compare average scores for empowering leadership by leadership styles listed above. I found that there are a few styles that stand out when comparing them with qualitative scores. There are not many pastors using an authoritarian style of leadership (only 4,8% - see table). The least favorable leadership style in comparison to the average scores of empowering leadership is the democratic style (47) as you can see in the table. Effective leading does not mean that followers have nothing to say, however, leading means making decisions that others will simply follow. On the other hand, the most favorable ingredient in leadership style mix is goal-oriented style (53). To motivate and empower people, a pastor needs to have clear goals.

Examples of style mix going along lower scores for empowering leadership are: (1) Partnership, Democratic, People-oriented, Serving, Relationship-oriented (46 score; 2,8% frequency); (2) People-oriented, Serving, Relationship-oriented (47; 1,1%).

These are not bad styles of leadership. However, in given mixes, there are missing components if leadership is to be empowering effectively. Pastors who are people-centered, who serve people and emphasize relationships above other things, may be wonderful people to work with but are unlikely to lead a church to greater health if they exclude other styles of empowerment.

Examples of style mixes going with more favorable scores for empowering leadership are: (1) Partnership, Goal-oriented, Relationship-oriented (56 score; 1,7% frequency); (2) Partnership, People-oriented, Goal-oriented (57; 1,0%); (3) Partnership, People-oriented, Goal-oriented, Relationship-oriented (57; 1,9%); (4) Partnership, Task-oriented, People-oriented, Goal-oriented, Serving, Relationship-oriented (58; 3,3%); (5) Partnership, Task-oriented, People-oriented, Goal-oriented, Relationship-oriented (59; 1,0%).

Note, these style mixes are well-balanced. Leadership style for healthy growth is inclusive – involves others in the process (partnership). A pastor who replaces the "all-by-itself" principle for "all-by-myself" principle is not an empowering leader. Interdependent partnership is important for healthy and empowering leadership. Pastors who tend to do all ministry by themselves have a negative influence on church health (see graph).

Furthermore, the favorable styles for healthy growth always combine people orientation (and/or relationship) with goal orientation (possibly with a task orientation). It is clear that if a pastor's leadership style mix does not include goal-orientation, the profile of a given church is more likely to have lower scores (the quality of empowering leadership in particular).

[Next part of this series in eNCDine October 2004]

Petr Činčala (PhD) lives in the Czech Republic and works as Research Manager for NCD International

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