The role of effective leadership on church growth: A case study for the Namibia North Conference

Abstract

This study aims to fill the gap in investigating the relationship between effective leadership and church growth in the Namibia North Conference. The study focused on effective leadership's role in vision, interpersonal relationships, and modeling to see how these influence membership growth, relationships, spiritual growth, and discipleship in church members. A pilot study of 20 church members with Cronbach alpha between 75-95% on effective leadership and 50% low output on membership growth was done. The cross-sectional study was adopted to help analyze effective leadership and church growth. The study was done in a non-contrived setting and used a descriptive survey research design. A sample size of three hundred eighty-four (384), 196 males and 188 females of nine thousand three hundred twenty-nine (9,329) church members from five (5) districts were targeted. Findings from the study on question one have shown that the Namibia north conference has a compelling vision, high levels of effective interpersonal relationships, and modeling. Question two's aggregate score indicated an average membership growth, a high relationship growth; an average growth level of spirituality; and a high growth level of discipleship. Question three's findings demonstrated statistically significant weak positive correlations between effective leadership and church growth. Hence on question four, the study proposed a disciple-making strategy that could enhance membership and spiritual growth. The proposed recommendations were that the conference should work with district pastors to train elders in discipleship and interpersonal relationships since they are the critical leaders at the local church level to bring about change. To the researchers, the study recommended that they study and understand the causes for statistically significant weak positive correlations between effective leadership and church growth in Namibia north conference. Another recommendation was that the researchers should further study church growth in terms of membership transfers and profession of faith. Keywords for this research study include effective leadership, relationships, church growth, membership growth, and discipleship.