Religious Priests/Pastors
OBJECTIVE To determine the factors most significant to success in planting new churches, and, especially the role of transformational leadership in this process.
METHODOLOGY The sample includes ministers who began Assemblies of God Decades of Harvest churches between January, 1991 and May 31, 1992. Effective sample included 67 ministers (22.6% response rate), with little variability in terms of gender (100% male), marital status (100%), and ethnicity (92% Caucasian). Mean age was 42 years, with an average of 2.7 years as pastoral staff member and 8 years as pastor. 184 members from 49 of the churches also provided data regarding the pastor's effectiveness and leadership behaviors. Internal reliabilities on the LPI-Observer were .72 Challenging, .84 Inspiring, .85 Enabling, .82 Modeling, and .89 Encouraging. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass) was also completed.
KEY FINDINGS LPI-Observer and MLQ factors were significantly correlated; and all LPIObserver scores were significantly higher than those found from the normative sample population causing the researcher to caution findings due to possible halo effect and measurement errors (i.e., limited variance and skew of the scores toward maximum values).
The LPI total score explained about 66% of the variance in leader effectiveness (F = 20.2, pp < .0001) and 74% of member satisfaction variance (F = 27.3, p < .0001). No evidence to support hypothesis about gains in transformational leadership through passive leadership training, or the development of specialized ministries within the church and transformational leadership, or between transformational leadership and church planting success.