Influence of Leadership Style On Church Growth: Perspectives of the Youth of Pentecostal Assemblies of God kariobangi District,Kenya

Abstract

Many churches today are declining instead of growing; with only one-third of people under age 30 attending worship services regularly, and less than half consider religion to be important to their lives. This problem is blamed on the leadership style of the church leaders with little supporting empirical evidence. The general objective of the study was to determine the effect of leadership style on church growth of the youth of selected PAG churches in Kariobangi District. Descriptive research design was 4ed. The study targeted 42 Assemblies with a population of approximately 756 church workers excluding the rest of congregants. A total of 76 respondents were drawn from a stratified sample of 4 local churches in the district. From each of the 4 assemblies the respondents included 3 pastors, 3 church elders, 3 youth leaders and 10 congregants between the ages of 18 to 29 years. Data was collected by administering a questionnaire and analysed using percentages, frequencies and measures of central tendencies and dispersion such as mean and standard deviation. The major findings were that peers and friends had the greatest influence of youth church attendance, followed by influence of parents, then church doctrines and their sense of identity in the church. Majority of the respondents strongly agreed that there was a manifestation of the practice of transformational leadership, servant leadership, participative leadership, charismatic leadership and spiritual leadership styles. These collectively contributed to numeric and spiritual growth of the youth in church as well as their active participation. From this study, a full range leadership framework for holistic church growth is proposed. A similar study could be conducted in other districts in order to determine whether the findings would be consistent across the PAG fraternity. Other areas that influence church growth that may be the subject of further research inquiry include: the influence of peers and friends, parents, church doctrine and sense of identity in the church.