Leadership Styles and Church Performance; A Survey of Protestant Churches in Ongata Rongai

Abstract

Several churches around the world have experienced performance challenges because of factors such as lack of good leadership, lack of resources, poor vision, poor communication, and difficultly to access to the youth which have made it difficult for churches to grow their membership. The general objective of this research was to assess the influence of leadership styles on church performance in Protestant churches in Ongata Rongai. The study specifically focused on studying the influence of the transformational and transactional leadership styles on church performance by viewing church performance from the angle of church membership retention and church membership growth. This study is a survey that used the correlational research design to collect data from 256 respondents who were church members from five selected Protestant churches in Ongata Rongai. The data collected was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social sciences (SPSS) version 23 and the research results revealed that church leaders in Protestant churches in Ongata Rongai use both the transformational and the transactional leadership style. The research results also indicated that the transformational leadership style has a positive but weak influence on church performance while the transactional leadership style has a positive and strong influence on church performance. The study recommended that church leaders incorporate more transactional practices in their leadership and that churches invest in capacity building of their leaders. Keywords: Transformational leadership, Transactional leadership style, Performance & Churches