THE EFFECTS OF LEADERSHIP CRISIS ON CHURCH GROWTH: A STUDY OF SOME SELECTED BAPTIST CHURCHES IN THE TAMALE METROPOLIS

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to investigate the effects of leadership crisis on church growth within the two Baptist families that is Ghana Baptist Convention (GBC) and Ghana International Baptist Convention (GIBC) in the Tamale Metropolis. Against the backdrop that leadership crisis has much effects on the growth of a church, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to examine the effects of leadership crisis on church growth among the Baptist churches in the Tamale metropolis. Seven Pastors and four members were interviewed by the researcher in this study. It was noted that the leadership conflict understudy is really present among the Baptist churches in the Tamale Metropolis. The major causes of this conflict in the area were found to be the desire of people to be in top positions, personality clash, lack of proper succession plan, and lack of good communication channels among leaders. The study revealed that some of the effects of leadership conflict on church growth in those Baptist churches among other things are broken relationships, a sense of withdrawal, weak evangelism, reduction in numbers, backsliding in faith and many others. Training of Pastors and leaders has been encouraged in this study to help minimize the level of leadership conflict among the Baptist churches in the Tamale Metropolis and other denominations.