Clergy--Performance standards

Ronnie L. Stanley Jr. D.Min.

As early as the 1980s, church growth specialists began to sound an alarm concerning the death, decline, and revitalization of churches. These specialists identified an association between pastoral leadership style, the presence of a compelling vision that identified how the church should look in the future and key actions that would result in the cessation of the decline and initiation of revitalization.

The readers will discover that there is an association between the visionary leadership of the pastor and the principles used to impact at least eight different spheres of the ministry that have been entrusted to him.

This dissertation defined “visionary leadership” as leadership that inspires people to change because of two things: the Senior Pastor’s model and message. The project will examine the role the of selected senior pastors and the impact of their visionary leadership on the revitalization of a declining church.

The primary means of investigation and research in this project was the use of eight case studies of pastors, which will assess their leadership style and its impact on revitalization. Some of these pastors entered their churches more than twenty years ago, and some began three years ago. In each case, their churches have experienced marked growth after a period of decline.

The literature review provided an informed approach to this project by examining sources that explored vision, vision communication, transformational leadership, outreach, assimilation, and church growth.

Ed Johnson III D.Min.

According to this researcher, spiritual health, in the context of the Christian faith, is defined as: living a Christ-like lifestyle in thought, in speech and in actions (2 Tim 2:22; Titus 2:12), repenting and abstaining from personal sin (1 John 1:9; 1 Pet 2:11), and growing in communion, reverence and obedience to God (2 Pet 3:18; 1 Pet 1:2). The thesis of this doctoral dissertation is that there are factors within a church staff culture that impact spiritual health of full-time staff members.

At its core, this researcher posited three hypotheses to determine whether a church staff environment or ethos will positively contribute to the spiritual health of the employees who work therein: (1) An intentional ongoing investment in and evaluation of the spiritual health of staff members, (2) A sustained emphasis on both the relationship and task side of the spectrum in the day-to-day staff operations, and (3) A fundamental and predominate adoption of and alignment with biblical concepts and practices. A case study research method was selected for this project as a viable means by which to test the validity of these hypotheses. It examined the staff culture of three local American churches to analyze the results.

In the estimation of this researcher, numerous churches and pastors do not understand or have yet to realize the influence and impact a workplace culture has on their staff members’ spiritual well-being. Consequently, these types of churches and pastors tend not to have an intentional plan to establish or restructure said culture so that it positively contributes to the spiritual health of the staff. This applied research project seeks to bring awareness to this issue and to provide a way forward for churches and pastors to create, cultivate, and maintain staff cultures that foster spiritual health among their full-time staff members.

Steven Bray D.Min.

The purpose of this Doctor of Ministry project was to create an annual staff development plan for Fountain City Wesleyan Church which focused on both improving effectiveness in performance and encouraging personal, professional and spiritual development. Fountain City Wesleyan is a church of 1000 with nine full-time pastors and ministry directors. The project highlighted the powerful impact of combining goal setting, coaching, and evaluation to develop team members. In addition, the project concluded that high performance expectations can be countered by high care for team members.

This project conducted two case studies of similar churches to Fountain City Wesleyan Church. The project explored the biblical and theological basis for staff development including the identification of twelve biblical principles. The literature review analyzed three components of the annual development plan: crafting an action plan utilizing SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed upon, Relevant and Timed) goals and strategies; regular coaching sessions; and an annual review process to provide additional performance conversation and formal documentation of employee performance.

This plan included a guide to create an action plan each trimester, the implementation schedule for the plan, a model for coaching staff (Connect, Opportunity, Alternatives, Course, Highlights), an annual self-review and performance review. Additionally, supplemental avenues to promote self-care among staff were identified. The final plan, tips and tools for coaching, tools for diagnosing development needs, and the research protocol are noted in the appendices.

Jewel D Williams

This project addressed the need to understand what internal attributes are necessary for the servant leader to exhibit Patterson's seven virtues successfully. The examination of the lives of pastors, leaders, and lay leaders defined as servant leaders based on Patterson's doctoral work, helped in the development of an attribute-driven virtue-focused servant leadership development model. The findings revealed that the necessary steps to the development of the attributes within the leader were: a dependency upon God, having mentors or coaches, building self-awareness and self-development, creating the right environment, and teaching the leader about service.

Larry E Sterling

The purpose of this project was to discover the extent leaders of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) have drifted toward antinomianism. The design of this project was to employ an online survey that utilized a seven point Likert Agreement scale to determine the spiritual condition of the surveyed. The result of the discovery was that the Church of God clergy have an overall compliance factor of 6.03 in their general adherence to the Practical Commitments. The strongest compliance score was 6.34 in regards to the category of Social Obligation, and 5.57 being the weakest in reference to Spiritual Example.

Hong Fu Liu

This research centers on the "three convergent approaches to a harmonious pastoral leadership." When a discrepancy exists between the expectation and understanding of the congregation and her pastor with regard to pastoral leadership ability, disequilibrium and strife will develop friction and tension within the church. This research involves governing principles from psychology, management, pastoral leadership, especially in theocracy study. The result is an accurate, scripture-concordant acknowledgement of the pastoral leadership, which will lead to an effective leadership and a harmonious environment within the church.

Yajaira A Gomez

This thesis reports on the derivation of best practices for my itinerant cross-cultural ministry. The purpose was to improve my cross-cultural itinerant ministry in the three areas of preparing for, administering, and sustaining an itinerant ministry. Using action research, data was collected from interviews with twelve experienced itinerant ministers and mined to derive their best practices. As the research subject, I then applied these identified practices to my itinerant ministry. Using the methods of autoethnography in comparing a pre, mid and post-project qualitative evaluation of myself, the researcher, the outcomes included improvements to my ministry in three areas: preparation, administration, and health.

Heui Chu Tang

The author researched the principles for regimen in ministry, which include to obey the teachings of the Lord, to keep the Sabbath for rest, to appreciate the land prepared by the Lord for worship and service, to fear the Lord in living wisely and other ways to enjoy the wholistic health for humankind.

Brian K Long

This thesis proposed humility to be a foundational virtue capable of enhancing leadership effectiveness. The project studied the effect that a Christian humility cultivation experience might have on leaders' understanding and awareness of the amount of prideful attitudes they exhibit, versus their understanding of humility and the amount of humble attitudes they exhibit. Qualitative feedback gained during the humility cultivation experience, along with self-assessment data, formed a solid basis for evaluating the project's effectiveness. Taken together, results indicate participants clearly experienced heightened awareness of the poisonous effects of pride, arousing their desire to reduce pride by cultivating humility.

James C King

There is a great deal of talk about leadership. There is also a great need for pastoral leadership; this need seems to be increasing. This author, in an attempt to gain a better understanding of what is needed to lead the church within the presbytery he serves, set out to study the pastoral and leadership styles of five colleagues within the presbytery. This author solicited from each participant the biblical role models, the literature, and the people that have most greatly influenced them as a pastoral leader. The goal was to find some patterns and common experiences that lead to successful and lengthy pastorates in Presbyterian congregations in central Pennsylvania.