Program

Doctor of Ministry

Year Approved

2015

First Advisor

Klem, Herbet

Abstract

This project addressed the moral leadership crises among the evangelical churches of Kenya. Evangelicalism is the fastest growing religious movement in Kenya, a country that already has Africa’s largest percentage of evangelicals overall. This makes it imperative to promote authentic leadership in Kenyan churches. But the concept of leadership development there is overlooked, and as a result churches suffer from a lack of authentic leaders. In this vacuum, Kenyan churches are heavily influenced by traditional African leadership models that can be authoritarian, hereditary, and overwhelmingly corrupt. The latest Corruption Perception Index of 2013, launched by the global agency of Transparency International, ranked Kenya at a position of 136 out of 177 countries and territories surveyed. This means that Kenya is considered to have among the top most corrupted leadership in the world, and its churches has been blindly following suit. This has disastrous consequences for the Kenyan church, as Massoud Omar has warned, “the evil of corruption transcends Christian and secular boundaries. Thus, if the church is not spiritually active it can stifle its spiritual reproduction and fruit-bearing among Christians.” To address this crisis, the researcher has proposed a transferable model for developing leaders who value the characteristics of an authentic leader and are willing to work at accountability to develop those characteristics. This model is based on the researcher’s mixed method, qualitative research study, using grounded theory, in which the case studies of followers are analyzed to understand their perspectives of their leaders’ success in practicing authentic leadership. The researcher will use this model to better train authentic Kenyan leaders through his non-profit organization, Transitional Leader Development.

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry

Document Type

Doctoral thesis

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