Transformational Leadership Theory for Leadership in Missions?
Leadership is important. Christian missions needs a philosophically sound, biblically grounded, and anthropologically informed leadership theory. This research on Bass’ transformational leadership resulted in three implications for leadership in
missions.
First, leaders in mission need a biblically based theory of leadership. Bass’
transformational leadership is clearly not suitable for missions leadership in its current form. This research concludes that transformational leadership theory can be a reasonable basis for leadership in missions, but only with an explicitly theological foundation and clear biblical guidelines in the theory’s teleological, ontological, authority, and ethic aspects. Transformational leadership for missions must be reformulated to meet these vital requirements.
Second, researchers in this field of study need a systematic approach to leadership theory in order to achieve the biblically based leadership theory argued for above. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of this research was that I did not have a road- map to guide the research. Missiological thinking about leadership often begins in the Bible, but such efforts tend to produce character studies or anecdotal descriptions of
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favorite leadership practices instead of comprehensive leadership theories.6 Missions leaders need a process to effectively study leadership from philosophical, theological, and cultural-anthropological perspectives. I submit the two typologies presented in this
research, Hofstede’s six dimensions of national cultures, and the road-map displayed in Figure 6 as a path to this end.
Figure 6. A roadmap to missiological thinking about leadership
Third, researchers and leaders in missions need a theology of leadership.
Leadership theory for missions must be examined and modified by leadership themes or
6Mark Green articulates four reasons behind the difficulty of extracting a leadership theory from the Apostle Paul’s ministry as reported in the Bible. First, leadership is a new field of study and was certainly conceived of differently two millennia ago. Second, Paul’s leadership style changed over time as he grew as a leader. This change is no doubt true for all leaders in the Bible. Third, a limited volume of source material is available for study, especially when trying to study the leadership of any single individual in the Bible. Finally, researchers cannot fully appreciate the culture of the specific contexts to which Paul wrote. Mark Green et al., “Assessing the Leadership Style of Paul and Cultural Congruence of the Christian Community at Corinth Using Project GLOBE Constructs,” Journal of Biblical Perspectives in Leadership 2, no. 2 (2009): 4–5. Similar difficulties hinder the study of leadership from any biblical character. Because of these difficulties, missions leaders do well to start from contemporary leadership theories and submit them to theological scrutiny.
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principles drawn from the Bible. Any missions leadership theory or practice should be defined from a clearly theological perspective. In order for such an examination and modification to occur, researchers and missions leaders require a theology of leadership in missions.
Areas for Future Research
The field of missions leadership will benefit from further research in missions leadership. A survey of current missions leadership practices would be helpful. The state of missions leadership throughout the globe is not clear. Associated with the status of missions leadership is the field of leadership training. Who is receiving what kind of training in leadership within the realm of missions?
A missiological analysis of leadership theories currently in use by missions leaders and agencies would be beneficial. Servant Leadership, in its many varieties, is a worthy starting place. Other kinds of leadership theory to consider are Christian trait leadership, moral leadership, martyrologial leadership, and spiritual leadership.
Theology of missions leadership needs further study. Galen Jones’s PhD dissertation on servant leadership provides an excellent ontology of the biblical leader.7 Perhaps the most comprehensive biblical theology of leadership to date is Don Howell’s Servant of the Servant.8 Working from Howell’s work, one could derive biblical
leadership themes or extend his work into a theory for leadership.
This study presented and applied two new typologies for leadership—one for leadership theory and one for teleology of leadership—both of these typologies should be scrutinized further. In like manner, the usefulness of Hofstede’s dimensions of culture in
7Galen Wendell Jones, “A Theological Comparison between Social Science Models and a Biblical Perspective of Servant Leadership” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2012), 51–67.
8Don Howell, Servants of the Servant: A Biblical Theology of Leadership (Eugene, OR: Wipf
& Stock Publishers, 2003).
186 missions contexts will make a fascinating study.
Summary
The purpose of this study was to describe transformational leadership theory and analyze it from a missiological perspective. Therefore, this research has a three-fold conclusion. First, Bass’ leadership theory is a well-developed, theoretically-sound, extensively-tested, theory that fulfills Peter Northouse’s definition of leadership:
“Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal.”9 Transformational leadership passes the first missiological test of a sound theory.
Second, Bass’ theory does not, however, meet the necessary requirements of a biblically-sound theory for missions. This researcher concludes that the gaps between Bass’ theory and biblical leadership themes are too great to ignore. The discontinuity between transformational leadership theory and biblical theology is not beyond repair.
The key aspect and element of Bass’ theory can be re-defined and given a fresh biblical basis and expression such that a transformational leadership for missions is achievable.
Third, Bass' transformational leadership theory has been tested in many intercultural environments with positive results. The cultural-anthropological analysis of this researcher concludes that Bass’ theory is a variform universal—applicable in most cultural contexts but with possibly significant mediations, modifications, and
moderations. Therefore, any leader attempting to use Bass’ transformational leadership in intercultural contexts must understand and account for these changes.
The above assessment begs the question, so what? Scholars and practitioners of leadership in Christian missions need to think and, subsequently, lead with greater attention to the philosophical, theological and cultural anthropological assumptions that
9Peter G. Northouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice, 6th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2012), 5.