Pastoral Leadership Styles and Church Growth in Mombasa County, Kenya

Abstract

This study examined the effect of pastoral leadership styles on church growth in Mombasa County, Kenya. Specifically, the study sought to examine the effect of transformational leadership, servant leadership, ethical leadership, and strategic leadership styles on church growth in Mombasa County, Kenya. Drawing from the positivism research philosophy, the study was guided by the quantitative non-experimental research methodology. The study was anchored on the correlational research design for data analysis and adopted the cross-sectional survey research design for data collection. The stratified random sampling technique was used to select a sample size of160 from a target population 267 churches in Mombasa County, Kenya. The church was the unit of analysis, while unit of observation was the pastor in charge of the church. A pilot study was carried out to establish the validity and reliability of the data collection instrument with a pilot trial sample size of 32 churches in Mombasa County in Kenya. The pilot study results revealed that the scale of this study passed the validity test and passed the reliability test. A cross-sectional survey-based approach was used to collect primary data using a structured questionnaire anchored on a five-point Likert scale. The study utilized the drop and pick method to distribute 160 survey questionnaires to the sampled churches in Mombasa County, Kenya. Out of the 160 survey questionnaires distributed, only 107 valid responses were obtained, translating to a valid response rate of 66.89%, which was adequate for data processing and analysis. The collected data was processed and entered into the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 26 to create a data sheet for analysis. Descriptive statistics were calculated to summarize the data in respect to each variable. The Pearson's product moment correlation analysis test was performed to ascertain whether there were significant relationships between the pastoral leadership styles and church growth. From the results, the transformational, servant, ethical, and strategic leadership styles had strong significant relationship with church growth in Mombasa County, Kenya. Multiple regression analysis was used for hypotheses testing at 5% level of significance and 95% confidence level, while F-statistic was used to test the significance of the model. The study provided empirical evidence that posits that transformational leadership, servant leadership, ethical leadership, and strategic leadership styles positively and significantly predict church growth in Mombasa County, Kenya.