Leadership South: Older Congregants Boost Growth

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Older Congregants Boost Growth

I am doing a deconstructionist critique of Christian transformational leadership. Among other things, this means that I study the footnotes. Here’s a particularly interesting one from Eddie Gibbs (Gibbs E 2005:200). He writes: “In a personal email [Peter Brierley] writes, ‘Your comment that churches making a significant impact among under 35-year-olds needing folk in the 70+ category was proved by our research from the 1998 English Church Attendance Survey in a report we wrote in collaboration with Springboard called Growing Churches in the 1990s. We found [that] 42 percent of churches grew when 25 percent of their attenders were 65+, the highest percentage of any age mix.’” QUESTION: What would older congregants do for growth? And how would one effectively accommodate them with under 35-year-olds?

2 comments:

Candice said...: Footnotes are sometimes the best part :); July 6, 2010 at 2:33 PM
Thomas O. Scarborough said...: Thanks Candice. Not least the ones that undermine the rest of what the author says. :-); July 11, 2010 at 4:14 PM

Post a Comment

Welcome

Again and again I have heard that access to Christian leadership thinking in the Global South is awkward. Not only is it hard to obtain the materials, but they are relatively few, and often they are published in languages other than English. Often, also, seminaries in the Global South will not use home-grown materials, but will import books from the Global North, teaching them in the context of their own Global South ethos. But apart from this, there is a real problem of parochialism in the Global North. If you are a seminary student in the Global North, take a look at your required reading. It is likely that 90-100% originates in the Global North.

I have served in leadership at local, regional, national, and international levels, with varied experience. I recently completed an MTh at the South African Theological Seminary in Johannesburg, and an MA at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California -- both in the fields of Christian leadership. When I started this blog, I considered that, being in the middle of my research, I could share some of the ideas and issues I am working through -- and perhaps engender some discussion.

In my experience, I would consider that the views of this blog are typically Global South. I consider that my colleagues in ministry would share many of these views. However, it stands to reason that this will not be so in every case.

I have used abbreviated references in some posts (e.g. Jinkins M 2002:23), which refers to the author, initial(s), year of publication, and page. In most cases, this should be sufficient for readers to locate the source.