Conspectus, vol. 10.pdf - South African Theological Seminary

Scarborough, ‘Christian Transformational Leadership’
and ability to strategize guarantee that he or she will be influential
(or transformational) to achieve shared goals. 17
With a definition now in hand, it should be helpful, in conclusion, to
sketch just why a definition of Christian Transformational Leadership
should be important. That is, it would be in the interests of further
research to sketch its possible application.
7. Application of the Definition
There are at least three major reasons why a definition of Christian
Transformational Leadership should be important.
Firstly, in recent decades, semantic critique has grown in importance,
not least through the popularity of the method of deconstruction. This
may rely heavily on the definition of terms (Blackburn 2005:90), and
provides a powerful means of analysis (Scarborough 2009:3). With this
in mind, a definition of Christian Transformational Leadership would
represent an important starting point for semantic critique.
Secondly, dropout from Christian ministry (which is an important
aspect of Christian leadership) is very high—up to 95 percent. 18 The
selected literature repeatedly points to a high dropout from Christian
leadership in general (e.g. Blackaby and Blackaby 2001:19, 45, 230;
CSwinton 1989:328, 356; Gibbs 2005:19). Christian Transformational
Leadership exists within this context, and its presence is not small, as
17
Again, the term ‘transformational’ is merely used for context here. The term
‘influence’ is preferred, because it is far more common in the literature.
18
According to Chun (2007:2), dropout in the USA may be as high as ninety-five
percent, while Gibbs (2005:79) gives a figure of fifty percent dropout from localchurch
ministry in the USA during the first ten years. If dropout should remain
constant over the duration of ministry, Gibbs comes to within two percent of Chun.
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