Effective discipleship through spiritual leadership mentoring

Abstract

The problem outlined in this thesis is that not a sufficient number of leaders who understand

holistic relational discipleship, and/or know how to apply its principles to the typical local Seventh- day Adventist Church in the selection of congregations in the Transvaal Conference (now known as

the Northern Conference of South Africa). The underlying assumption was that traditional congregations in the administrative territory of the Transvaal Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (Administrative office for a small to large cluster of local congregations in a geographical territory) were not fulfilling their potential in discipling according to New Testament principles. The thesis shifts from the pastoral paradigm to the more inclusive ‘priesthood of the laity’ paradigm where, not only the pastor, but also elders and the church board leaders play a key role in shaping the missional life of the congregation. The paper concludes with a proposal to disciple leaders through a process of spiritual leadership mentoring, which ultimately will lead to a process of ongoing renewal within the local congregation. The term leaders generically apply to all church board members in the local congregation, who typically consists of elders and other administrative and ministry leaders. The research hypothesis suggests that local congregational leaders have not been adequately equipped for their Biblical function of making disciples, possibly as a result of the lack of effective spiritual leadership mentoring processes, from the congregational level and supported from the Conference level. The result is that the congregation struggles to make self-reproducing disciples, that in turn make other disciples. The second chapter provides a practical theological framework, the third chapter focuses more on building up the local church. The fourth chapter explores the concept of spiritual leadership mentoring. The fifth chapter progresses to the empirical research based on the quantitative model, and the final chapter provides some proposals. The empirical anonymous quantitative survey was the tool used to collect data from respondents that enabled the testing of the hypothesis, and analysis done using the statistical methodology from the department of statistics. The aim of the questionnaire was to discover the understanding of discipleship and mentoring amongst the leaders, where their time was spent predominantly, and how many made use of training opportunities, and how many were actively mentoring others for leadership. Twenty two congregations were targeted within the administrative territory of the Transvaal Conference of Seventh-day Adventists with 215 questionnaires collected from 349. The hypothesis was verified and initial proposals or interventions put forward on how to navigate this challenge.