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A NEW PARADIGM OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN THE CHURCH OF GOD MISSION INTERNATIONAL

Inakpenu Habib, Usman

[Thesis]. Manchester, UK: The University of Manchester; 2014.

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Abstract

This research explores leadership development in the Church of God Mission International (CGMi), Nigeria, from its beginnings in 1968 to date, and the leadership challenges of the future of the Church. The thesis examines the charisms of leadership in Benson Idahosa’s life as the founder of the movement, and subsequent developments – its expansion and emergence as a major Pentecostal denomination. A biographical narrative of Benson Idahosa’s ministry along with a historiographical account of CGMi, up to the present time of transition from a charismatic missional movement to a more settled institutional denomination. This narrative raises the primary research question: Can the charism of the founder be continued in CGMi as a more settled Church? The thesis is an interdisciplinary study that brings together Church leadership, missiology and Pentecostal studies with the sociology of routinization in order to explore the importance, aspirations and reality of leadership in a mission movement turned settled Church. This analysis reveals a leadership tension situated in the struggle between charismatic and institutional emphases. The sociology of routinization is used to interpret the current state of CGMi as a Church in transition, reflected in the changing nature of leadership. It is argued that a more settled institutional approach to leadership is currently steering CGMi, which may divert the Church from its original charismatic and missional emphasis. The thesis offers a challenge to the sociological inevitability of routinization, by exploring a theological approach to leadership renewal guided by the charism of the founder. The concept of leadership renewal provides a framework for discernment by distinguishing between the essential and non-essential elements of the founder’s charism. This also requires discernment about the transmission or non-transmission of those elements in order to meet the contemporary demands of the Church, while preserving the original essence of the movement. It is argued that a theology of leadership renewal is needed in order to provide a corrective measure to the pressures of institutionalisation, through a charismatic emphasis on leadership development. The aim of the thesis, therefore, is to propose a theology of leadership renewal, fit for the future of the Church, in which the charismatic and institutional dimensions work cooperatively, and without collapsing the tension that exists between them.