Leadership style and church membership: The relationship dynamics of churches on the East Coast of the United States

The level of membership or attendance is one way to evaluate the success of the church. There is significant evidence of a decline in church attendance in America. Forty-three pastors associated with the Southern Baptist Convention of Virginia participated in this quantitative study to determine if there was a relationship between leadership style (transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire) and church membership between 2010 and 2014. Leadership style was the independent variable; the mediating variables were the pastor's age, gender, educational background, and tenure. The dependent variable was church membership. The leadership styles were measured by the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio, 2004). The mediating variables and church membership were obtained from the demographic questionnaire. The statistical tests utilized in the study were the Pearson correlation and the multiple linear regression. There were no statistically significant findings between the leadership style and church membership. However, there were significant relationships between the pastor's level of education and church membership and between tenure and church membership.