A Sustainable Vision: The Importance of Leadership Succession in Perpetuating an Institution's Legac

Throughout church history, Christians institutions, organizations and churches have often abandoned their original theological foundations. This dissertation focuses on the role leaders play in that recurring phenomenon. Maintaining the philosophical and theological integrity of institutions depends on the diligence of the leadership to develop an established, functional succession process capable of preserving their original intent. By following a case study methodology, this research seeks to trace common elements contributing to institutional drift. Three case studies provide the data for comparative analysis of causal narrative to explore what factors contributed to similar outcomes in each case.;Data gathered about the church in Ephesus in the first century, and the Free Church of Scotland and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the nineteenth century reveal a common phenomenon, institutional drift. The research design selected to examine this data is Comparative-Historical Analysis (CHA). CHA uses a causal narrative approach to discover principles and theories that are unique to a particular case (ideographic discoveries) as well as those that offer generalizations across cases ( nomothetic discoveries).;The thesis of this dissertation asserts that responsible and effective leaders invest wisely in the future of their institutions by establishing clear succession processes sufficient to uphold a consistent commitment to their values and beliefs for generations to come. In each of the three case studies, within forty to fifty years successors to the founding leaders did not sustain the vision or the values upon which the institutions were founded.;The data in each case study reveals that the founders clearly stated their beliefs specifying what they intended for the institution to become and remain. Yet all of their successors took liberties and laid aside those beliefs and replaced them with their own.;Although leaders cannot guarantee what course their successors will follow after they pass from the scene, reliable predictions about the future disposition of their institutions tend to follow common patterns. Evidence from each case study in this research shows that deviations from the doctrinal convictions of the founders resulted in unintended and unanticipated outcomes. Therefore, this paper suggests that institutional leaders who desire to leave a lasting legacy need to heighten their efforts to establish 1) what they believe to be inviolable truth; 2) how it must be transmitted from one generation of leaders to the next; 3) what the successor selection process requires to insure compliance with those truths; 4) what measures of integrity need to be in place to find trustworthy successors; and 5) how institutional leaders should respond when essential beliefs come under attack.;This dissertation seeks to understand how leaders of Christian institutions can pass on their legacy intact from one generation to the next and maintain the integrity of their initial vision for the institution.