African Christian Leadership: Realities, Opportunities, and Impact Edited by Robert J. Priest and Kirimi Barine

African Christian Leadership: Realities, Opportunities, and Impact

Edited by Robert J. Priest and Kirimi Barine

Orbis Books, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-1626982420

320 pages

USD $34.00

Reviewed by Timothy D. Stabell, adjunct professor of mission, Briercrest College and Seminary, Caronport, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Evangelical Christianity’s explosive growth on much of the African continent cannot be fully understood without paying attention to the leaders God has used to bring this about. The present book breaks ground in the study of leadership in African churches by building on a foundation of extensive empirical research. This research was conducted by a team of trained social scientists, scholars from major African Evangelical theological institutions, and key African church leaders. The study made careful use of both quantitative and qualitative methods: an initial survey administered to over 8,000 participants was followed-up by extensive interviews with a few key local leaders. Care was taken to ensure that African leaders were at the center of the whole process of designing, administering, analyzing, and presenting the findings.

In order to keep the project to manageable proportions, the Africa Leadership Study (ALS) team restricted research to three countries, one representing each of the three major official languages of the continent: Kenya was chosen to represent English-speaking countries, Central African Republic for French, and Angola for Portuguese. Several thousand active Christians in each country were then invited to take a survey that probed their experience of positive Christian leadership. Among other questions, participants were asked to identify the Christian leader who had had the greatest impact in their lives. Respondents thus identified a number of key local leaders, who were then interviewed individually in greater depth.

In this way, the ALS team gathered a significant amount of data for the analysis presented in this book. After an initial chapter describing the purpose of the study and the research methodology, subsequent chapters discuss the different themes that emerged from the team’s analysis of the data. These include findings about the character of leaders identified by survey respondents, insights into the kind of training that shaped them, the importance of “social capital” to successful leadership, the role of leaders in times of war, the place of various Christian organizations and their role in socioeconomic development, and the growing importance of women leaders. One element explored in the survey, with surprising results, was the place of books in the lives of Christians and Christian leaders in Africa. The implications of all these findings for leadership training are presented in another important chapter.

It should be noted as well that the ALS team has made the data, along with other resources, available for use by other scholars (at www.africaleadershipstudy.org). They explicitly acknowledge the limitations of their study and express the hope that others will build on the work that they have begun. One would hope, too, that this study would provide impetus for biblical and theological reflection on themes in Christian leadership at a deeper level than was possible in this book, given its primary and worthy goal of presenting the results of empirical research. 

For Further Reading

Bonk, Jonathan J., Dana Robert, and Lamin Sanneh, eds. Dictionary of African Christian Biography, Boston, MA: Center for Global Christianity and Mission. Available online at https://dacb.org

Osei-Mensah, Gottfried. 1996. Wanted: Servant Leaders: The Challenge of Christian Leadership in Africa Today. Accra, Ghana: Africa Christian Press.