Setting the Strategic Direction and it’s Influence on Church Growth in Kenya

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine how the setting of the church’s strategic direction influences the infrastructural growth of the church in Kenya. As known, great organizations are crystal clear about where they are going, why they are going there, how they will get there and the rules of the journey (also called the strategic direction). According to the conventional textbook wisdom, the setting of an organization’s strategic direction is done by leaders at the strategic level of the organization, and is then cascaded down through the rest of the organization. Views of customers, employees and other stakeholders may be taken into account but it is in essence a top-down process. The setting of an organization’s strategic direction entails mapping of the strategy, which refers to the strategic objectives, success measures, strategy to achieve these objectives and internal strategy to build the organizational capacity needed to implement the strategy, which are the leadership, staff, systems and processes, financial resources and infrastructure, and institutional competencies.

This was a descriptive research in which both quantitative and qualitative data was collected. The study population comprised of one hundred and twenty six (126) Bishops and four thousand, six hundred and sixty seven (4667) clergy serving with the five major Christian denominations in Kenya, namely, the Roman Catholic Church (R.C.C), the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK), the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA), the African Inland Church and the Methodist Church in Kenya (MCK).  A Stratified random sampling technique was used to choose a sample size of 95 bishops and 368 clergy drawn from the five churches. The data collection tool used was a self-administered structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were presented in the form of frequency distributions, means and pie charts, while factor analysis, correlations, chi square, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and regressions were used to present inferential statistics. Regression was used to test the hypothesis. The data was analyzed using the statistical program for social sciences (SPSS) as a tool.

A regression analysis which was done to determine the relationship between setting the strategic direction and the church’s infrastructural growth had a strong correlation. In the model summary, R² is 0.673 which indicates that the setting of the church’s strategic direction causes a 67% variation in the infrastructural growth of the church. On the other hand, the ANOVA tests showed a regression of less than 0.05, which was significant and which established that the setting of the church’s strategic direction has a significant influence on the infrastructural growth of the church. The study concluded that the determination of the church’s strategic direction positively influences its infrastructural growth and recommends further studies to determine the different leadership styles that are key in ensuring sustainable growth of the church and faith-based organizations in general.