Character for Leadership
40
the church serves the church’s ends when it helps the community to order its life
for ministry” (Campbell, 1992, p. 6).
Greenleaf (1998), seeing the magnitude of developing transformational and
servant leadership qualities in religious leaders, leveled
the responsibility for the
transformation of society upon seminaries. Seminaries play a key role in the
development of clergy (leaders) for churches and denominations. It is these
churches and denominations that then have a responsibility to minister to the world
in which we live. Therefore, the issue of leadership
development is of special
importance to institutions of theological education. In particular, the evaluation of
their graduates is crucial in order to insure that these graduates mirror the values
that must be present to promote the transformation of individuals and society. “If
this vision [of personal development to then meet the needs of society] is to be
achieved, a process that has to do with the being—the character—of
students and
graduates is required” (Hardman-Cromwell, 1993, p. 26).
Spiritual formation programs are often curricular component designed to
address the spiritual life and character development of seminary students.
Spiritual formation is a matter to be considered in the context of moral
[character] formation not only because the two cannot be separated but also
because failure on the part of the theological school or the student to attend
to the spiritual life undermines the authenticity of ministry. (Campbell,
1992, p. 18)
In addition to programs of spiritual formation
that generally address the
character development of participants, Hillman (2004) demonstrated that students
who are currently involved in some ministry leadership activities had the greatest
propensity for displaying effective leadership behaviors. Such current ministry
involvement is an important component in the process
of transferring theory into
practice and positively affecting the leadership development process. It is likely
that the character of those involved in such ministry activities is different than that
of uninvolved students. What is unknown is whether the character precedes and
leads to involvement in ministry or ministry involvement promotes character
development.
Character for Leadership
41
H
7
:
Leaders exhibit effective visionary leadership behaviors based on
their current level of involvement in a ministry capacity.
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