Leadership Styles in Church Administration: A Case of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church - Ghana

The success of a leader depends critically not only on his abilities and skills but also on his own behavior, that is, various actions he takes to influence followers towards the attainment of organizational objectives. It is mandatory on him to create and maintain good work climate in compliance with organizational culture and to the satisfaction of employees.According to Jon and Dan (2006), many of us have known poor leaders who promote their own image by taking credit for work done by others, selfish, inconsiderate, or tyrannical with followers, or who are unfair, dishonest, and threatened by competence of people. There have been allegations that some men and women of God in church leadership positions do not offer enough to create good work environment in our conferences, missions, hospital, schools and other SDA (Seventh - day Adventist) church institutions. This study seeks to identify the leadership styles practiced by the Seventh-day Adventist Church Leaders.A descriptive survey was used to conduct the study. This design was used considering the nature of the study as a qualitative study and all employees and officers in SDA Conferences and Mission, schools, hospitals, church districts and some selected workers from ADRA(Adventist Relief Agency) constituted the target population. The convenience sampling technique was used to select the respondents. The study revealed that a cumulative percent of 84.70 of the respondents agreed that leaders in the church and church institutions exhibit leaders’ reward/punishment strategies than all the other leadership styles. This was followed by laissez faire leadership style with a cumulative percentage of 76.06 of the respondents agreeing to that fact. Charismatic, directive and participative leadership styles follow in downward succession. Supportive and servant leadership styles happened to be the least leadership styles exhibited by these leaders. A cumulative percentage of 62.28 of the respondents agreed that their leaders have good work relationship with them. It is recommended that SDA Church Leaders need to reduce domineering attitude and cleaving to power. They should also practice more servant leadership and improve work relations