The Performance of Learning Tasks by the Church Session: Implications from the Literature on

The parish administrative board--the Session--is an interactional group according to the operational definition as advanced by Gibb, Proshansky and Seidenberg. As a group it shares relatively common religious and moral values, as well as institutional goals. The perimeters of the Session's group life are clearly, if not legalistically, defined by the constitution of the United Presbyterian Church. Prescriptions for study are not so clearly spelled out, although the Session's willingness to study is assumed by the national church boards and agencies. Does the minister's style of leadership and the Session's task-orientation effect the board's functioning as a learning group? In this paper, an effort is made to find answers to some of these questions from the literature of small group research. Two hypotheses were advanced: (1) Administrativ2 groups are differentiated from learning groups primarily by styles of leadership and group tasks and goals; and G