Although wavering personal commitment to a local body of believers has been a concern of Christian leaders since New Testament times, increasing individualism and other cultural changes are affecting individual Christians’ commitment to their churches in new ways. This study examines church commitment using the multidimensional construct of organizational commitment to examine characteristics of churches, church leaders, and church members that may influence such commitment. Specifically, church size, perceptions of pastoral humility, church tenure (the time one has attended a church), age, and gender are considered as possible predictors of church commitment. This commitment is measured as affective commitment (one’s emotional attachment to the church), continuation commitment (the felt-need to stay at the church), and normative commitment (one’s belief that staying at the church is the right thing to do). In a study of evangelical Christians in the U.S. (N = 244), a regression analysis indicates that higher affective commitment is associated with perceptions of greater pastoral humility and member tenure. Continuation commitment decreases as church size goes up. Higher normative commitment is associated with perceptions of greater pastoral humility, smaller churches, and longer member tenure. Overall, higher church commitment is best predicted by perceptions of pastoral humility, then by tenure and church size, with larger churches having less committed attenders. No significant differences in church commitment were associated with age or gender.
Voluntary organizations, which differ from other organizations in the way they reward and retain members, can easily suffer setbacks from a loss of membership. Poorly managed conflict is often a source of attrition. This study examined the relationship between personality, conflict styles, and membership duration of people (N = 431) who attend or have attended churches (primarily Protestant churches), the most common form of voluntary association in America. Most of the Big 5 personality traits significantly predicted conflict styles and/or membership duration. Extraversion predicted higher preferences for collaboration and lower preferences for avoidance. Agreeableness predicted higher preferences for collaboration and accommodation, lower preferences for competition, and longer membership durations. Conscientiousness predicted higher preferences for collaboration and lower preferences for avoidance. Neuroticism predicted higher preferences for avoidance and lower preferences for collaboration and competition. Openness predicted shorter membership durations. The relationships between conflict styles and membership duration were less clear.
Media richness, the degree to which a specific media transmits information in multiple channels, is an important concept as the number of available multimedia communication methods increases regularly. Individuals differ in their preferences for media richness which may influence their choice of communication multimedia in a given situation. These preferences can influence how successful their communication efforts will be. This exploratory study of 299 adults (ages 16–84) with at least a basic ability to compute examines the relationship between multimedia preference and age, gender, and personality traits. Males and people with higher levels of extraversion and agreeableness were found to have a higher preference for media richness. Age was not a significant predictor of media richness preference.
were not achieved. Each participant read a series of three scenarios involving the different types of social goals. For each of the three scenarios, they imagined how satisfied they would be with two different outcomes. In the first outcome, in addition to achieving or not achieving their content goal (depending on the condition), they did not achieve the social goal that was made
Interpersonal conflict among missionaries is a major factor contributing to missionary attrition. This paper examines two approaches to resolving conflict, one focusing on mandatory submission to authority and the other focusing on fostering cooperation between the parties in conflict. Both biblical and empirical evidence suggest that cooperation is usually the best option. Although the submission approach is often viewed as biblical, it represents a shallow understanding of the complete biblical picture and a naïve and overly optimistic view of human nature. The cooperation approach better incorporates the biblical principles of servant leadership, mutual submission, and seeking one another’s interests. Empirical evidence suggests that organizations such as mission agencies may be more effective if they adopt an approach fostering cooperation as an organizational norm. Research on power and its abuse may be used to motivate missionaries to voluntarily limit their hierarchical power in order to better love and serve others. Viewing conflict as a decision making process can enable missionaries and mission organizations to more effectively find ways to minister and achieve their goals, including evangelism and church planting.
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