Religious Organization Leadership

Religious Organization Leadership

Literature Review

Many Studies have been conducted on the Leadership of Religious Organization. They have studied how it is different from conventional leadership and what are the traits of Religious Leadership.

A religious leader is one who leads a group of two or three people. The leader needs to have a sense of control for the group behavior. The role is like a teacher who has to have control of the group in the classroom. The leader must have some affiliation to the council by giving more security, so that people feel safer. Councils and Assemblies of God and Methodist churches and other councils have to be affiliated with their leaders to avoid bad achievement between groups of councils and standards. It is important for the religious leaders to meet the goals and purposes of religious leadership, which is to set examples for others and bring others on track.

The basic principle of Religion is that it is a collection of traditions, which are designed to guide the social development of a particular group of people within the respective society. The most significant aspect of religion is that it symbolizes the ultimate hope that when someone dies, the universe will provide a spiritual accommodation for their soul. In the field of religions and beliefs, many fruitful future research areas can be found.

Interest in religion/spirituality and counseling has flourished during the past ten to fifteen years. The increased interest within counseling in religion/spirituality has led to several changes across the landscape of the field of counseling. Scholars have conducted numerous studies focused on religion and/or spirituality. In addition, a search of the PsycInfo database reveals an increase in the past ten years in the number of studies, though not focusing exclusively on religion/spirituality include an investigation of religious/spiritual variables. What once appeared to be ignored or perhaps thought to be unimportant is now rapidly gaining acceptance as a meaningful area of research.

An increase in research is not the only change concerning religion/spirituality that has recently occurred in the field of counseling. Many new professional organizations have emerged. And older organizations have seen a tremendous leap in membership in just the past ten years. As just one example, the American Association of Christian Counselors has had an increase from 2.000 members in 1993 to over 24.000 members in 2000. Both the number of counseling workshops concerning religion/spirituality and the number attending workshops has greatly increased of late. Finally, religious doctoral training programs continue to produce large numbers of religious counselors.

Batson, C. D., B. Schoenrade and W. L. Ventis: 1993, Religion and the Individual: A Social-Psychological Perspective (Oxford University Press, Oxford).

One result of the increased emphasis on religion/spirituality in counseling is that the larger number of religious/spiritual counselors are competing with secular counselors for clients. What has this influx of religious/spiritual counselors into the market done to the attitudes of both groups? Numerous surveys have shown that counselors and psychologists are less religious and/or spiritual than their ...