Relating religious leaders’ personality, leadership style, and emotional intelligence to member assessments of church vitality: A multidimensional approach

This study reports a multidimensional approach to assessing religious leadership, combining leadership assessments made by 22 church leaders with 2819 vitality ratings from members of the associated Protestant churches in the Netherlands who participated in the National Church Life Survey. The multilevel analyses indicated leaders’ personality as the single predictor of church vitality, with lower leader scores on neuroticism resulting in more positive member evaluations. No significant associations were found between leaders’ transformational leadership, servant leadership, emotional intelligence, and member ratings of church vitality in the multilevel statistical model. Furthermore, a discrepancy was observed between the self-assessments of religious leaders and the evaluations made by their congregants, suggesting that self-perceived leadership effectiveness may not align with members’ perceptions. We elaborate on the lessons these findings teach us regarding assessing and mapping religious leadership effectiveness and highlight the importance of a multidimensional approach utilizing multi-source data and multilevel statistical modeling.