God's middle managers calling - leadership key to success

TAKEN as a marketing proposition, institutional Christianity in Australia can boast some strong brands, personal as well as corporate. Peter Jensen and George Pell, for example, are so well known it is hardly necessary to report they are respectively the Anglican and Catholic archbishops of Sydney: their power is local, national and, within their denominations, global.

Evangelicalism is less understood, but it is the theological subgroup of Christianity recording the best growth within and between denominations, and includes Pentecostal churches such as Hillsong.

The churches are backed by financial assets such as property and investments, and large and powerful welfare networks that do plenty of good. There are schools that turn out the next generations of the religiously literate, if not the personally committed.

Reluctant to blame the product - after all, who can complain about Jesus Christ? - the churches are checking out the delivery systems and finding them wanting.

Because although there are bright spots, they are in stark contrast to the surrounding overcast landscape's emptying churches and ageing ministers and congregations. And while there has been a lot of talk about mission - the core business of maximising converts to Christianity - the crux of the mission is the person at the top: leadership was the key word for 2006. Read more