JUXTAPOSING THE EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP STYLE IN THE CHURCH OF ACTS 15:1-5 WITH THAT OF CHRISTIAN EVANGELICAL CHURCH TODAY

Abstract

This paper focuses on an examination of the Jerusalem Church Leadership style (Acts 15) and its relevance to Christian Evangelical Fellowship of Nigeria (CEFN). It examines church leadership style from the first church to our modern church and an attempt to compare the former and to seek guide for the later. The challenge for the modern church is to look to the Bible for guidance in establishing a scripturally oriented effective leadership structure. Although the difficulty in this is that there seems to be no clear prescriptive pattern of leadership in the New Testament teachings. A better approach is to study the New Testament writings in order to discover what they did and why? From this, the principles that can be applied to our culture and time can be gleaned. A combination of Narrative and Comparative research method will be used in dealing with this topic. This paper has the potential of guiding and synchronizing the modern churches in their choices of leadership pattern and following these biblical principles on leadership we can see a united, strong, and healthy churches emerging in our society.