Third-wave missionary leaders in contemporary Yakland: an analysis of six malfeasance and leadership formation cases using a maturity-support approach

The thesis presents my Maturity Quotient Model (MQM) for refining J. Robert Clinton’s Leadership Emergence Theory through microscopically analysing the function of ‘leaders response’ during malfeasance. My central argument is that it is possible to analyse, pre-empt, and remedy missionary leaders’ malfeasance in their leadership formation. The first part of the thesis presents the research’s raison d'être, clarifies the meaning of ‘Yakland’, and argues that missionaries there have to inherit the unfavourable historical biases left by their predecessors, and that their leaders’ malfeasance aggravates such negative views of them. The second part (1) presents my research findings and methodology for focusing on ‘maturity’ and ‘support levels’ to examine missionary leaders’ malfeasance, and (2) shows the identifiability and analysability of holistic maturity using the works of Frankl, Samra, Erikson, Kao, the Via Triplex, and mathematical formulation. The third part demonstrates that the lack of a suitable leadership model to examine the missionary malfeasance has necessitated the development of the MQM as the theoretical and practical framework for this research. The last part presents my research findings. Of a sample of 76 active missionaries surveyed in Yakland in 2015, 76% reported malfeasance. MQ score to some degree predicted which of these missionaries were malfeasant. Support Level was not a significant predictor of malfeasance. While the MQ score gave an indication of who was at risk of malfeasance, its predictive power was inadequate for it to be used as a tool for reliably identifying malfeasance either on its own or in combination with support level. Missionaries in the Immature Phase, not the hypothesised Maturing Phase, are more vulnerable to malfeasance; and malfeasance becomes markedly less likely at the watershed phase of fdMg (MQ>0.5971). Thus there is an argument that churches and mission agencies should be less concerned about the alpha and beta missionary leaders in the field and keep a closer watch on delta and gamma leaders who are more likely to jeopardise the mission enterprise, themselves and others. Stronger conclusions cannot be drawn because of the limited predictive power of the MQM.