Abstract / Summary
As Western culture evolves, missionaries from the West are facing new challenges. These challenges can be observed in the North American churches where many of these missionaries were raised. In this study, we seek to understand what the greatest challenges for church leaders (including missionaries) are, how they relate to age, and how this information can benefit missionaries, especially church-planting missionaries. In this study, North American church leaders (N = 347) indicated how great 79 commonly faced challenges were perceived to be, as well as their age and information about their church’s size and growth. A factor analysis reduced these 79 challenges to 16 clusters of challenges. Six of these clusters were related to age. Older leaders found maintaining their mental health, self-management, and church finances less challenging than did younger leaders. The differences in mental health were especially strong. In contrast, younger church leaders found evangelism, creating effective programs, and addressing problems associated with social media use less challenging than did older leaders. Moreover, churches with younger leaders were growing faster than churches with older leaders. The cultural dynamics producing these differences in North American churches are likely to act on missionary teams comprised of North Americans. For older and younger missionaries to benefit from each other’s strengths, it might be beneficial for both older and younger missionaries to form teams together.