THE ROLE OF CHURCH LEADERSHIP IN DRIVING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF NIGERIAN BAPTIST CONVENTION COOPERATIVE PROGRAMMES: INSIGHTS FROM THE IBADAN BAPTIST CONFERENCE

Abstract

The research investigates the vital role of church leadership at every structural level of the Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC), which includes the national Convention, Baptist Conferences, Associations, and Local Baptist Churches alike, to enhance and ensure the efficient functioning of the Cooperative Programme (CP). The CP, which is a covenant relationship and trust-based funding arrangement, relies greatly on leadership factors such as leadership influence, organization clarity, and communication. The research works with existing scholarly contributions (2020–2025) on transformational leadership principles, ethics of stewardship, accounting mechanisms, and congregational contributions to Nigerian Baptist churches, among others, to propose an efficient leadership model that enhances CP cooperation. The proposed model, which is labelled VFSAC (Vision → Formation → Systems → Accountability → Culture), proposes five leadership drivers that are viewed as important factors for efficient cooperation. The application of VFSAC to Ibadan Baptist Conference shows that leadership actions such as vision casting, member development, administrative structure, reporting transparency, and cooperative culture can greatly benefit CP compliance and commitment level. It cannot be overemphasized that when leaders focus on systematically conveying giving theology, demonstrate individual accountability, and convey stories of influencing efforts, congregants' trust and passion for CP can greatly increase. Implementation of these factors within the predefined Ibadan context would mean using GP-level online reporting tools for tracking contributions, providing training programme on capacities for treasurers at their respective churches, arranging transparency phases on quarterly or six-monthly basis to keep leaders and members on track with individual and congregational accountabilities, and implementing stepped goal programme to achieve the recommended 20% CP guideline contribution target.