Group Observation Assignment, Essay Example

In Northeast Ohio there is a church group called the Canaan Free Will Baptist Church.  The beliefs of the Free Will Baptist denomination are slightly different than normal Baptist churches; however, the overall process of bringing individuals to Christ is very similar.  The goals of the church are to help others in need, provide assistance and guidance to people of all backgrounds towards finding their path to God, and the assist those people that have chosen to accept Christ as their savior to lead a life that is worthy of Him.  Just as in every group or organization, there are multiple dynamics that make the Canaan Free Will Baptist Church quite unique and both efficient and inefficient with their resources.  To completely understand the group dynamics, it is important to analyze the group in terms of leadership, organization and structure and the quality of the communication that exists for members of the congregation while being involved with the church.

First of all, leadership is the most important factor that continues to make the Canaan Free Will Baptist church into a successful organization.  Although many people would believe that without a congregation, there would be no church; the pastor of the Canaan Free Will Baptist church does such a phenomenal job that he has continued to increase the size of the congregation through his pastoral actions in the community and the powerful sermons each week.  Reverend Jim McComas has been the main leader of the Canaan Free Will Baptist church for over the last 10 years and saw the congregation move from a small rented venue in Rittman, OH, to a large $100,000 brand new church building that took six years to pay off the loans.  Not only does Reverend McComas preach every Sunday for four different services, but he also has church events on Wednesday and Thursday evenings for different groups within the church.  He provides leadership through interacting with members of the church outside of the services; he visits with local orphanages to preach to young boys and girls; he visits with nursing homes to spread the word of God; and he also travels with a singing group throughout Northeast Ohio and parts of Kentucky and Tennessee to also share God’s word through song.  These acts provide two different styles of leadership.  The first is leadership through his actions and the second is leadership through his words.  He provides leadership to the congregation by showing them how to live a good Christian life that serves God, but he also provides leadership by motivating the church to do good for others.  Similarly, this follows Fiedler’s concept of relationship-motivated leaders because McComas leads through his position and his actions as pastor of the church.

In lieu of the leadership that exists, the Canaan Free Will Baptist church is organized in a particular structure that provides guidance and efficiency for all of the church activities.  First of all, there are appointed members of the Pastoral Staff at the church that are responsible for overseeing multiple different areas of the church’s activities.  First of all, Reverend McComas is the Senior Pastor that oversees the entire message and organization of the church as well as providing top tier leadership for the rest of his staff and the entire congregation.  Next, there exists a reverend for the Nursing Home Ministry, Discipleship Ministry, Soul Winning Ministry, and the Canaan Silvers Ministry.  The Nursing Home Ministry and the Canaan Silvers Ministry are designed to communicate the word of God to elderly individuals, first in nursing homes around the local communities, while the ‘Silvers’ are a church study group for elderly individuals within the congregation to meet every week.  The Discipleship Ministry and Soul Winning Ministry are designed to teach younger church members the word of God as well as interact with different facets of the communities to communicate the church’s message and increase the size of the congregation.  Furthermore, elected officials also serve various positions within Canaan Free Will Baptist.  These positions include secretary, assistant secretary, librarian, deacons, church clerk and many more.  Unlike the appointed positions that are awarded by the Senior Pastor, these positions are voted on by the entire congregation and anyone can be nominated.  Therefore, individuals within the church can have assigned roles or unassigned roles within the church and each have their own specific set of responsibilities to the congregation.

Communication is a large part of the activities that exist within the Canaan Free Will Baptist church to express the message of the church, the word of God, and to achieve the goals of the church as previously stated.  The concept of convergence theory states that individuals with similar needs, values or goals tend to converge to form a single group (Forsyth, 1990, p. 488).  Therefore, the congregation is united in its values and goals and work to provide communication efforts to help achieve the needs of the diverse population.  The bulk of the communication efforts stem from the Sunday and Thursday church services that are given almost every week.  While congregation members can receive this communication if they are present for the service, the church has also provided CD-Rom discs in the church library that are available upon request as well as downloadable files that can be accessed on the church web site through the internet.  Furthermore, for members within the community that would like to stay updated on the church’s activities, a newsletter is mailed out to anyone on their mailing list throughout the nearby communities.  An important activity within the church is to provide announcements and prayer requests in every Sunday bulletin, made up by the Assistant Church Secretary, and a weekly recorded phone message that is sent to all church members through the telephone.  This information is easily accessible to all members of the church, so long as they provide the church with their contact information.

While the church wishes to help provide guidance and assistance to its members for achieving the goals, the church intentionally tries to avoid having the problems that exist whenever groupthink can impact a group.  According to the text, groupthink is a distorted style of thinking that renders group members incapable of making a rational decision (Forsyth, 1990, p. 294).  The goal of the church is to spread God’s word and show people how to live lives that follow the Christianity beliefs of the church.  The goal is not to force church members to believe anything that makes them unable to make a rational decision or think for themselves.  The church purposely avoids making general statements and biases within its messages, which is why it is called “Free Will Baptist” because people should have the free will to choose how to live their lives through Christ.  The quality of the communication is very important because the church is constantly working to provide all people with a pathway towards God.  By accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior, people are able to live higher quality life that helps benefit others and themselves through acts of kindness and generosity.  While the church is a business and needs donations to pay its staff and other bills, the communication presented by the church is never about money.  The quality of the message continues to stay pure and is presented in as efficient a manner as possible to connect with as many types of people as possible.

It is clear that the Canaan Free Will Baptist church is able to utilize multiple group dynamics to provide an efficient and highly productive environment to lead people to God’s word.  Pastor Jim McComas and the appointed and elected staff members provide leadership and role definition for the congregation.  The church is highly organized and structured in a way that all portions of the church message can be communicated to different ethnicities, economic and social backgrounds.  Also, the church intentionally avoids many of the group problems, such as groupthink, in the quest to achieve the goals of the organization.  This task is achieved through the excellent quality of the communication for all members of the congregation as well as the members of the local communities.

References

CanaanFWB.org. (n.d.). Canaan free will baptist church. Retrieved from http://www.canaanfwb.org/index.htm

Forsyth, D.R. (1990). Group dynamics, second edition. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.