The Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship (The Fellowship) is a Christian movement which provides networking and support to a consortium of churches (primarily from the Baptist tradition). The Fellowship believes in the modem day existence and expression of spiritual gifts given by the Holy Spirit. This research seeks to use The Fellowship as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness of Polarity Management (PM) as a supplemental tool by extracting from the PM mapping process explicit operational principles for The Fellowship. Furthermore, this project will present the polarity organizational structure of The Fellowship thereby identifying it as a Polarity Organization (PO).
This research will implement the PM mapping process to extract implicit operational principles of The Fellowship. Greater certainty will help ensure continuity in decision making throughout the varying tiers of leadership. Key stakeholders will be identified and engaged to become sponsors who will be active research participants. They will participate in a series of meetings/conversations to learn, develop, implement, and evaluate PM as a way to extract operational principles for each of their areas.
Other hopes for this research are to provide mainline denominations evidence that other organizational models are options to be considered for their modified incorporation to address generational gaps and declining/stagnant membership. Evaluation of this research will consist of the development of an operational principles document and pre/post surveys.
