Abstract

Various institutions around the globe subscribe to democratic principles in their transactions because they believe that democratic practices would be conducive to their survival and progress. However, the moment the concept democracy is mentioned, our minds go to the political administrative and legal processes that inform governance in different countries of the world. Nevertheless, this chapter underscores the importance of democracy in non-purely political institutions such as large church bureaucracies. War, which is “politics by other means” began in heaven according to Revelation 12:7-9. So politics entered the cosmos as a result of offence against God’s moral law. The church is God’s appointed agency for the salvation of men. It was organized for service, and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world. But due to organizational complexity, accretion in numbers, geographical spread, cultural diversity and doctrinal compromise, the church is witnessing internal crises that makes it look like ordinary political party. In this circumstance, the church is in utter need for servant leaders who spiritually report to God directly and administratively to the entire body of Christ. The Seventh - day Adventist church was used to illustrate the effort of church government to achieve democratized and decentralized governance. This was shown by the way the church mobilized and selected leadership that run her institutions and establishments in two hundred and fifteen (215) countries of the world. The study is essentially qualitative as it depended on the secondary sources of data; and sought to integrate faith with learning. This study found that rather than democracy and political correctness, ultimately, solution to the problem of church government is Jesus Christ Himself who had promised the disciples that the “gates of Hades will not overcome” his Church (Matt. 16:18). To a varying degree, this study is a fusion of descriptive, analytical, observatory and historical perspectives. Any researcher on society whose epistemology is fundamentally a-historical, is myopic (Nwachukwu, 2010). This approach which integrates faith and learning also gives a religious as well as political interpretation to history. It helps to contemplate the past, understand the present, as well as forecast the trajectory of church governance. Therefore, our secondary sources include text books, journals, archival materials, the Holy Bible and official church documents. The Seventh-Day Adventist church was used as an example of a church attempting to achieve a democratic church governance.