Testing Servant Leader Development in Student Life Workshops at Maranatha Baptist University

December 3, 2025

Testing Servant Leader Development in Student Life Workshops at Maranatha Baptist University

Jeffrey Drost | 2018

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to extend servant leadership theory by exploring the seven virtuous constructs of Patterson’s (2003) theoretical model at Maranatha Baptist University (MBU) and to ascertain if MBU’s Student Life Servant Leadership Workshops (SLW) are effective at bringing about perspective transformation (King, 1998) by focusing specifically on the nurturing and development of Patterson’s seven constructs. Using a pretest/posttest quasi-experimental design with control group (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002), this study used Dennis and Bocarnea’s (2005) Servant Leadership Assessment Instrument (SLAI) to survey students from two samples: (a) residential students who attend the SLW and (b) online students (i.e., the control group) who receive no training on Patterson’s dimensions of love, altruism, humility, vision, trust, empowerment, and service. Data were collected electronically from students before and after the SLW intervention. Partial support of Patterson’s model was found in the SLAI responses for the residential sample among the relationships between love and humility, love and altruism, and empowerment and service. Similarly, partial support was found for Patterson’s model in the SLAI responses for the online sample among the relationships between love and humility, love and altruism, vision and trust and empowerment, and empowerment and service. The independent-samples t tests conducted using students’ paired pretest/posttest responses indicated that the SLW intervention did not produce a statistically significant effect on residential students’ perceptions of their leaders’ servant leader characteristics as measured by the SLAI. The study concludes with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications of not finding support for relationships among the remaining dimensions of Patterson’s model and for the inability of the SLW to produce a statistically significant effect on students’ perceptions of their leaders’ servant leader characteristics along with suggestions for future research. This study makes important contributions to the study of servant leadership theory and perspective transformation.

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