Effect of Leadership Style and Audit Assessment on Church Spendings: A Comparative Analysis of Selected Orthodox and Pentecostal Churches in Ekiti State

The study examined the effect of leadership style and audit assessment on church spending of selected Orthodox and Pentecostal churches in Ekiti State. In particular, it examines how autocratic and democratic leadership style affect church spending, the role of auditors in checking and controlling church spending, and evaluates how the mediating role of auditors on the correlation between leadership style and church spending. The research design was a descriptive survey, and the purposive sampling sample was 377 active members across the selected Orthodox and Pentecostal churches in Ado Ekiti local government area in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Structured questionnaires were used to obtain data, which were further analyzed under descriptive statistics, linear regression, and the Sobel test of mediation at 5% level of significance and an independent sample t-test. The results obtained shows a positive but statistically insignificant impact of autocratic leadership style on the church spending is significant (β = 0.672, p = 0.064), and positive but statistically significant effect of democratic leadership style on the church spending is also significant (β = 0.742, p = 0.022). The auditors role was also discovered to be a critical factor in promoting transparency and accountability with β = 0.811 and p = 0.028 found to influence the church spending, and the Sobel test outcomes proved that the auditors played a critical role in influencing the leadership style and the church spending (Sobel Z = 3.05). The study revealed that there is no significant difference in the church spending practices between Orthodox and Pentecostal churches in Ekiti State. Hence, the study concludes that inclusive leadership and active auditing practices are critical to effective financial management in churches. Correspondingly, it was recommended that democratic methods of leadership, improvement of auditing roles, and increased cooperation between the leadership and auditors be adopted as a way of promoting accountability, responsible use of resources and governance of finances.