Present Leadership And Attrition Of Waterbury Memorial Telugu Baptist Church At Perambur: A Case Study

INTRODUCTION

Waterbury Memorial Telugu Baptist Church at Perambur is the first Telugu church in Chennai. Missionary Norman Mather Waterbury was as a missionary to India by American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. He arrived at Perambur with his wife in November 1881 and started working among the Telugu speaking population residing in the area. They concentrated on the well-being of laborers, who got opportunity to learn and master Telugu language within five years and authored about five books in that language. Unfortunately in 1886 November 11, Waterbury died and it was on that day fixed for dedicating the new Church building which is called Waterbury Memorial Telugu Baptist Church at Perambur ((“City’s First Telugu Baptist Church Is 125
There are many Baptist church leaders failed to understand their leadership responsibilities. Past few years many Baptist churches in Chennai had raised lot of problems with present Leadership and attritions of both leaders and members. Because of it there are many believers departed from the church fellowship and seek different denominations for worship. If this continues in Baptist churches in Chennai in near future the churches may vanish or may not be actively involved in ministry. So this concerns the researcher to find out the attrition of present leadership and attrition of believers among Telugu Baptist churches in Chennai in order to prevent and strengthen the
Pastors of the most of the Baptist churches are acting as puppets by the elders’ board, there is no unity within the church leaders, there is no uplifting of widows by the church board, there is split within the leaders for position, some elders withdraw from the church leadership position and started new churches for the sake of position etc. All these things led the believers in Telugu Baptist churches go away and seek different denominations to attend the worship