Unlike assigned leadership in which leadership is granted to someone who holds a certain position of power, emergent leadership occurs when someone becomes an influential member of a group or organization without previously holding a formal position of power. For people of faith who find themselves as part of a minority culture, this type of emergent leadership is always necessary for the practice of their beliefs. By using the book of Daniel as a case study, this paper will show how people of faith within a minority culture can emerge as influential members of the organizations and communities that they find themselves a part of.
The example of Daniel shows what it is like to be faithful to God when part of a minority group culturally and spiritually. The evaluation within this paper will compare Daniel’s emergent leadership with the same emergent leadership of evangelicals who find themselves as racial, national, cultural, and spiritual minorities. This paper characterizes the role of the minority leader through the lens of three questions: First, what identifies the individual or group as a minority within the culture? Second, what identifies the individual or group as an emergent leader within the culture? Third, what was, or could be, the God-honoring result of their emergent leadership as a minority within the culture? These questions will be answered by analyzing the book of Daniel, chapters one through seven, using the prophet Daniel as an example of this type of emergent leadership as part of a minority culture. The previous work on emergent leadership by Aubrey Fisher, Jeffrey Smith, and Roseanne Foti will be utilized to explain how Daniel’s engagement while under Babylon and Persia followed the pattern of emergent leadership. The conclusion of this paper will offer guidance for evangelicals as they seek to become emergent leaders within the communities that God has placed them to serve in.