Advanced Strategic Planning: A New Model for Church and Ministry Leaders

Malphurs guides the novice or the pro toward a more clear and practical understanding of Strategic Planning with this "how to" guide. Designed as an overview of Strategic Planning, Malphurs leads a church leadership team through the steps. Although our church board did not benefit much from the "nuts and bolts" of room set-up and brainstorming techniques, we found Malphurs step-by-step guide of values, mission, and vision to be just what the Holy Spirit has been guiding us to consider. This resource has been most helpful alongside of our own study in God's Holy Scriptures concerning the focus and work of the local church.

Malphur's book is great - it puts everything together: values, mission, vision, finance, staffing, goals & objectives, evaluation. One could follow his book chapter by chapter and develop a strategic plan that can serve as the foundation for a focused, growing ministry.

Aubrey Malphurs, author of many books on parish leadership and strategy, is a professor of Pastoral Ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary and is also the president of the Malphurs Group (a training and consulting firm for churches). "Advanced Strategic Planning" is a book that seeks to assist a congregation to move from a stage of stagnation and plateaued growth to a period of change and revitalization. Malphurs's introduction lays out his belief that all institutions essentially operate on a bell curve (aka "sigmoid curve" or "s-curve"), that an institution begins and experiences rapid growth in virtually all dimensions, then begins establishing routines, the routines entrench themselves and become a source of comfot to those in the organization, then the institution declines and dies. Malphurs argues that institutions (and especially the church) should, as soon as they recognize plateau, should re-invent or re-structure themselves to experience a new period of significant growth. This necessitates the re-invention and re-structuring of countless aspects of church life and organization. "Advanced Strategic Planning" takes a church through the change process in a step-by-step manner. Throughout the book, Malphurs draws upon his wealth of experience as a pastor, interim pastor, professor, and consultant to take a church through the strategic revitalization process. He addresses many pitfalls and stagnation traps, reasserts the importance of following through on the process, and pastorally encourages the church leaders to carry on. He stresses the distinctions between values, missions, and functions in a helpful way. Most valuable for this reader, he spends much time defining and showing the importance of communicating a vision. The unhelpful aspects of this book are few, but include the following: Malphurs gravitates toward writing for the larger, wealthier parish and tends. The result is that smaller, financially strapped congregations may not get as much out of this book. Also, my parish operates a day-school and I had trouble applying some of Malphur's advice to my particular situation. However, these criticism are (admittedly) minor and should not detract you from reading this book. I recommend this book for pastors, parish leaders, and others in a position to move their religious-based organization form stagnation to revitalization.

I've read some of the negative reviews listed for this title, and I must strongly disagree. Malphurs' work here is the best treatment of strategic planning for churches I have found to date. In place of the term "advanced" in the title, a better word would be "comprehensive." Nonetheless, Malphurs here provides a handbook addressing church planning that is unrivaled today in breadth and insight. As a pastor of twenty years, I wish this book had been available when I first started in ministry. I hope this title is now offered in many seminaries, because its content would be a gold mine for young, soon-to-be church leaders. Pastors, church staff members, and lay leaders, this volume is a must-have. In my opinion, it is required reading for anyone involved in church leadership.

As a consultant to churches in the area of strategic church planning and leadership development this book is one of the best on the subject. If your church wants to get re-focused and re-energized for ministry a comprehensive planning process is a must. This book will help guide you through the process. Malphurs suggestions for facilitating planning sessions, i.e. storyboarding, workouts, etc., is worth the price of the book. See our web site for a strategic planning bundle with recommended books and resources for faciliting a planning process in your local church.