Strategic Planning for Church Growth: Review of Malphurs
This paper reviews Aubrey Malphurs' Advanced Strategic Planning: A New Model for Church and Ministry Leaders (1999), examining its guidance for churches facing declining or stagnant membership. The review summarizes the book's two-part structure — foundational concepts and a step-by-step planning process — then critiques its strengths and weaknesses, including its practical audit instruments, accessible style, and occasional redundancy. The paper concludes with a personal application of Malphurs' internal analytical framework to a real-world church membership plateau, demonstrating how his organizational, congregational, and outreach audits can inform a concrete growth strategy.
- Introduction: Context for reviewing Malphurs on church strategic planning
- Summary of the Book: Overview of Malphurs' two-part planning framework
- Critique: Strengths and weaknesses of Malphurs' approach
- Application to Ministry Practice: Applying Malphurs' audits to a real church scenario
- References: Source citation for Malphurs' book
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What makes this paper effective
- Follows a clear review structure — summary, critique, application — that demonstrates genuine engagement with the source text rather than surface-level description.
- Balances praise and criticism honestly, acknowledging both the book's practical audit instruments and its repetitive, overly chatty narrative style.
- The application section grounds abstract planning concepts in a specific, real-world congregational scenario, showing how academic frameworks translate to practice.
- Direct quotations from Malphurs are used purposefully throughout to anchor analytical claims.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates evaluative synthesis: rather than simply reporting what Malphurs says, it assesses the utility of his methods (e.g., noting when audit instruments may be "superfluous" for experienced leaders) and maps his framework onto a concrete ministry context. This moves the analysis beyond description toward critical engagement.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a framing introduction that situates the book within the problem of church decline. A detailed summary covers both parts of Malphurs' book, including the role of consultants, team-building, cost concerns, and congregational communication. A focused critique section weighs strengths (audit tools, empirical grounding) against weaknesses (redundancy, oversimplification). The application section lists eleven specific audits drawn directly from Malphurs and ties them to a stated membership-growth goal, closing with an orienting quotation.
Introduction
In an era of declining or stagnant church membership, identifying opportunities to revitalize churches represents a timely and valuable enterprise. To this end, this paper provides a summary, critique, and application of Advanced Strategic Planning: A New Model for Church and Ministry Leaders (1999) by Aubrey Malphurs. A summary of the book's contents is followed by a critique of its messages and an overall evaluation of the work. Finally, the paper offers an application of Malphurs' framework to this writer's own assumed future ministry situation.
When companies face unexpected changes in the marketplace, they are forced to pivot in new directions in order to survive. Malphurs makes the point that unless churches pivot as well — with effective leadership — membership will continue to stagnate and decline. Pivoting is far easier, however, when churches are still active with sustained membership. Churches in a declining phase face far more daunting challenges if they are to survive. In these cases, the strategic planning process can actually revitalize church leaders and help them grow membership once again. Malphurs emphasizes that "the strategic planning process has a way of breathing hope into many who have lost their hope due to the struggles of ministry."1 In too many cases, church leaders lack a strategic vision to guide them from where they are to where they want to be, or they do not know where they want to be in five or ten years in the first place. The importance of effective leadership in the strategic planning process is made clear from the outset: "The key to strategic planning is competent strategic leadership."2
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