LEAD 620

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY

Book Critique 1
Advanced Strategic Planning by Aubrey Malphurs

Submitted to Instructor Dr. Geg Faulls

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the completion of this course

LEAD 620
Mission, Vision, and Strategic Planning

by
Christopher Callaway Sr.
September 17, 2016

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Book Critique 1 is on Advanced Strategic Planning by Aubrey Malphurs

SUMMARY
It is always refreshing to read the work of a man who loves the local church, and
Aubrey Malphurs, a church planting consultant and Dallas Seminary professor meets that
critera. The whole purpose of this book Advanced Strategic Planning is to help local
churches become healthy and biblical. He hopes to do this through the process of
strategic planning. Malphurs begins Advanced Strategic Palnning by identifying the
following problem, endemic among American churches. The life cycle of many
churches is reflected in what is called a sigmoid curve, or an S-curve, in which a
church begins well, trends up, but evebtually declines. He summarizes the problem by
saying The message or lesson of the simoid curve is that all good things ( and even some
bad things) endEven brand-new institutions and organizations such as a church will, in
time,plateau and then die. No matter what institution it is, organizational dry rot sets in.
The institution because brittle, ceases to function, and expires.1
What is the solution for this sad situation? The church must launch new s-curves2, a
process carried out through the work of strategic planning. In strategic planning, one goes
about discovering your core values; developing a mission, a vision, and a strategy, and
then implementing this knowledge.3 These ideas, presented in the first pages of the
book, form the bulk of Malphurs solution to the problem of church decline. The
following pages of the book use this strategy for improving churches, elucidating in depth
this belief in such ideas as dream planning, vision and mission statements, the
assembling of a ministry dream team, and a Strategic Initiation Team.
1 Malphurs, Aubrey. Advanced Strategic Planning. 3rd. ed. Grand Rapids:Baker, 1999.
2 Ibid, 14
3 Ibid, 14

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Critique
This book had both strengths and weaknesses but overall a very refreshing book to read
with an abudance of good information to help the church grow and no slump downwads
ultimety dieing. Lets face the reality today the church is declining and for the most part it
is due to failed leadership within the church. The most obvious strength of Advanced
Strategic Palnning is the one Already mentioned. Malphurs has a heart for the local
church. He is particulary burdened for the contemporary church, which he likens to a
ship without a compass, drifting aimlessly on the ocean4 This ship is struggling to stay
afloat, buffetedby the winds of change and the currents of postmodernism which
threaten to lead the church even farther off course. The strategic planning process
issimply Malphurss response to this crisis. This heart for the local church shows itself in
numerous place throughout the book and marks it as a text which seeks to be part of the
solution, and not the problem. Malphurs shows a desire for congregational harmony
throughout the book. As you read you can dtect a genuine desire to preserve the unity and
harmony of the churchs fellowship in the midst of the strategic planning process. For
example, in speaking about the necessary communication between pastor and
congregation, Malphurs writes, if you conduct secret meetings and fail to communicate
in general what happens in those meetings, you will not be able to lead the congregation,
because they willnot trust youDuring the strategic planning process, as well as at any
other time, you must communicate, communicate, and then communicate some more.5
Such advice shows clear concern for the harmony of the body. Malphurs evinces care for
the churches that seeks to assist. Malphurs does a great job using biblical doctrine to
4 Ibid, 31
5 Ibid, 63

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further support his claims he grounds his call for strategic planning in the Bible. Before
he lays out the various suggested steps for strategic planning, he offers an 11 page section
on the spiritual principles that must undergird the planning process.6 Malphurs uses
simple but very important steps each one grounded in scripture. Examples of this include
Malphurs call for church discipline, as well as an encouragement to the congregation to
submit to the churchs leadership. In each of these matters, as in others, Malphurs seeks
to ground the planning process in scriptural principle and godly behavior.
As discussed earlier although the overall substance of this book is a must read and must
have for ministry leaders there are some weaknesses I must point out. In general It seems
that malphurs places too much value in strategic planning. He seems to regard it as the
principal means by which struggling churches may be saved from dissolution. Some
measure of strategic planning can be helpful. For eample, Malphurss exhortation to
pastors to think through the identity of their church and the people they are targeting is
excellent. With this noted, I think Malphurs overestimates the value of strategic planning.
The more important part of the health of the local church in my humble opinion depends
more on its preaching of the word, its exercise of the ordinances, and its cultivation of
healthy body life and evangelistic outreach. There is a place for strategic planning at the
institutional level, however many churches have not even thought about their purpose and
their mission, and such thinking can do much to revive tired congregations. That said,
Malphurss model focuses to much on the church as an institution and not enough on the
church as family,the flock, or bridegroom of god. This overly institutional focus leads
toan institutional solution for the churchs problems. This solution, in turn, leads us away
from the plain biblical means of church health and growth. Malphurs encourages the
6 Ibid, 79-90

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church to evaluate itself, which in itself is a healthy idea. His form of measurement,
however, is concerning. Evaluation takes place according to PIs, performance
indicators that reveal the churchs progress towards its goals. For example,one might
evaluate the effectiveness of a seeker service by the number of baptisms, or the
effectiveness of personal evangelism by the number of professions of faith.7 Numbers
may reflect the blessing of God on our ministry, and they also reflect other realities. Our
numbers may be high because ourdoctrine is shallow and easy to stomach. Our
evangelism may appear frutful because our evangelistic program goes soft on hell and
perseverance. Isnt it better to evaluate ones church accoding to its faithfulness to
scripture?
Application
In the midst of reading and completing this book its hard for someone like me to apply
this great resource to a church or my ministry leadership since I am not yet in a church
leadership copasity yet. However from a leadership standpoint and ministry standpoint I
would have to say that this book does help with my future goals, and gain better
understanding of how important the strategic planning is in the churches growth, stability,
and outreach. The 5 phases of strategic planning helps breakdown a model of how to plan
and execute a strategic plan for a church or any leadership in ministry. In executing a
strategic plan I would practice plug and play if you will. Action items are plans that set
specific actions that lead to implementing your goals. Action items are basically a to do
list for each of my goals. It will involve listing out the concrete steps that you need to
accomplish in order for the church to reach its goals. An action plan will explain who is
going to do what, by when, and in what order for the church to reach its goals. The design
7 Ibid, 307

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and implementation of the action planning will depend on the nature and needs of my
local church. To ensure implementation of action items, it is important to assign
responsibility and deadlines. A great method to assign each goal to a board member, staff,
or volunteer. Ask him or her to write the action plan and be responsible for making sure
each task is accomplished. Another method I might try is to identify all the actions that
need to occur in the next ninety days. Then I would just continue this same process every
ninety-day increment until the goal is achieved. When writing my action items I will look
at What are we going to do in the next 90, 60, 30 days to work towards this goal? I
think this process would really help the church actually do what it plans to do. Short
achievable goals. Without it, the vision strategy will remain only so many words on a
piece of paper. As it was said earlier, it includes formulating implementation goals,
determining priorities, assigning persons to implement certain goals etc.

Bibliography
Malphurs, Aubrey. Advanced Strategic Planning. 3rd. ed. Grand Rapids:Baker, 1999.