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Review Summary: Practical Help for Casting a Vision |
Date: 2008-10-19 |
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Details: Aubrey Malphurs' book Advanced Strategic Planning (already in its second edition) offers sound, practical advice to pastors seeking to chart out a strategic plan for healthy growth. As professor of pastoral ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary, Malphurs has experience teaching pastors to think strategically, and this book serves as a textbook for students who want to avoid the plateaus and valleys of church life. Malphurs is also the president of a consulting organization that helps identify weaknesses in churches and pushes them to implement changes that might help them grow again.
There is much to be commended in Malphurs' book. He recommends the adoption of mission and vision statements for churches. He helps churches discover their core values. He understands that churches will look different in varying contexts. He communicates the value of professionalism and excellence in ministry undertakings. He offers helpful instruction for evaluating the ministry, and he affirms the necessity of church discipline.
Malphurs' book is very practical. Malphurs does not seek to back up every practice he condones with biblical support. He is clearly pragmatic at times in areas he believes the Bible does not specify a certain procedure. One glaring exception is his advice to avoid putting older men and women on leadership teams or committees. How that follows Paul's advice to have the older mentoring the younger is beyond me! But aside from that, Malphurs does offer good, helpful principles for thinking strategically in churches today.
I recommend that pastors take Malphurs' book, glean insight from his experience, and begin moving their churches forward with a strong sense of God-given direction. |
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Review Summary: Practical Strategic Planning |
Date: 2008-04-09 |
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Details: 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. |
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Review Summary: Great book that puts strategic planning all together! |
Date: 2008-04-01 |
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Details: 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. |
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Review Summary: Nuts and Bolts of the Ministry |
Date: 2007-04-10 |
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Details: This volume offers the basics of the Christian ministry. You would learn the basics of how to do ministry, but you must be critical in your reading. I used this volume for a seminary class. |
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Review Summary: Practical Church Leadership Resource |
Date: 2007-02-01 |
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Details: 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. |
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out of 15 Reviews
