text: Malphurs does an excellent job of laying out the strategic planning process step by step and in great detail.  I really appreciated the fact that he takes into account things like church patriarchs/matriarchs and other church dynamics that are often not addressed practically in ministry books.  He almost makes the process seem easy, and maybe it is, IF you are starting a new church or are in the very early stages of a church plant.  However, much of the material seems practically impossible to implement in a "plateau'ed" or "downward spiraling" church that has been around for 100 years.  The principles are easy and make sense IF you have 100% support of the congregation.  That's pretty hard to do in most of the churches I've been in that need strategic planning the most.   That's no fault of Malphurs; the book itself is a great book
  