Church planting is the best solution to the current state of the church in America – a church in crisis – according to Aubrey Malphurs in his book The Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting: a Guide for Starting Any Kind of Church. The book aims to be a guide for church planting in general, without being tied to any specific model; instead of providing a model, it provides a four-step process for planning a new church.
The four parts of the author’s process are:
- Core values, which make clear the reason the church does what it does.
- Mission, which dictates the new ministry’s direction.
- Vision, which is a clear picture of God’s future for the church as the church planter believes it can be.
- Strategy, which defines how the new ministry will deal with outreach, disciple making, team building, location and facilities, and finances.
In the field of strategic planning, core values generally indicate how the organisation does things (e.g. creativity, excellence, co-operation), not the actual activities that the organisation undertakes. I was therefore surprised to see the author describing the primary activities of the early church (evangelism, instruction, fellowship, worship and service or ministry) as “core values”. It seems to me that there is value in a church prioritising the order of importance of its activities, but on a conventional understanding of the terminology, that is not a feature of core values.
The author draws an interesting distinction between a “purpose” and a “mission”. In conventional strategic planning, the expressions “purpose statement” and “mission statement” are often used interchangeably, but here the author argues that mission is narrower than purpose. The purpose is the reason that the church exists, while the mission is what the church is supposed to be doing. The purpose of the church is to glorify God whereas the mission of the church is to make disciples.
In addition to describing the four-step process, the book contains chapters on church planter profiles, new church funding, and foundational assumptions, and numerous resources ranging from a spiritual gifts inventory to sample vision statements are provided in appendices.
By the end of the book it seemed to me that what the author has actually provided is a guide to strategic planning for a new church, rather than a guide to the nuts and bolts of church planting. Although the book aims to cater for any type of new church, it clearly does not cater for the types of new churches which are started spontaneously without any formal strategic planning.
The Kindle edition of the book is missing a table of contents, which makes it difficult to navigate.
Notwithstanding the minor reservations expressed above, in my view the book is a very useful tool for church planters.