Church Consulting Firms Compared (2026)

Church consulting firms do three different jobs, and a church of 200 or more usually needs one of them at a time. Strategy and church health firms like The Unstuck Group, Auxano, and Church Answers help you set direction. Staffing firms like Vanderbloemen and Slingshot Group help you hire, and capital campaign firms like INJOY Stewardship Solutions and Generis help you fund a vision. Two of the 11 firms below publish a price. Church Answers lists virtual consultations starting at $6,000, $8,000, or $12,000 depending on attendance, and The Malphurs Group sells its church health assessment for $99. The other nine quote after a conversation.

Church Consulting Firms at a Glance

How I Chose

Every firm detail below comes from that firm’s own website, checked on September 25, 2026. I left out third-party estimates of what any single firm charges.

REACHRIGHT is a church marketing agency, not a consulting firm. We build church websites and run church marketing, including Google Ad Grants, local SEO, and social media. We don’t sell consulting, and I’m not offering REACHRIGHT as an alternative to any firm on this list. I’m also the executive pastor of a church of about 300 in Hawaii Kai, and I report to our lead pastor and church council. So I read these firms’ pages the way you will, as the person who has to explain the invoice to a board.

Three Kinds of Church Consulting Firms

Name the job before you call anyone. The firms on this list solve different problems, and each group sells a different kind of engagement.

The lines blur at the edges. Vanderbloemen runs a staff and culture consulting line beside its search business, Center for Healthy Churches handles pastor search along with strategy, and Auxano sells a Generous Church Accelerator. I placed each firm in the group that matches its main focus and called out the overlap in its entry.

If the gap is new people finding your church, that’s marketing work, and it belongs to a different category from everything on this page. My list of church marketing agencies covers that job.

Church Consulting Firms Compared

Two of the 11 firms publish a price. Church Answers lists its virtual consultations by attendance, and The Malphurs Group lists its $99 church health assessment. The other nine quote after a call. Quote-only pricing is the norm on this list, so treat it as your first question for the call rather than a strike against the firm.

“Not stated” means the firm’s own pages didn’t give a size range. Ask on the call before you assume a firm fits a church your size.

Strategy, Growth, and Church Health Firms

These seven firms help you decide where your church is going and how to get there. Most of them start with some kind of assessment and end with a plan. They differ in how much help they give you once the plan is written.

1. The Unstuck Group

Pick The Unstuck Group when you want a full strategic plan and outside help carrying it out. The work runs in two phases. Planning covers the first 90 days, with three on-site facilitated visits and reports on your ministry health, staffing, and structure. Activation starts in month four and adds quarterly check-ins, coaching, and support while you execute.

The firm calls its method the Unstuck Process: assess, plan, structure, then execute and align. It says it serves “churches of all sizes,” from under 200 to more than 20,000, and its homepage cites 800+ churches served. Unstuck doesn’t publish a consulting price. The one price on its homepage is $49 a month for its Resource Hub membership, and that’s a resource subscription, separate from consulting.

The three on-site visits are the reason I’d put Unstuck first on a shortlist for a staff team that plans better in a room than on a video call.

2. Auxano

Auxano works on vision clarity, leadership alignment, growth strategy, and generosity culture. It sells that work as six named offerings it calls Accelerators: Church Growth, Ministry Focus, Vision Planning, Leadership Alignment, Healthy Culture, and Generous Church.

Auxano describes its method as “clarity processes.” It works with individual churches and with church networks, and it runs a certification and training track. It states no size threshold and publishes no price.

Look at Auxano when your leaders can’t describe where the church is headed in the same words. The Generous Church Accelerator also puts Auxano in the generosity conversation, so a church planning a campaign can weigh it against INJOY and Generis below.

3. Ministry Architects

Ministry Architects offers broad church consulting plus tracks for specific ministries: youth, young adult, children’s, and worship, along with staffing. Its process has three steps: a Deep Listening Assessment, a Customized Blueprint, and Strategic Implementation. It doesn’t name a trademarked framework beyond those steps.

The firm says it has served 1,000+ churches and organizations across denominations and has 70+ consultants. It states no size floor, and pricing is quote only.

Ministry Architects fits a church whose overall direction is sound but where one ministry area needs rebuilding. A church of 200+ with a strong Sunday and a thin student ministry is the kind of problem those ministry tracks are built for.

4. Church Answers

Church Answers publishes more pricing detail than any other firm on this list. It prices its consultations by church size, scope, and timeline. Virtual consultations start at $6,000 for churches under 200 in attendance, $8,000 for churches of 200 to 499, and $12,000 for churches over 500. In-person work requires a custom quote.

The model leans on research and diagnosis. An engagement can include statistical analysis, Know Your Church and Know Your Community surveys, a leadership self-assessment, budget benchmarking, and a facility and website assessment. Zoom sessions handle the kickoff, the feedback, and the close-out, and you get a written report at the end. The work runs three months to a year.

Church Answers describes a three-part approach that connects community data, congregational assessment, and leadership evaluation. It says it serves churches “of all sizes,” from small churches to megachurches, and its price tiers follow attendance. For a church of about 300 like ours, the $8,000 starting price gives your council a floor before anyone books a sales call. Ask what scope would raise it.

5. The Malphurs Group

The Malphurs Group is a nonprofit that works on strategic planning, ministry health assessment, leadership pipeline, and pastoral coaching. Its Church Ministry Analysis 2.0 (CMA) assessment costs $99.

For that $99, you get one-on-one onboarding with a Guide, online data collection across six health areas (mission, values, discipleship, vision, strategy, and leadership), a custom report, and a virtual consultation to review the findings. The price covers the assessment only. The site doesn’t price full multi-month consulting engagements.

The Malphurs Group presents its nonprofit model as donor-subsidized. The CMA page doesn’t state a client size.

At $99, the CMA is a low-risk way to put real data in front of your leadership team before you commit to a larger engagement with anyone.

6. Barna Group

Barna Group brings its research work into consulting. Its church consulting covers vision clarity, congregational and community assessment, leadership development and transitions, generational dynamics, decisions about joining or leaving a denomination, and facility and financial assessment. It also offers custom research studies, organizational consulting, speaking, and Barna Polls.

Barna references “proprietary diagnostics” and a “nationally recognized research tool” for leadership assessment, without naming either one publicly. It says it has served thousands of local churches and hundreds of businesses and nonprofits, and that it works with a limited number of churches each year. Pricing is quote only.

Bring Barna in when your board wants hard data on its congregation and community before it approves a direction. Because it limits how many churches it takes, ask about availability early.

7. Center for Healthy Churches

Center for Healthy Churches focuses on pastor transitions, including interim placement, along with strategy, conflict transformation, coaching, and mission studies. Its services include pastor search consultation, interim placement, vision and strategy development, conflict resolution, clergy coaching and training, and organizational assessments.

It works in a formal partnership with PneuMatrix, a separate consulting group with Presbyterian ties, and the two share a pool of consultants for pastor searches, transitions, and conflict work. Its testimonials also name INGRAINED, a congregational engagement tool. It publishes no price, but it says its “financial model is affordable and available to all congregations and clergy.” Its testimonials come from Baptist and Presbyterian churches, and it doesn’t state a size range.

Center for Healthy Churches pairs interim pastor placement with pastor search. Call it when your senior pastor is leaving and you need an interim and a search at the same time.

Staffing and Executive Search Firms

Staffing and search firms fill roles. For a church of 200+, that usually means a senior pastor, an executive pastor, or another key staff hire. I cover both of these firms alongside five other options in my church staffing services roundup, so the entries below stay on what matters for a consulting decision. If you’re hiring for my role, start with this executive pastor job description before you call a search firm.

8. Vanderbloemen

Vanderbloemen runs executive search for senior pastors, executive pastors, nonprofit CEOs, school heads, and C-suite roles. It also runs a Staff and Culture Consulting line covering succession, staff and culture consulting, and onboarding coaching. That culture work is why it belongs on a consulting list.

Vanderbloemen says it has 16+ years in culture consulting and that “3,500+ Churches Trust Us Worldwide.” It serves churches from multisite congregations to growing ministries, plus nonprofits, schools, and values-based businesses. Its searches follow a 7-stage Executive Search Process: Launch Meeting, Search Profile, Search Begins, Research, Presentation, Selection, and Guarantee. It describes culture fit as a “DNA match.”

Neither the executive search pages nor the consulting pages state a fee structure, so pricing is quote only.

9. Slingshot Group

Slingshot Group pairs staffing search with leadership coaching and consulting. It runs searches for hiring organizations, places candidates, and coaches teams on development, onboarding, leaders in transition, and succession.

It doesn’t name a framework. Client testimonials on its site call its process “as thorough as it is personal” and credit it with taking the time to understand a church’s culture. Testimonials range from community churches to mission organizations, it states no size floor, and it publishes no figures.

If you want the same firm to fill a role and then coach the new hire and the team around them through onboarding, Slingshot is set up for both.

Capital Campaign and Generosity Firms

Campaign firms help you raise money above your regular giving for a specific vision, like a building, debt payoff, or a new campus. If you want to understand how a campaign works before you hire help, read my guide to running a church capital campaign first. It walks through the plan, the feasibility work, and the launch.

10. INJOY Stewardship Solutions

INJOY Stewardship Solutions lists six solution categories: church capital campaigns, school capital campaigns, annual giving programs, personal finance education, financial analysis, and planned giving. It emphasizes customization and doesn’t name a framework. Its process centers on financial analysis plus a customized campaign design.

INJOY says it has served 5,000+ churches, that 100,000 new givers have participated, and that it has helped raise $4.5 billion. The client logos on its site are large, established churches, including Elevation, NewSpring, Redeemer, and Connexus, though it states no size threshold. Pricing is quote only.

It also offers a downloadable resource titled “10 Questions you should ask your campaign partner.” Whichever firm you end up hiring, go into campaign calls with your own written questions.

11. Generis

Generis ties its generosity work to discipleship. A client testimonial on its site praises “the Generis philosophy of fundraising being about discipleship before it is about money.” Its work spans generosity culture, capital campaigns, stewardship development, and donor engagement.

Generis says it has completed 4,950 consulting engagements, served 3,444 unique organizations, and impacted “over 4.7 million people.” It serves churches, Christian schools, universities, seminaries, and faith-based nonprofits, with virtual and in-person advisory, strategic planning, and assessments. Its 5-phase Generis Process runs Discover, Evaluate, Construct, Guide, and Celebrate. Pricing requires a discovery call.

If you worry a campaign will feel like a sales pitch from the stage, the discipleship framing is the reason to put Generis on your shortlist next to INJOY.

What These Firms Won’t Tell You Until You Call

Nine of these 11 firms keep their price behind a call, which makes the first conversation the place to get the details. Walk in with your questions written down.

A consultant’s plan works only if your team carries it out, so budget your staff’s time along with the fee. My post on whether church consulting is worth it covers the signs you need outside help, what to look for in a consultant, and how to tell if your team is ready to hear hard feedback.

How to Pick

Start with the job, then the budget:

• If your church needs a full strategic plan and wants people on site, talk to The Unstuck Group.
• If you want a diagnostic with a published starting price you can take to your board today, look at Church Answers.
• If you want data before you commit to a bigger engagement, start with The Malphurs Group’s $99 CMA assessment.
• If one ministry area has stalled, call Ministry Architects.
• If your senior pastor is leaving, talk to Center for Healthy Churches about an interim and a search.
• If you need to hire a senior or executive pastor, compare Vanderbloemen and Slingshot Group.
• If you’re planning a capital campaign, get proposals from INJOY and Generis and compare them side by side.

Whoever you call, get the full cost and the timeline in writing before you sign anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do church consulting firms charge?

Two of the 11 firms on this list publish prices. Church Answers’ virtual consultations start at $6,000 for churches under 200 in attendance, $8,000 at 200 to 499, and $12,000 over 500, with the final price set by scope and timeline, and it quotes in-person work separately. The Malphurs Group charges $99 for its Church Ministry Analysis assessment and doesn’t price full consulting. The other nine quote after a call.

What's the difference between a church consultant and a church staffing firm?

A church consultant helps you set direction by assessing your church’s health, clarifying vision, and building a plan. A staffing or search firm fills a role. Some firms do both. Vanderbloemen runs a staff and culture consulting line next to its executive search, Slingshot Group pairs search with leadership coaching, and Center for Healthy Churches handles pastor search and interim placement. For more search firms, see my church staffing services list.

How long does church consulting take?

It depends on the firm, so ask every firm for a timeline in writing. The Unstuck Group’s Planning phase covers the first 90 days, and its Activation phase starts in month four with quarterly check-ins. Church Answers engagements run three months to a year. The Malphurs Group’s $99 CMA assessment covers onboarding, online data collection, a custom report, and one virtual consultation.

Which church consulting firms work with large churches?

Several say so on their own sites. The Unstuck Group says it serves churches from under 200 to more than 20,000. Church Answers publishes a virtual tier starting at $12,000 for churches over 500. Vanderbloemen says it serves everything from multisite congregations to growing ministries, and INJOY’s client logos include Elevation, NewSpring, Redeemer, and Connexus.

Do I need a consultant to run a capital campaign?

You can run one yourself, and my church capital campaign guide walks through the plan, the feasibility work, and the launch. A campaign firm adds outside design and financial analysis. INJOY Stewardship Solutions and Generis both run capital campaigns, and Auxano’s Generous Church Accelerator also covers generosity. All three are quote only.

Is church consulting worth it?

It can be, if your team will act on what the consultant finds. A plan nobody implements wastes the fee and your staff’s time. My post on whether church consulting is worth the investment covers the warning signs that you need outside help and what to look for in a consultant before you sign.

Is REACHRIGHT a church consulting firm?

No. REACHRIGHT is a church marketing agency. We build church websites and run church marketing like Google Ad Grants, local SEO, and social media. If your gap is new people finding your church, compare church marketing agencies. For strategy, staffing, or a capital campaign, use one of the firms above.