ACTION:
Examine with
your congregation the demographics of the community you consider your area of
ministry. You should be able to find demographic resources available in several
formats and in several places.
The Bureau of Census
has a website that is available to all free of charge: http://www.census.gov. Here you can
get the least expensive and most comprehensive information by census tract, zip
code, town, city or state. You need a little patience, at first experimenting
with various options at one’s disposal. The census data is displayed either in
city, suburb, town, or census-tract figures. You can copy the list and paste it
into your word processor. As you examine the list of categories, decide which
of them best inform you about your community.
Many denominations
have research departments that will send out demographic work-ups of specific
radii surrounding your church. All you need to do is to call and request the
material, or do it online.
Here are a few
additional resources:
There are
companies, like GeoLytics, Inc. (Google demographics), who offer demographic
services for a fee. These companies are able to give you the traditional
numbers and percentages of various ethnic/age/economic groups living within one,
two, and three miles of a church. In addition, they also provide a wide range
of probable lifestyles which offer two pieces of information: a) you can use to
match up the lifestyles of the church with those of the community, or b) to add
to your information concerning what the needs of the community might be. If you
have the option of acquiring this feature, it would be worth the expense of
getting it. This feature adds an additional later of interpretive value. The
table below gives some additional examples of where one might find information.
Many main
libraries have books of demographic projections, for business use. Here you would
have to do a lot of the extracting and interpreting of the data on your own.
REFLECTION:
You now have some significant data before you. There are several
categories of people who live within the sphere of your church’s ministry.
First of all, reflect on the demographic makeup of your church. Does your
church reflect the demographics of your community: a) ethnicity (race and/or
culture), b) age and family make-up, c) class, d) lifestyle, etc.? If not, how
does it differ? What do those differences mean for the continued ministry of
your church?
Cultures – There are cultures that are living in your survey’s radius.
How large are their communities? Are they recent immigrants? To what extent are
they churched? Reflect on how your church might serve them—plant a church in
their language, begin ESL classes, etc.
Lifestyles – If you purchased demographic data from
a company, you were likely given a list of at least a dozen, lifestyle groups
living in your survey’s radius. The company has used the census data and the
information such as age, income, marital status, number of children, the age of
the children, etc., to deduce certain lifestyle tendencies. Reflect on each of
these lifestyles. Are they compatible with the lifestyles of the people in your
church? What would their needs be? How might your church serve them? What does
your church has to offer?
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