Knowing Your Community

This article was adapted from Dwayne McCrary’s book, Farsighted.

Knowing Your Community

Knowing our community and who lives there can help us better understand those who are already a part of our congregation and identify potential groups yet to be reached. These potential groups can be those living near current attenders or within a defined geographic area around the church’s location. Trends, changes, and the underserved in the church’s ministry area can help leaders make ministry and strategy decisions.

A Place for Demographics

Church ministry must remain focused on people. Each demographic category examined represents a group of actual people living in a defined area. Each piece of demographic data gives one snippet of insight into who those people are.

When driving or walking through the neighborhoods surrounding your church facilities, what do you see? Are there swing sets, tricycles, basketball goals, or cars with high school parking permits? What kinds of vehicles do you see? What type of housing do you find: apartments, duplexes, or single-family homes? Do you notice work vehicles and if so from what companies? When you talk to the people in these neighborhoods, what are they talking about? How does what you find in the neighborhoods around your church facilities compare to what you discover when visiting the members of your church?

These questions assume we are talking to people. Some of us may be introverts but that does not excuse us from talking to people. Nor does the claim that people do not want to be bothered at home. We need to find ways to connect with those in our ministry area. How will we be able to effectively minister to people we do not know and who do not know us? So, what does this have to do with demographics?

Demographics serve as a tool to confirm insights we gain as we interact with and observe what is going on in our ministry area. Insights gained can help us anticipate changes in the area, make wise staffing decisions, and speak into our understanding of the ministry area. A couple of warnings before moving on:

1. Not all demographic information is helpful. For example, we may find out that the average age of the people in the neighborhood around our church facilities is thirty-seven. We do the math and find out that the average age of the people in our church is also thirty-seven. The problem with that is the people in the neighborhood could be dominated by people who are in their late thirties and early forties while those attending our church are in their teens and fifties. The average ages can be the same, but that average does not tell the true story.

2. Not all demographic information matters. The temptation is to examine all the information and lose focus on what matters. For example, if we are focused on helping people who teach Generation Z in Bible study groups, then we will want to focus on the demographics of the specific people teaching that group. The demographics of the larger group of church leaders gets in the way. The demographics of those who will be trained needs to be the focus. If all the people being trained are also Gen Zers, then our training may have less merit than if those being trained are from a different generation. The disparity gives credence to the work.

Getting Started

Step 1: Define Your Ministry Area

Ministry Area can be seen in one of three ways. The first view is the area immediately around the church facilities. Most recommend a two-mile radius as a starting point, but that may depend upon your location. Natural and man-made dividers like highways, bodies of water, and other structures may impact the radius as well. A second view is looking at the demographics in the neighborhoods where clusters of current members live. Looking at this view gives us clues as to how we might enable our current attenders to reach the people who live around them. In this strategy, each current attendee is a potential missionary on the field. A third view is doing a drive time study. The vast majority will drive less than twenty-five minutes to get to the church facilities. The time may vary depending on the community in which your church sits. People in a rural area may be more willing to drive a farther distance than people in an urban area where everything they need is within five minutes. Notice the criteria is minutes and not miles. Someone might drive twenty-five minutes but cover less than ten miles depending on the roads and stops along the way. In the end, it is important to incorporate each of these views to produce a well-defined ministry area.

Step 2: Create a Map

One goal of demographics is to define who we are now. A first step is creating a pin map to plot out where the people we currently serve live. Whether you do this digitally or on a giant physical map, you will need to secure a list of home addresses for each of your members and then add a mark that represents each person or family. One thing to consider would be to create a color code for categories. We may use one color for regular attenders and a different color for members who rarely attend. We may have other categories within these two larger categories that call for other pin colors such as families and another color for single-parent families. We may also choose to plot the names of people who have been guests in the past twelve months and/or key leaders in the church.

Some have found value in creating a series of maps that feature different sets of information so that each map is simple to understand but can be held next to other maps to glean important information. Looking at the series can give a better visual of the dynamics at play within the church body. The majority may or may not live near the church’s meeting location. We may discover clusters of church attenders in different areas within our city. We may also find out the number of other churches they drive by on their way to our church. Everything we observe should raise questions that will help us better understand the people to whom we currently minister. It will also give us clues as to if we focus on the area immediately around the church’s facilities or the areas in which we find clusters of our current attenders. Another source to consider is the Annual Church Profile. For Southern Baptist churches, the Annual Church Profile (ACP) is an annual survey of statistical information administered by Lifeway. Gathering ACP reports from various years can give us some comparison points that may help us as well.

Step 3: Make Personal Observations

One of Yogi Berra’s more memorable sayings was, “You can observe a lot by watching.” This is especially true when we want to understand the age groups and lifestyles of those living within a defined ministry area. Consider spending time in local coffee shops in that defined area on multiple days in a week. Watch who frequents the establishment. Other options would be grocery stores, parks, and restaurants. Observe the customer base. What age groups or lifestyle types shop at this store? After visits to coffee shops, restaurants, parks, and grocery stores in the area, we will want to write about what we observed. We may even give a name (or names) to the typical person we encountered and then list characteristics. We are trying to create a profile based on what we observed.

Finding Other Sources of Information

In some cities and municipalities, the local chamber of commerce may have data they are willing to share. The chamber may also have someone who can help you analyze the data as well. The United States Census Bureau is another source (census.gov). Not only does it have the data, but it also has tutorials and apps that will help you be a better interpreter of the data collected. You may also consult one or more demographic services. The Association of Religion Data Archives (thearda.com) is a free website that provides access to several tools that can help you get a data picture. This site also includes tutorials that will help you gather and interpret the data. A variety of other fee-based services exist that one may consult. When looking at the data, pay attention to population trends, income fluctuation, ethnicity, religious background, family types and composition, housing type, and psychographic data. The goal is to better serve a defined community with the demographic data being one source to better understand who is in that defined community. We may also discover the underserved, giving rise to ministry initiatives for serving and reaching all people in a defined area who have yet to be reached by our church. We will also need to know some of that same information about the current attenders, otherwise we will have nothing for comparison. The paid services are helpful here because they can craft and administer surveys of our current attendees to help us define the demographics of those who currently attend our church. Once all the data is gathered and sorted, do not interpret it alone. Talk to city and county leaders and ask them questions about the data. Visit with other church leaders and compare notes about what they are observing in the community and reach out to denominational leaders.

Conclusion

In the end, all of this work is time consuming and tedious if done right. Although this is common practice in the mission field and in the world of church planting, this is work that is often overlooked in established churches. Sometimes we think we know everything we need to about the place in which we live and work, but in the busyness of ministry, it is easy to lose touch with our people. This investment allows us to regain current insights and understanding of our people so we can be sure that we are ministering to our people in the way that they will receive it best.