Are there demographic markers that you can track in your community and within your church to help promote ministry growth? Absolutely! During this webinar, Steve Bell from The Joshua Survey, and Meagan Brown from MortarStone discuss the demographics you should be tracking to better know your church and community. Watch the full to the right.
Here is a brief synopsis of the webinar:
What Can You Learn from Demographic Markers in Your Community?
Within your community are certain demographic markers that help you determine the need for various ministries. Tracking these markers becomes important for outreach opportunities and church growth. Pulling demographic information from an area-wide census can give you a glimpse of the types of people you should be reaching. Here are a few markers to consider:
- Levels of affluence, wealth, income ranges and net worth
- Ethnic makeup
- Education levels and professions
- Gender
- Family households vs. single households
- New movers
- Church attendance
- Hobbies, interests, and volunteerism
What Can You Learn from Demographic Markers in Your Church?
Most churches believe that the ministries they offer are meeting the needs of their church attendees but, what if you did an internal demographic analysis and had objective data to support these ministries? Would you be surprised to learn that you were missing out on potential ministry opportunities because you didn’t have a clear picture of who your attendees really are? By doing an internal survey on paper and electronically you can start to learn more about your church and the people who regularly attend. Here are few markers to consider when doing a church-wide survey:
- Denominational backgrounds
- Ethnic makeup
- Genders & ages
- Income
- Education
- Professions
- Propensities – where they volunteer, how they like to serve
- Hobbies
- Family composition
Once you have the information on your community and church, what’s the next step? Knowing this demographic information can help you with the following:
- Targeted mailings & emails: create personalized mailing that are targeted to the right people within your church and community. Targeted email messaging has a 76% response rate!
- Staff selection: If you learn that you have a high number of Hispanic people in your community, you now have the objective data to hire a Spanish Pastor.
- Giving Initiatives: By understanding the income and net worth values of your church and community, you can begin to make educated giving initiatives and plan for future growth and expansion.
- Event & ministry planning: Better plan events and ministries after you’ve learned more about the needs of your church and community.
- Identify outliers: If you understand the different types of people (ages, races, genders, households) in your church, you can identify fringe groups that are in need and create ministries to support these groups.
The solution to knowing your community and church seems simple – pull census data and do an internal survey, but in reality, finding this information and getting the data compiled can be time-consuming and confusing. If you, like most churches, don’t have time to get this information then let The Joshua Survey and MortarStone help you out. Together we can provide you with a customized community report and church-specific demographic analysis that includes everything mentioned above and more.