Mapping and Researching Your Community

Resources:

http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/

http://www.perceptgroup.com/

Ring Study, Drive Time Study, Zip Code Study, Specific Area Studies

Traditional Demographic Information

• General Population Changes
• Racial Groups
• Age Group
• Educational levels
• Income Levels
• Family Groupings
• Employment Information
• Psychographic Groups

Psychographics: The study of the values, behavior, and lifestyles included in a demographic profile.  

Depth of analysis depends on how you define the areas.

Reaching Receptive People: Churches grow when they learn to identify and reach people or groups that are receptive.  

The Law of Receptivity:

• Some people are more responsive to the gospel than others, and a given person is more responsive now than last year.  
• Whole populations swing back and forth on an imaginary axis from hostility, to resistance, to indifference, to interest to receptivity and some people are at all points on that axis at any point in time.  
• In every season some groups and some peoples are receptive. 

Indicators of Receptivity:

1. Unchurched people who are linked, by kinship or friendship networks, to active, credible Christians are more receptive than other people.  
2. People are more receptive to new groups and classes than from long established groups and classes.  
3. Sometimes a more indigenous ministry will reveal a people to be receptive.  
4. Churches grow as they identify people with needs that the church can minister to, either by: (a) extending ministries already in place, or (b) building new ministries.  
5. Populations in which any religion is growing should be perceived as open and searching for something.  
6. People among whom
7. People experiencing a major culture change tend to be very receptive.  
8. Various forms of population mobility induce receptivity.  
9. In most seasons, in most nations, “the masses” are more responsive than “the classes.”  
10. Personal dissatisfaction with themselves and their lives opens many peoplt to the gospel of grace and a second chance.  
11. People who are ‘like’ the people already in active in a church, particularly its newest members, will be more receptive than the surrounding culture as a whole.  
12. People experiencing life transitions are more receptive than people in stable periods of life.  
13. Visitors to a church’s worship services are frequently

Follow-up of Church Visitors

• When someone from church follows up with a brief, get-acquainted visit within 36 hours, 85% of them return for a 2nd visit.  
• When the visit was within 72 hours, 60% of them would return.  
• When the visit was after 72 hours, 40% return
• If the pastor made the visit, all the percentages were cut in half.  

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~ by caitlinshirley on March 11, 2009.