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Researching the area
Andy explains how to begin researching the area that you are about to move into to start a new church.
Research is gathering the information about your planned plant area to inform you how to plant the Church and contextualise the Gospel.
The two main methods are demographics and ethnographics. Demographics gives you “who are the people?” Ethnographics gives you “what are they like?”
Demographics is the study of statistical information about people and population you are trying to reach with a Church plant. By gathering data from various sources one can form a jigsaw of a community that will help in discerning the most promising ways to serve God and grow the church plant. Paul would not have heard of the term “ethnographics”, but that is what he did in Athens in Acts 17 when he wandered around observing, talking to people and getting the feel of the place. Paul saw lots of idolatry and was “greatly distressed”. Paul sought to understand the community and neighbourhood in depth before working out how best to communicate the Gospel - “I see that in every way you are very religious.”
When preparing to move to King’s Lynn I discovered that 10% of the population were from Eastern Europe by doing my demographic research. Wandering around, I found 3 Russian rather than Polish shops. Polish shops are springing up all over the UK as the UK population has grown by some 500,000 Poles since 2004. Doing a little historical research, I discovered that King’s Lynn has a historical link with Russia from the Hanseatic period and that link has continued. Talking to the Russian shopkeepers, people in the shops and listening on the streets, I discovered that the Eastern Europeans were mainly Russian speakers rather than Lithuanian, Latvian or Polish. I then discovered that none of the Protestant Churches were actively reaching Russian speakers, so we then looked to recruit Russian speakers to the core team to reach them.
Demographic research
Here are some of the questions you can answer with demographics
1. How many people live here?
2. How has the number of people changed?
3. How will the population change over the next five years?
4. How old are the people?
5. How much money do they make and what type of housing do they live in?
6. Where do they work?
7. What race and nationality are they?
8. What languages do they speak?
9. What are the age and racial trends?
10. How well educated are the people?
11. How many churches are there? How many attend and who are they trying to reach?
Finding out demographic information
The best place to start is the UK government website www.statistics.gov.uk – clicking on Neighbourhood and then country, you come up with the first jargon hurdle in selecting the area to look at.
The smallest area is a postcode, which can typically be only 15 houses – clearly far too small a sample! The National Statistics website produces data in the following forms Super Output Area, Output Area and Ward. An electoral ward is an area for the election of a local government councillor and can vary between 100 and 30,000 residents. Wards do get changed and so analysing data over different censuses can prove difficult. An Output Area is a cluster of postcodes . Super Output Areas(SOA) were developed to help demographic research and wont change. There are 3 types of SOA upper, middle and lower. Lower SOAs have a mean population of 1500, middle 7200 and upper 25,000. Super Output Areas are the most helpful to use for Church plant demographic research.
Once you have selected your area, the website produces a highlighted map and gives options for what statistics you want. At the bottom right there are external links to find other demographic information, of which local authority websites are often more helpful and up to date. However, the last census is a helpful start although there was a population and migration explosion in 2004 when the EU grew by 8 states. Migrant worker data can be found at http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/aboutus/reports/accession_monitoring_report/
Useful information that can be found is population, number of households, the average number of people per household, education level, health, employments, how many cars per household and so on. Comparing your chosen area with the national average and the UK as a whole tells you whether your area is above or below the national average. Drilling down to a more local ward level helps further. I found King’s Lynn to be relatively deprived, with some wards some of the poorest in the region and the country. Educational aspirations are lower than the national average and there are more retirees in the outlying villages than the national average.
The major retailers have also done their homework too . Tesco’s are the arguably the biggest retailer in the UK and site stores where they will make the maximum profit for their catchment– use the store finder section of www.tesco.com to find where they have put their 24hr stores; that will give a measure for how many church plants that are aiming to grow big an area can sustain.
Ethnographic Research
Gives you a vision for your community as well as the Church plant and will help reinforce your conviction that the community needs the transforming power of the Gospel and that the Church can make a difference to the area. It is all about networking and asking questions!
Avoid building primary impressions from Christians, but look to meet, get to know and ask questions at the school gate, estate agents, headteachers, shopkeeper, the community development manager at the council and key community people.
Looking at Ofsted reports for the various schools will give you a feel for the educational aspirations of various areas.
Avoid questionnaires and surveys, but look to have natural questions depending on who you are talking to, that flow from the social context (jobs, schools, housing) to internal stuff like hopes and fears to religious life (church and religion) to world-view. The purpose is to listen and learn and you may only find out information from one category.
Your core team will gain a lot of ownership for evangelising in the plant by being involved in this process. It will be helpful to incorporate brainstorming what you have all learned at the core prayer/vision meetings.
What brought you here?
What do you like or dislike about living here?
What kind of church does this place need?
What’s the toughest thing for you when you consider faith and spiritual things?
If you ask God one question what would it be?
Are things the way they ought to be?
Some of the information I found out about our area of King’s Lynn…
· Half the population are static and have been in the area for generations and socialise mainly in family grouping, considering others as “outsiders”. There is little culture of popping round for a coffee or hospitality
· The other half moved into London overspill estates in the 1960s or more recently for a better quality of life than in the South East. They are more open to popping round and hospitality , but gradually stop as they settle and find it difficult to break in.
· In the poorer areas that make up most of the town, there is little educational aspiration and hope. Life is lived for the weekend.
· People move into King’s Lynn for a “better life” and a bigger house than they had nearer London.
· Migrant workers use Kings Lynn as a dormitory town and commute up to 45mins for fruit picking, food preparation and flower processing
· There are relatively few BME (Black, Minority Ethnic) inhabitants
· There is a high level of racism towards recent Eastern European migrant workers – The BNP are pretty active.
· There are major regeneration projects in the town centre, riverside area and the south of the town
· There are plans to move the regional college and build a university which will bring students in.
· There are a high proportion of rich people hidden away in the north of the town and outlying areas.
· Professional commute to Cambridge (40mins by train) and London (90mins)
Once you have done your research, summarise your finders and build a profile of some of the cultural groupings in the community.
Working class local: socialises with family, low aspirations.
Eastern European Migrant: 20-28 with partner or in 40s with kids back in home country, work long hours in variable shifts, low paid, often living in a room in a non-legal House of Multiple Occupancy (HMO) in often overcrowded.
Middle Class Professional: commutes by train, shops elsewhere, here because Norfolk is nicer than London and King’s Lynn has a good station.
Putting it all together
How big a catchment?
Looking at the distribution of large Tescos showed me that Kings Lynn has a big reach into the surrounding villages – people drive up to 20 mins to do their weekly shop – that showed me a realistic catchment area. We also found out how many houses were in each town and village in the catchment from demographics. A quick call to the advertising department of the local newspaper gave us a map and price list of its distribution – helping us decide a realistic catchment size.
Who would we reach?
The fact that it appeared no-one else was actively reaching the large Russian speaking population meant that I prioritised recruiting a Russian speaker(s) on the initial team to break in.
The general lack of aspiration in Norfolk and King’s Lynn in particular meant that we would need to bring hope through the Gospel. Preaching style would be different to that in Cambridge!
Any other clues
The lack of a culture of hospitality meant that we would need to work hard at that.
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