I hope you're not getting confused. In case you are, let me explain. About 3 months ago we asked you to take a survey. The purpose of that survey was to learn who you are. We can look at our congregation on a Sunday morning and make some assumptions, but sometimes what we see and what is really the case, don't mesh. So we asked you to answer some demographic questions as well as some questions on why you're here, how you heard about Good Shepherd, etc. Farther down this post you'll find more information on what we're doing with that information. Let me share a little more though. (If you just want to jump to the conclusion you'll find it near the bottom.)
In the post just prior to this one, the one dated November 7, you'll find information about another survey. We're asking you to take this survey so we can learn more about you, spiritually speaking. It's not a test at all, it simply asks questions about where you are in your own spiritual life. It's anonymous and we won't even see any individual results. The results we get here at Good Shepherd will be the compilation of all who take the survey.
We are one of 500 churches worldwide who are participating in this survey. Our results will be compiled with those of 500 other churches and used to help churches all over the world to aid their membership in their spiritual growth. That's exactly what we'll do with our own results. Your staff will take what we learn and develop ministries to help you make a deeper Spiritual connection to God. Please scroll down and take that survey!!!
Now for the results of the first survey. Our goal was to seek to understand who are congregation is. We also did some research to better understand who lives in their community. It was a three month process of data collection and evaluation. I appreciate all who participated. Over 50% of our worshipping population responded and that number is huge. Most surveys hope to sample 10% of a population... or some number much lower. (Depending on the population, .1% to 1% may be enough.
While this data will be used for several purpose in making your church more effective in our ministry to and with you, our primary desire was to use the data to form a plan for adding a fourth service. This link will bring you to a PDF file. This file is a series of slides that were presented to your church council on Tuesday night. I want to run through these ever so briefly with you. If you'll right click on the link, save it to your computer or click "open in a new window", and then open the file in a separate window you'll be able to follow along.
Slide 2 - Explains our population base in the 10 zip codes surrounding Good Shepherd.
Slide 3 - Shares something about Good Shepard's population.
Slide 4 - Distribution of our survey respondents by zip code. This is very close to our total membership by percentage.
Slide 5 to 7 - Compares our community population by age to our survey responses. Very close!
Slide 8 - Graphs the survey responses by age group.
Slide 9 - Reviews our community by married households
Slide 10 - Indicates that Good Shepherd is far above the community, and national, average for married households.
Slide 11 - Graphs the marital status of Good Shepherd
Slide 12 - Lists some vital information about the Spiritual life of our community
Slide 13 - Lists some comparison data for Good Shepherd's Spiritual life.
Slide 14 - Gives prior denominational background of Good Shepherd members
Slide 15 - More demographic data for our community
Slide 16 - We have several pages of "comments" from our survey and that data is available to you if you would like to read it. We've pulled out some of the comments that related to the reason why people attend Good Shepherd.
Slide 17 - Most people heard about GS from a friend, or they were driving by. What does that tell you about your need to invite, and our need to cut the lawn???
Slide 18 - Another similar question explored the "why did you come" question.
Slide 19 - Most of our members have friends that don't go to church. This is great. We should! Now let's invite them to consider making a God Connection at GS.
Conclusions
Slide 20 - Our purpose for a 4th service is to connect more people to God. Our goal, of course, is to reach those who do not currently have a church home or a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Slide 21 - Our research tells us that, while we are currently reaching those in the 25-45 age range, this remains our best possible target market to reach. It also suggests that what we do on Sunday morning is the right direction for worship style.
Slide 22 - Introduces our Launch Plan. We are looking at Palm Sunday, March 16, 2008. We are planning an evening worship time. Details need to be worked out so that we don't edge out our youth group in order to create this new ministry. We'll get back to you on that question.
Slides 22 to 23 - Provides some suggested marketing venues for our launch team to consider.
Slide 24 - There's plenty of room. Think of those friends you have that don't currently have a church home. Pick a chair in that worship room. Now pray them into it.
What are your thoughts?????
3 comments:
The website needs an overhaul to be used as a more effective tool at getting people in to Good Shepherd. First, the website only works with the Internet Explorer web browser. Given the younger and more tech savy crowd are not using that web browser(The number of Macs sold is soaring), you are missing a large audience with a website that just doesn't work for them. If people go to a site and it doesn't display correctly, and you can tell, people just leave. Also, the site looks disorganized and from the 90's, that's a big turn off to younger and more tech savy people. More pictures of kids, youth groups, the band playing, etc. would help. Check out www.marshill.org for a good example site. There's no sense in having someone design the pages, just use a good CMS. There are plenty of free and easy to use systems.
Interesting you should comment on our website, especially since I was focusing here on our survey. However, since you did, let me respond. I agree with you 100%. As a matter of fact we've made adjustments in our 2008 budget to allow us to spend money on hiring a web developer to produce a much nicer site. We'll be adding a great amount of capability in our web presense as well. Among the things we will be capable of doing is provding email addresses to any or all of our members with the goodshepherdumc.org, online offering and purchases, email blasts, upgraded calendar, media center, etc. Our goal is to provide a site that is not only useful to our membership but also very attractive and intriguing to the person surfing the web for a church in the northland.
Sorry I wasn't more clear. My comments about the website were directed towards your conclusions, in particular Slides 20 and 21. One way of expanding the reach of the church can be accomplished through improving the website. If 25-45 year olds are a target audience then that also ties in with an improved website and this age group are heavy computer users. You may not get everyone who visits the site to actually attend church but if they keep coming back to the site for audio files of the sermons, inspirational videos, text files of the sermons, etc. that accomplishes the goal of reaching more people.
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