Back to School Already?
By Mary C. Frances, Senior Associate Consultant
In case you were wondering….I have been having a great summer! My husband and I took an incredible trip to England and Ireland. We have had both sets of grandchildren visiting as well as dear friends from across the pond. My garden is in full bloom, and I harvest from our vegetable garden daily for delicious food for dinner. I’ve been having so much fun that August just kind of sneaked up on me. Maybe this is a wake-up call for you too. The summer slowdown is about to end and your Rally Day, Back to Church Day, Sunday School start up is little more than a month away. What will you do to create a different scenario than last year?
Often, I see churches plan September for the people inside the church while expecting people from outside the church to show up. Some people may use this shift in the calendar as a time to shift gears and look for a church but most families with children are focused on back to school, sports schedules and carpooling. But, what if your focus for September was more on the people who aren’t yet in your pews than those who are? If that was the case, who would you be focusing on? Who would you seek out to invite to church? How would you prepare for their arrival? I suppose that first you might need to know who to invite. Who is your neighbor? Who is your target audience and why? Let’s look at the Neighborhood Insight Report to consider your options…
The first piece of the NIR I would look at is the Generational Predominance in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. This tells us the age groups of people in your neighborhood. Are you surrounded by families with children? Or empty nesters? Or retirees? We can click behind the graphic to see the breakdown of age and gender in order to determine what generational group to focus on.
Second, take a look at your Lifestyle Segments in the bottom middle of the page. Each one is a treasure trove of information about the majority groups in your area. While clicking on the segment produces a paragraph about each group, FaithX has summarized all the information from the four-page ESRI report into one Missional Context Report. All of them can be found on our website as well as available through the NIR. The Missional Context Report helps you understand more about your primary population. Are they available during the week? What kind of worship might they tend to prefer? What outreach opportunities would be of interest to them?
And finally, I would look closely at the School Age Children data on the second page. Clicking through that graphic provides a detailed graph showing how many children are in each age group at school. If you are trying to understand if you have school-aged children in your area, this is a key piece of the puzzle.
If you need some help diving into the data to better understand your neighbors as you round this corner toward your Fall programming, be sure to reach out to us at info@faithx.net
