In Todd Hobart’s video, he recommended churches do 2 things:
1) Discern where you are as a church. Identify your particular context and the issues in your community.
2) Discern who you are as a group of people. Learn about the congregation and its strengths. Then, you can see how you fit into what God is doing in the world.
Where are we?: Discovering Your Community
- Click over to the US Census Bureau Fact Finder, the site for the current US Census data. They have a great feature where you can type in your address and then select which data for that area you would like to see. For example I learned that:
- In the city of St. Paul, 30% of households have children under 18 living there.
- 17% of the population in the census for St. Paul was foreign-born.
- 35,000 people in St. Paul have no health insurance.
- In 65% of families in St. Paul, all adults in the home are in the workforce.
Who are we as a Church?: Finding your Strengths
In and through the Spirit and Culture of Youth Ministry book are a great resource of tools for you to use as you apply the insights of the EYM study results to developing the Spirit and Culture of Youth ministry at the center of the life of your church. Here are those same tools from the book in pdf form, so that you can easily make copies, distribute and use them.
Faith Assets Assessment
