Prior to
the Pre-consultation attempt to find the following data.
1. Name of city and state
2. Population
3. No. of Churches in city - Roman Catholic, Orthodox,
Mainline, Pentecostals, etc.
4 .Christian Population (census), Christians attending
churches, Church / population ratio 5.% attending
churches ,% Christian in city compared with
national percentage 6. Growth and decline in overall church attendance over a 20
year period
7. A general description on
the nature of the churches of the city, particularly those that have grown, and
some indications as to why this might be.
8.Languages in
city?Worship in which languages?
9. Is there a prayer
movement?
10. Who are the recognized leaders? (spiritually).
Mapping Exercise
As
part of or in preparation for the pre-consultation or City Strategy Congress
this exercise will help to break down the city into reachable communities:
1. Trace onto the cardboard the map of your city (or
the map could be done on an overhead and in black and white xeroxable
format.For cities under 100,000 it
could be done by hand.For larger cities
consider a computer program such as Supermap or some other mapping program )
2. Place name of city and state at top right. Write
down the city and metro-city populations
4. Draw in the main arteries, railway lines,
highways, rivers
5. Draw an overlay of geographic boundaries, possibly
political (usually the easiest in terms of available data) or their may be more
natural breaks
6. Draw in areas where the rich live (use a legend in
lower right corner)
7. Draw in areas where the poor live.Who are they?
8. Put % of the population that are slums or the
number of bustees on right corner.
9. Put down the main religions and their percentages
in the right.
10. Put down the main languages and their % at the
top right hand corner.Draw an overlay
with location of the language groupings in the city.Which of them have a church?
11. Plot in the churches in the city (Use a different
color for Roman Catholic,, Mainline and Pentecostal, sum the total number of
churches on the right by the legends.
12. Plot in areas where main religious groups live
(on the map or as anoverlay).
13. An overlay based on city planning projections as
to where new communities will be developed (People are most reachable when
first migrating.If the church gets
there firstwith a building or with an
identifiable home, people will tend to form their socialrelationships aroundthe church).