By Tom Bandy Lifestyle diversity and cultural change have created new challenges and opportunities for worship designers. The challenge is that the basic question people ask themselves on Sunday morning is no longer when to worship or preferred style of worship, but why should we bother to worship at all? Prior to the millennium change, …
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By Tom Bandy Baby Boomers (present age 60 – 78) represent a large portion of the population in Maryland and Delaware, and an even larger portion of UMC participants. However, Baby Boomer church expectations are not all alike. Consider just some of the top boomer lifestyle segments: Baltimore-Washington Peninsula-Delaware Region UMC Region …
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By Tom Bandy We know how to retrieve lifestyle data about our community context or church participation. Run a ComparativeInsite Report. Identify the top 50-60% representation. Read the Experian E-Handbook summaries and MissionImpact Guide commentaries for each lifestyle segment, starting with those significantly over- or under-represented in our church. This gives us a pretty good …
By Tom Bandy MissionInsite does a nationwide survey called “The American Beliefs Study” of religious preferences and practices. This tends to be richer than other national surveys because it uses a larger sampling. A new summary is now available as of January 2023 and there are recent videos available to explain them. Customized data for …
By Tom Bandy Many of you may have read the Easter opinion column by Ross Douthat in the New York Times: “It’s Easter 2050. Here’s What American Religion Looks Like”. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/30/opinion/easter-religion-america.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare. It’s a good article, and I have been reflecting on it from the point of view of demographic and lifestyle change. The writer predicts …
By Tom Bandy The internet has been valuable in so many ways. But the combination of digitalization and miniaturisation has raised ethical concerns especially for lifestyle research. Many churches and denominations also use lifestyle research (as we do), but there is always a risk that institutional priorities and hidden biases might unconsciously lead us to …
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By Tom Bandy Strategic thinkers often want to explore a specific demographic detail for which there is no one single category in the Build a Report process. Recently I was asked to research locations with a high population density for children aged 5-13 in families below poverty. MissionInsite only allows you to do separate OpportunityScans …
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By Tom Bandy You can use MissionInsite to make this Christmas especially meaningful for distinct lifestyle mosaics that live in your reach. This is particularly useful for urban churches experiencing growing lifestyle diversity that is transforming their surrounding neighborhoods. Centralization is what happens as urbanization moves along major transportation corridors, isolating rural areas, and forcing …
By Tom Bandy The single most difficult group for churches of any variety to reach is Group O Singles and Starters. There are six segments included in the group: O50 Full Steam Ahead Younger and middle-aged singles gravitating to second-tier cities O51 Digital Savvy Young Singles who live digital-driven smaller city lifestyles O52 …
By Tom Bandy Congregational Planning Method Most congregational users prefer to skip the initial “What Do You Want to Do” screen to explore a smaller, designated area. You can find the Opportunity Scan tool by clicking the “Demographics” tab on the bottom toolbar of the screen. Then find the Opportunity Scan tool at the bottom …