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As I discussed yesterday, I find several fundamental breakdowns in the statement “we cast a wide net” when it comes to a church’s demographic strategy.  Today I want to look at another very important truth that one must understand to properly craft a demographic strategy: The size of your scope is directly influenced by your available resources. In other words, the only way you can effectively reach everyone is to have unlimited and infinite resources.  Let’s face it, even when we are not in the midst of economic recession, I don’t think there is a church in the world that would say they have unlimited resources (and if you are that church, are you hiring?).  So before you settle on a target demographic, you have to take a long hard look at your available resources.

The word “resources” in church life can mean a slew of different things.  The obvious things are money, facilities and staffing.  Some things you may overlook however may be volunteers, technical equipment, technical aptitude, racial diversity in your body, racial diversity on your staff and competing factors in the community.  I think the best way to explain some of these factors is by looking at some examples.

1. If you don’t have an ethnic group represented on your staff, you shouldn’t target that ethnic group.
2. If you don’t have cameras, video mixers, and post-production equipment AND people with the aptitude to use them with excellence, you shouldn’t start a video driven ministry (i.e. television ministry, web campus, or satellite video venue.)
3. If there is a church in your immediate community that is killing it with a certain target group, you shouldn’t target that group.  You just don’t have the available market share to support the endeavor.

DISCLAIMER:  I feel the need to pause here and voice a disclaimer.  We serve a God that defies logic.  The point of this conversation is not to apply man-made rules to a God that our feeble minds are not capable of fully understanding. However, these concepts should act as a warning system.  God very well may be leading you to do something that defies all rules of marketing, strategy and logic, but if your endeavor is illogical, take extra time to make sure that God is leading you and not something else (your selfish desires, fear of man, desperation.)  We can do all things through Christ, but to think that you can do something logically impossible through your on strength is prideful and irresponsible.

Once you  have worked through the process of choosing a general target demographic based on your available resources, I believe it is beneficial to take one final look at your scope (or size) of your target.  The truth is that the smaller the amount and the sizes of the targets you choose to throw your resources at can greatly increase or decrease your chances of effectiveness and success.  Let’s take another chunk out of the “wide net” metaphor.  Let’s say a net-maker is making nets out of a finite length of rope.  If he chooses to double the overall size of the net, the average size of the holes in the net will double as well, which will reduce the amount of return for throwing the net in a particular fishing area.  In the same way if he chooses to make 4 equal-sized nets out of the finite amount of rope, he will end up with ability to fish in 4 different areas, but each of the nets will only be a quarter as effective as a net that was the same size as the 4, but utilized all of the rope. Inversely, if he chooses to make just one net that is just the right size to fish a particular area, and he utilizes all of the rope to make that one net, he will maximize his effectiveness.  In real terms, this may be the difference between trying to reach people age 25-45 and trying to reach people age 25-30, and it very well may be the difference between scratching the surface and opening the flood-gates.

Thoughts?

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under Demographics, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.