New Churches Podcast | Season 1 | Episode 782

Using Demographics to Better Serve Your Community

Tony Merida & Vance Pitman

Episode 782

Hosts Tony Merida and Vance Pitman sit back down with returning guest, author and pastor Jamaal Williams, to discuss how neighborhood assessments can help your congregation to better love and serve your community. Here’s how you can more accurately determine the needs of those you’re seeking to reach.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

  • Why training up your launch team matters
  • The barriers to cultivating a diverse, united expression of the body of Christ
  • How to mobilize your congregation to live on mission
  • Why you can’t just copy and paste the ministries of your sending church
  • Where the American church is going—and how you can anticipate its needs

Helpful Resources:

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Sharable Quotes (#NewChurches):

If we don’t unlock the door of the multi-ethnic church as America continues to move demographically, we’re not going to know how to reach our own nation much less the nations and peoples of the earth. — Vance Pitman

Cultivating a multi-ethnic kingdom culture requires a lot of denying self and making sure we’re not just trying to reproduce our own culture in those we disciple. — Jamaal Williams

Be a student of culture, be a student of your city, and begin to be a wise contextual church planter. — Tony Merida

If we make the goal to be multiethnic, we can lose focus on Jesus, and it becomes about being pragmatic. But if we make the goal to root ourselves in our beloved identity in Christ, teach others to do the same, and create a hospitable place where people feel welcomed and seen, we’ll see a multiethnic church. — Jamaal Williams

The multi-ethnic church is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit of God. That’s why Jesus said, “My house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations.” — Vance Pitman

Ask God for wisdom to reach your community, for the grace to cross cultures, for the power to break down barriers. He will do it, and He wants to do it. He wants your church to look like your neighborhood more than you ever could. — Jamaal Williams

Published on October 31, 2023

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About the Podcast

New Churches Podcast

The New Churches podcast delivers biblical and practical insights to help you be a faithful and effective church planter. Learn from trusted pastors, theologians, missiologists, and faithful leaders who can help you pursue the mission God has given you. 

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Meet the Authors

Tony Merida

Vice President, Planter Development Send Network

Tony Merida is the founding pastor of Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, N.C, and is the vice president of Planter Development for Send Network. Tony has written several books, including The Christ-Centered Expositor, Love Your Church, and multiple volumes in the Christ-Centered Exposition commentary series.

More Resources from Tony

Vance Pitman

Vance Pitman is the Founder & President of Vance Pitman Ministries and National Mobilizer with the North American Mission Board. He is the founding pastor of Hope Church Las Vegas, which he led from a living-room gathering of 18 people in 2001 into a thriving, multi-ethnic church of more than 4,000 members representing over 54 languages twenty years later. Following his retirement from Hope, Vance served as President of Send Network, the largest church-planting organization in North America, where he helped accelerate the multiplication of churches across the continent. Today, he coaches pastors and church planters in leadership, church multiplication, and spiritual health while traveling as an ambassador for the North American Mission Board. Vance is the author of UNBURDENED and The Stressless Life.
More Resources from Vance
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