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

Relationships Mission The Church Practical Leadership Pre-Launch Growing Multiplying
About the Podcast

New Churches Podcast

The New Churches podcast offers practical answers to your real ministry questions. We aren’t going to provide lofty pie-in-the-sky theories. Instead, we are going to help you in your real ministry context, with your real thoughts, questions, and issues.

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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. He also serves as a Board member for The Gospel Coalition. Tony has written several books including, The Christ-Centered Expositor, Love Your Church, and multiple volumes in the Christ-Centered Exposition commentary series. He’s happily married to Kimberly, and they have five children.

More Resources from Tony

Vance Pitman

President Send Network

Vance Pitman is president of Send Network, founding pastor of Hope Church, and author of UNBURDENED: Stop Living for Jesus So Jesus Can Live Through You and The Stressless Life: Experiencing the Unshakable Presence of God’s Indescribable Peace. As a seasoned church planter and now leader of the largest church planting organization in North America, Vance seeks to inspire people to join in God’s eternal, redemptive mission of making disciples, by multiplying the Church all over North America, that the nations may come to know Him.  Vance and his wife Kristie have four children and four grandchildren, and live in Georgia.

More Resources from Vance
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