Peoples on the Move

Community Research for Ministry and Missions

Anthony F. Casey

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781532696190
  9781532696206
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532696213
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Peoples on the Move provides pastors, church planters, and missionaries with the tools they need to walk out their door and learn the unique dynamics of their neighborhoods in order to formulate effective strategies for ministry. The book takes a practical approach and contains many examples of how the research is done as well as how community research translates to ministry strategy. It reads like one is walking the streets with the author as he apprentices a new generation of church planters and missionaries.

1

Why Community Research?

Introduction

Several years ago, I was passing out invitations to a church event in the community surrounding the church where I served as an associate pastor. I met an older man at his mailbox and invited him to our church and he responded, “Which church? Oh yea, I’m a member there. Brother ______ is the pastor.” I attempted to conceal my true thoughts as I responded, “Brother _______ hasn’t been the pastor at this church for more than fifteen years!” Clearly, this man had no idea what was happening at this church, though he claimed to be a member. Pastors and ministers may feel like half the community feels this way about their church, but the truth is, many pastors know as little about their own communities as the community knows about their church. Asked to describe the community within a radius of a few miles around the church, many pastors provide a picture that is twenty years outdated.

The Changing Face of North America

Across North America, neighborhoods are rapidly changing as people move in and out. Over the past several years, approximately one million immigrants were granted legal residence in the United States on an annual basis.1 Aside from the recent crisis in Syria and resultant forced migrations, the United States is historically the largest immigrant-receiving country in the world, drawing 20 percent of the world’s migrants. Currently, 25 percent of the US population is comprised of first-generation immigrants or their children.2 Aside from permanent residents, another 165 million or so people enter the United States annually for business, tourism, or as international students.3

The United States is the world’s number-one destination for international students, drawing more than one million a year.4 China, India, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea are regularly among the top nations sending their students to us. These countries contain some of the highest populations of unreached people groups in the world. Future world leaders regularly study in the United States during their formative college years. Yet, a large percentage of international students are never invited into an American home and report having no American friends.

Additionally, the world is urbanizing at an accelerating pace as people move to the cities for job opportunities and to escape hardships in rural life. This urbanization often means a clash of cultures as people from all walks of life and holding a variety of competing religious beliefs now live side by side in the same neighborhood. Urban church planting and viewing US cities as a mission field is becoming normative, and rightly so. Representatives from hundreds of unreached people groups now reside in the United States.

The Foreign-Born Population in North America

States and cities across the United States and Canada are seeing increased immigration and urbanization. Payne notes that many migrants to Canada “are predominantly urbanites and are even more likely to live in a metropolitan area than Canadian-born citizens.”5 Major cities in Canada such as Hamilton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto have foreign-born populations comprising 25 to nearly 50 percent of the city’s population.6

The following chart shows the top ten US states with the largest foreign-born populations.7

State	Foreign-Born Population	Percent Foreign-Born
10 Connecticut	503,209	14%
9 Maryland	874,332	14.7%
8 Massachusetts	1,061,461	15.7%
7 Texas	4,494,345	16.7%
6 Hawaii	253,551	17.9%
5 Nevada	547,696	19.3%
4 Florida	3,967,671	19.9%
3 New Jersey	1,943,338	21.8%
2 New York	4,442,247	22.6%
1 California	10,473,630	27%

While this type of demographic research is motivating and helpful, it does have its limitations. The census can only determine the country of origin of immigrants and cannot list which people groups are represented in these states. That localized research is much more difficult to deter...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Why Community Research?
• Culture Learning in the Bible
• Culture Unites, Culture Divides
• The Tools and Process of Research
• Reviewing the Literature and Preexisting Data
• Site Access and Informants
• Participant Observation
• Qualitative Interviewing
• Data Analysis
• Writing Up and Applying the Research
• Special Considerations for Multicultural Research and Ministry
• Short-Term, Team-Based Ethnographic Research
• Bibliography