Community Outreach: Synthesize

Synthesizing results is the next step. It is important to share observations without judgment so there is an objective record of what is going on. Once all observations are spoken and on the table, the next step is finding themes and synthesizing areas of focus.

What are the themes we learned in our research?

In the process I am leading at my church, we found 4 key themes or points of interest. With the understanding that examples are a powerful tool in transferring information, I am sharing our themes here: 

1. People are moving to the area at a high rate. Projections include our county growing by ½ a million in the next 20 years. People are moving from many different areas of the country and building of new housing subdivision is at a high level.
2. With the influx of new residents, the number of children and youth are also increasing. The projections are confirmed by the construction of new large schools.
3. Some people are not interested in returning to a church building, whether due to the pandemic or other issues.
4. We have an asset in our church building and property.

After identifying these themes, we used a framework developed by the Chalmer’s Center to create open questions to focus the next phase of our efforts. Once we have finalized and chosen one question to focus our innovation process on, we will put the others on hold with the understanding we can come back to them at a later date, but the one we choose becomes our main focus.

The four open ended questions we wrote corresponding to the themes above are as follows:

1. How might we help people feel connecting by using the church property so that there is a sense of community?
2. How might we help the youth in the community to find purpose and a way to connect so that they find common ground and faith in Jesus?
3. How might we help people who cannot or will not attend church to engage in Biblical teaching/community/prayer so that they grow in faith and relationships?
4. How might we help new transplants to find a church home so that they become a member of our church family?

The next step is to choose one question to focus in on.