Yahoo! Real Estate’s new tool, Neighborhood Profile, provides an interesting tool for an often overlooked necessity in the church–cross-cultural ministry. The tool lists factors such as average income, average family size, cost of living and more. Keep in mind it isn’t a tool designed for ministry, but rather for real estate, so there are deficiencies. For example, unfortunately, it would be helpful to know a little more about race, age or job fields. I think from the strengths and weaknesses of this tool, we can make a few observations and draw a few principles:
- America is too big a place for real estate or churches–break it down, and begin ministering there.
- Being sensitive to your surroundings should not be an option but a necessity.
- This tool is incomplete, and nothing will ever be as effective as living as a community member before a church member.
Joshua
March 16, 2007
This information has been available for years from the company providing it to Yahoo!, Best Places . MSN used to have a neighborhood finder which provided demographic clusters, which were VERY helpful. A sampling of this can be found at Claritas . not sure of any free sites that offer both the Best Places data and the cluster info like MSN used to.