Demographic study gives church a clue 

1998 Florida Conference Area Population by Age

LAKELAND — Within the next five years, the Hispanic/Latino community will be the fastest growing population in the Florida Conference, but only one-fourth the size of the conference’s population of seniors aged 70 and older.

That information came from a recent demographic study done by the Percept Group Inc. in California and commissioned by the Florida Conference’s Committee on New Church Development and Church Redevelopment to help the conference decide where to plant new churches and how to revitalize existing ones.

“This information gives us the first clue of the magnitude of our work,” Charles Courtoy, the committee’s executive director, said. “It begins the process to distill what’s needed in keeping with our vision and mission. From it, we will develop a strategic plan to guide us in the next five years.”

The study is a five-year look at the conference’s demographics and ethnographics — the scientific description of individual human societies. It shows that the population living in the Florida Conference area is expected to grow from 13.4 million to 14.2 million in the next five years — a 6.4 percent increase and 50 percent higher than the national growth rate.

In addition to population statistics, the study provides information on “what some of the belief systems and concerns are of those people,” Courtoy said.

Approximately 70 percent of the population surveyed report they are either marginally involved or not involved with any faith tradition, including Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Bahá’í, Buddhist and Christian faiths. A total of 13 percent of the population reported a preference for Methodism, which includes the United Methodist Church and other Methodist denominations, such as the Evangelical Methodist and African Methodist Episcopal churches. The average weekly attendance in United Methodist churches is slightly more than 1 percent of the total population, or 156,138 people.

The study also identified geographic areas where there is no United Methodist presence. “We have 29 areas with a 10-mile diameter that currently have no United Methodist church,” Courtoy said. The largest is Jupiter, on the Atlantic Coast north of West Palm Beach, where more than 54,000 people live.

Courtoy says collecting the statistics is only the first step toward affecting how churches in the Florida Conference will minister to their communities in the next five years. The information will be shared with church development committees in the conference’s 14 districts that will then be responsible for talking to business, economic, political and religious leaders to discover more about their communities’ needs.

“We don’t do anything at the conference level that’s not in conjunction with the districts,” Courtoy said. “The districts must take the information farther, study it, respond to it. They will create proposals, and the conference will respond with resources.”

Local churches can also take an active role in their own redevelopment. Tools like Ministry Area Profiles (MAPs), demographic reports for the area around a church, help sensitize churches to community needs.

While the demographics are a good starting place, they are not a complete diagnostic tool. “When we see a statistic that says 20,000 people, we have to ask questions: what are their ages, what are their races, what are their needs?” Courtoy said. “Then we know what kind of minister to place there, what kind of church orientation will work.”

(Ministry Area Profiles are available to local churches through the conference’s New Church Development office for $165 each. For more information, contact Barbara Holden at 1-800-282-8011, extension 146, or by e-mail at Bholden@flumc.org.)

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© 1998 Florida United Methodist Review Online