Find out what people want

When we start thinking about engaging our community, it’s easy to think about what we can do, rather than what people want or need.

This can lead to our offering projects, events and resources that few are likely to access because they don’t meet their needs – real or perceived.

There’s an equal and opposite danger. If we assume we know the need but don’t ask, we may duplicate what already exists or is already planned.

Instead of assuming, it’s better to go out and ask people what they want and what they perceive as the needs.

This is best accomplished by use of a community audit – it’s good to go out to ask key questions of community leaders and/or community members.

There’s a range of audits available; it may be that your denomination has a process that you can access. There are also generic ones that will help to guide you – and you’ll find two questionnaires on this website to get you started. (Community Leader Interviews Questionnaire) (Community Research Questionnaire)

By asking community leaders, you’ll get an insight into the pressures they face and the resources that already exist. Usually their greatest challenges are to do with manpower and time - something that churches can often offer. And in the process of asking, you’ll build relationships.

By asking community members, you’ll either confirm what the leaders are telling you or discover new needs. And again, you’ll build relationships. Yet another advantage of doing extensive and thorough research is that it adds great weight to any application for funding you might make.

• Bethlehem New Life Church in Cefn Cribwr, South Wales, asked every home (5,000) in its community what they felt the needs were. They then based their plan and funding applications around the findings.
• St Mary’s Baptist Church in Bristol spoke to community leaders, including those from other faiths, and members of their community. They based their strategic plan for the development of the church around their findings.
• Willowfield Parish Church in East Belfast researched its community and discovered seven clear needs. These they looked to address, and accessed considerable funding in the process.

Recognising how easy it was to ask leading questions in order to get the answers they ‘wanted’, they took great care over the wording of the questions. And by asking, they demonstrated humility and an openness that was appreciated.

Some churches employ a professional researcher, in order to avoid these dangers. There are obvious advantages in this; but there are disadvantages: it doesn’t allow you to build relationships, and it doesn’t encourage the congregation to participate in the fact-finding process and so begin the process of engagement.

There’s something to be said for the church leaders interviewing community leaders and so building relationship peer to peer. It may be, of course, that you already know many of them.

Having done thorough research, you’ll be left with a huge amount of data. This will need to be sifted, collated and interpreted. You may choose to do this as a leadership team – it will give you a feel for the data and you’ll all participate in the creation of the final report. But it’s very time consuming.

You may therefore choose instead to employ a researcher for this task. Or hand the job over to a small team - there will be those in the congregation who love to create charts and reports. But remember you’re handing over the opportunity to interpret the data. This might determine the final outcomes.

Whichever way you go about this, it’s an important phase in the process of community engagement. Take it seriously!
 

Last Updated 09 February 2009