Ethnic and Immigrant Ministry Research-- & Your Help

Monday August 3, 2009 ~ 3 Comments

I need your help in finding anyone and everyone you know who is actively working to reach first generation immigrants in the U.S. and Canada. Please email them a link to this online survey, www.LifeWay.com/immigrantsurvey and ask them to tell us about the work they are doing. I'm looking for EVERYBODY working with immigrants: it can be someone working at the national level with a denomination, missionaries, church planters, or it can be a lay believer in a church who coordinates a small local ministry.

We have been working on this for several months and have connected with quite a few leaders, but we are discovering new groups everyday-- but, I would like to ask for some help to make sure we get the word out to as many churches, networks, and leaders among immigrants as possible.

The survey is at www.LifeWay.com/immigrantsurvey and is in English and 19 other languages. Individual surveys are confidential, so you can feel comfortable sharing this information with groups concerned about security issues. The North American Mission Board is sponsoring this project and they have offered to share the results and insights from this study with partnering leaders and organizations across the U.S. and Canada. Our hope is that the results will assist everyone in more effectively sharing the gospel and planting churches among the immigrant groups in our communities.

Please forward this link and blog post to as many people as you know who are connected to this type of work! And, feel free to post this on your blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Posted on August 3, 2009 at 2:43 PM ~ 3 Comments

Tagged with: ethic, LifeWay Research, ministry, research

3 Comments

By David Kaufmann on August 4, 2009 3:53 PM

Ed,

I was talking with Jeremy Rose about this project. I am a Pastor in Antioch working with about 7 distinct First Generation Church Planters to help equip and shepherd with them. I would love to connect you with them if you are interested.

Pax,
David

By Eli Garza on August 4, 2009 5:29 PM

Hi Ed,
I heard your interview on WLQV here in metro Detroit this afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. I wish I could meet you one day if you are ever in the metro Detroit area. I would be very interested in discussing with you how the church growth, restructuring and strengthening issues you have investigated apply to our metro area. SBC churches are not very strong here in MI. Also, I am very grateful for this 1st generation ethnic study. I have been a member for 40 years of a multi-generational ethnic/bilingual church here in Detroit and found the survey questions to be very insightful. I just hope that the results will not be used in a broad "one size fits all" fashion (as what happens sometimes in our state conventions and associations) but that they can be fashioned to fit not only the particular ethnic group but also the characteristics of the ethnic group in relation to the geographical area of the US where they are moving into and assimilating. I am looking forward to see the results.

By Greg on August 5, 2009 9:37 AM

I think it is interesting that your posts on preaching and Andy Stanley start a firestorm, yet studying ministries to first generation immigrants is apparently of not much interest to folks. A sign of where our hearts and minds are as a church?