The Value of Doing Community Research for Your Church

[Tom Pounder] Today we're going to talk about the value of doing community research before your church or ministry makes any kind of big decisions. Are you ready? Because it's time. [Announcer/Intro Voice] You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network. [Tom Pounder] Hey, heroes. My name is Tom Pounder. This is the Church Digital Sidekick podcast. This is a podcast where I bring in ministry leaders and we talk about how we can be more effective in this very digital and online world we're living in today. And today, my guest is Tammy Burdick. Tammy is a co-founder and a researcher at Firm Foundations Marketing, and she's based out of Roanoke, Virginia. Well, that area, which is close to me. Well, kind of close to me where I live in Northern Virginia. And Tammy and I actually met via Twitter and through a friend, Jeanette Yates. I meet a lot of friends through Jeanette Yates. But Tammy and I talked about that a little bit in the interview. But Tammy and I talked today about the value of doing research in your community before you're making a decision in your church, in your ministry. We realize that churches have a lot of decisions that they're going to need to make. throughout the lifespan of their church or their ministry. And there is value, tremendous value in doing research, in particular community research, so you can best serve your community the way you need to as a church. And so I'm really excited to have Tammy on because I've never really talked about this. We've never had a conversation about doing research and the value of that. So I'm really excited to have Tammy on. But before we do that, I do want to highlight at The Church Digital, we have a whole podcast network that is going on. It's not just me. It's not just Jeffrey. We have a variety of other voices out there. And if you want to learn about digital tools and you want to learn about how to do ministry more effectively on this very digital world, don't just listen to my podcast or Jeff's podcast. There are other podcasts. and the Church Digital Podcast Network that I would love for you to check out. So go to thechurch.digital, check out the podcast network there, and learn all about how you can be doing ministry more effectively today in this world that we're living in. All right, so without any further ado, let's get into my conversation right now with Tammy Burdick, talking about doing research and the value of that for your church. All right, with me right now is Tammy Burdick. tammy how are you i'm great tom how are you doing i am doing great and i'm glad you're on the podcast with me uh um i think you and i met i think on a twitter space um or i started following you from a twitter space that uh jeanette yates was doing is that correct that's correct yes i can't even remember what it was about i think it was something about jeanette and um another one of her twitter friends [Tammy Burdick] stepped away from a podcast yeah yeah yeah so how how long have you known jeanette oh goodness um we have worked um and been champions of text and church as a company for probably the duration of my little company so it's from foundations marketing um is the name of our agency And we found text and church along the way. And it was just, it's just a great platform. And then I got to know Jeanette because she's just awesome. And we, you know, we have yet to meet in person when Jeanette one day we're going to meet. We've just been friends on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and professionally and personally. And yeah, no. So that that's how you and I met. [Tom Pounder] Well, no. And seriously, I love Twitter. Twitter is my favorite. Hopefully you'll say Twitter is your favorite as well. But I can't guarantee that. [Tammy Burdick] But I enjoy it. Enjoy it. [Tom Pounder] jenette and i have known each other for years too and i've never met her in person um and but i've met a bunch of other my twitter friends in person so i owe it to jeanette that one day that we're gonna have to meet in person um so yeah hey um okay so talk to me a little bit now we're again we just started to get to know each other um and so but this is the first time on my podcast so tell everyone a little bit about what you do and how you got started in that [Tammy Burdick] Sure. So I co-run, co-own Firm Foundations Marketing. We will be celebrating four years this March. And what we do is there is a disconnect that we were seeing early on between what churches were saying and the messages that people were receiving. So whether that, you know, there's been talk about, know irrelevancy or you know all of those different buzzwords that have been around the last last several years um and what we came to realize over time um was not really having a good handle on what was going on with the people not just inside their church but outside their church especially with churches um that have been around for a long time i mean there's you know you know we're both in virginia So there's a lot of churches here that have been around for a long time, and the communities have changed drastically. And that's true for both rural and urban and suburban churches. And so helping them to understand how the community is today and what's going on with it, what real needs and struggles people have, because when you understand what's going on in their personal lives, in their homes, then you can you can meet those needs you can talk with them you can pray with them a lot more effectively um and just be able just to serve them in ways that really really matter yeah especially now churches you know they have you know so many different ways that they want to be able to serve and trying to decide like with limited resources with limited volunteers and limited staff um what you know which structure that we go do we go in and so sometimes just knowing that the bigger needs of the community and being able to discern that is incredibly helpful. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's awesome. You've actually given a great segue into what we're talking about today. You're welcome. There you go. And again, if anybody's looking for information about Tammy and Firm Foundations, she's going to talk a little bit more about it at the end. We'll also include all the links in the show notes. So just make sure you check on the show notes. But we're going to talk about community outreach and understanding the community. and why that's so important today and how you can do that. So talk to me a little bit about that. You've already kind of hinted to some of it already, but why is doing the research on your community and your audience so important? [Tammy Burdick] yeah i think you know for a lot of years it was it was church growth was the big thing and i still think that the church growth and proclaiming the gospel of jesus is an important thing um but i think for a while we're kind of figuring that out a little bit um it was that there wasn't as much attention paid to in some churches to church that and trying to understand both you know you have to do both you have to understand both the community outside as well as your community of people inside. And so you want to grow both deep and wide. Yeah, it's the same thing. You want to be able to understand everything that's going on so that you can have healthy, strong roots of your people inside. What is it that your older generations are dealing with? Are they seeking to serve? Do they want to talk with someone? What is going on there? what are families dealing with um there's a lot of like sandwich care going on right now where you've got families are taking care of older relatives as well as their own kids is that something that's a major issue um and then that that also changes from community to community yes you know we work with churches all across the country and every single one of those churches is dealing with something different purely because of the environment that they live in. So you can't necessarily say, oh, this one thing is going to work because it worked at this church elsewhere. It may not necessarily work at your church, in your community, with your particular makeup of people. So really having a hand on what it is that people need is a foundational piece before you go forward. [Tom Pounder] I'm so glad you hit on that because I think it's really easy for us that we're in this copycat world. We live in what works in one place. We're like, well, it's got to work in my place because we're it's just going to work. But the reality is it doesn't always work. What's happening in California is different than happening in Texas, in different in Ohio and Virginia. It's all different. So you have to know and understand your community. [Tammy Burdick] uh so that you can best serve it and again i i like to that every church is different you know some churches have a different target audience absolutely other churches and so you really have to know and understand your community really well absolutely yeah we we often tell churches that we work with we could do the same community study um for two different churches but because of the makeup of their congregation we could come up with different findings yeah so it just it there's so many nuances that come to it. I think we can all agree that social media is incredibly important, but how a church uses that is going to really depend upon their audience. And I think for a long time, it was really like, let's just throw it up against the wall and see what sticks. Let's apply all the best practices, buy the graphics packs, like all of those things help. But if it doesn't resonate, then you don't really get anywhere. I was just reading the Lifeway research released a study today saying that the number, the single biggest concern that pastors have is just apathy, the lack of interest. And that's exhausting. Like, you know, I mean, we both work in this space. Like there's nothing worse than putting your heart and soul into something and then it's crickets. So yeah. Yeah. Being able to, to know what it is that the people are, are struggling with yeah or what it is that they care about and reaching out that way so what what tools do you use do you have a set of tools or do you have a process that you go through when you're working with churches or ministry groups yeah so i'll kind of walk through that real quick um we always um start off with with a scope meeting just to get an idea of um how how big is the problem how complex is the problem is it something a little bit simpler and then and then we go from there um we've helped church planters we have helped churches like i said like traditional churches getting to reconnect with their communities who've been successful on doing that um you know helping churches figure out like what's next when they're looking for a pastor you know what what is what does the church need right now And what are some of the things we should be talking about with the pastor? So that's kind of that scope portion. And then from there, I'm using the tools at our resource. So probably one of our favorite tools, at least my favorite tool, is with a group called Mission Insight. And so basically, you know, in marketing parlance, it's household segmentation. And it's a really rich, valuable tool that allows us to go beyond demographics and to be able to see their lifestyle, what's important to them, but also get into their religious beliefs, what they have questions about, how strongly they hold beliefs, all across the scale. um and so being able to figure out what does that look like um do people you know like big clean like post-modern spaces with lots of technology or is that gonna like you know freak people out in your community or if there's a specific group you're trying to reach like what kind of environments you know and that's really helpful if there's a church that's trying really hard to reach a particular segment that happened with a person that we are working with where we are encouraging them to go for like a non-traditional space yeah because they had a group of young adults in their surrounding community that were a traditional church space would be like a huge like no i don't want to go into that space but if i'm in like a kind of a regular environment then their guard goes down and they're able to have those conversations so it's it's pretty incredible and then you know surveys interviews if we need something that's a little bit more nuanced [Tom Pounder] Okay, so let me ask you this question. Have you encountered a church or a ministry group that you've worked with before that had like a specific target in mind or a target audience in mind? And then after working through the process with you, they thought, okay, our direction, where we wanted to go or where we thought we wanted to go is not where we needed to go. And they kind of did a change of pace or a kind of a 180 of sorts? [Tammy Burdick] one that i that i just alluded to a little bit they had an inkling that they needed to do something different yeah which is halfway there because you know being already at a place of like okay what we've always done like isn't working and we know we need to do something different but what does that something different look like um and i think yeah what you're referring to is if i'm understanding correctly is is they need to go in a completely different direction yeah what they've been doing yeah that has that has not happened yet but i anticipate at some point that it will um and i think that's a part of the hard conversations that we um that we have with churches is sometimes you know you have to let go of of what you used to do if the mission is to reach this particular group to administer the to this particular group all the other stuff is shouldn't be as essential yeah as it as it once was and so being able to let go so that you can do the ministry and the service that's necessary which is hard i mean i come at that as a ministry leader as a church leader myself and being able to say like okay this isn't necessarily as important yeah yeah [Tom Pounder] has how again this wasn't one of the questions i kind of gave you in advance but how how has the um how has covid changed things in the processes maybe that you've walked through with with churches have they have they changed at all or are churches looking for different things in the churches that you've worked for yeah i think um you know when when covet first hit it was kind of [Tammy Burdick] It was chaos. One of the first things that we did was put out a piece just to advise leaders on how to stay calm through COVID. Like, what is it that people need? That was literally why we called it, was like, calm. Like, this is what people need, just a quick communications piece. Because that was a crisis of magnitude that we've never dealt with in our lifetime. And the ones who... were able to kind of adapt, I don't want to really say like, adapt, you know, they've been able to adjust a little bit more, more easily were the ones that had a closer understanding of their communities of their of the people that lived around them, the ones that struggled the most. It was either just accepting kind of what was going on and what it wasn't. that people needed. Or it was just a lack of resources. I mean, it was, you know, first later burnout is real and it's a problem and it's a lot. People are dealing with a lot, our pastors are dealing with a lot and there have been more than a handful of conversations where that has been the subject of the conversation has just been, I just, I'm just exhausted. I'm just tired. is there anything you coach them with when they when they tell you that or or how do you encourage them in the churches yeah it depends on on the situation um i know that a lot of you know the conversations when they happen one-on-one a lot of them they tend to be handled by my business partner tyler harden fantastic he has a lot of those direct reports i do a lot of the writing and the research um but he's got a great listening ear and sometimes um you know they say you know leadership at the top is lonely yeah and i think um that's especially true um for our pastors and our church leaders doubled on top of the time during a pandemic when there's a lot of social isolation just in general yeah um So I think it's like, if anything administrative, like you just want to listen first. And so that's the first thing we try to do is listen to what it is that they're trying to say. There's nothing worse than when you're grappling with something difficult and then someone is just like, okay, that's enough. Like, I'm just going to tell you what to do, you know? And so just trying, trying to listen and it's, you know, there's just trying to figure out like what, what is the best resource for them? is is there a facebook group that we know of that can be helpful do we have a mutual connection um a lot of it is just just staying in touch with them letting them know that that we care about them um just as individuals as people yeah um so because there's no there's no one there's i wish there was one thing tom [Tom Pounder] No, I'm, I'm a, I'm a online pastor, student pastor myself. It's just like, it has been challenging. And I think as you know, again, we're talking about doing community research and looking at your audience and what you're doing, but it's important to know who the pastors are and who the ministry people and what they're going through. So I imagine that's part of your process as you kind of go through stuff with them. [Tammy Burdick] Yeah. We always, we always ask, you know, what has this been like for you? [Tom Pounder] get a temperature check on on them you know what are they how are they doing how is their staff doing um because sometimes they're doing fine yeah and sometimes they're not yeah most of the time they're not they're just faking it they're totally just faking it yeah okay okay so as you kind of work through this process with them what other steps do you go through with them to kind of walk through this [Tammy Burdick] One of the things that we set out to do, especially when we decided to do the research route and really just focus in on that, is not just hand them a report in a fancy binder that says, here's the research. I come from a background, both of us do, of doing the research and then applying it. So that's the next part of that process is either a lot of it is virtual, but if it's close enough or if it makes sense, then we'll show up in person. And to be able to explain the workshop, the research in a workshop, vetting to be able to say, this is what it is. This is how we can apply it. Um, and especially during that scoping meeting, actually figuring out like, what are your biggest challenges that you're, that you're, um, that you're either dealing with your biggest goals. Are you trying to grow something or you're trying to fix something? Let's figure out how we can apply this research to that specific thing that you're using so that it's actionable. The worst thing is for that research to sit in a file. digital or otherwise and never looked at again it's too it's too valuable and once they start to figure out like how they can use it then that sparks other ideas yeah um but unless you're a data nerd like you don't necessarily see the possibilities like i love it so would you consider yourself a data nerd Absolutely. I was thinking about this the other day. So the market research team that I initially was on earlier in my career, they gave me a nickname and a promotion of DJ Data. [Tom Pounder] Nice. Nice. That is awesome. [Tammy Burdick] Oh, yeah. But you know, the charts and all the different ways of looking at it, it's just, I love it. love it but it's not enough to to love the numbers like you have to figure out like okay what do we do with this what is this what does this mean how can we apply it [Tom Pounder] Yeah, I'm just going to give a quick personal example because I think the data is really important is that I work at New Life Christian Church. We're in Chantilly, Virginia. We were a mobile church, portable church for a really long time. And then we finally were able to secure a building. And we actually bought an old Budweiser distribution center. It was 85,000 square feet. And we're like, what are we going to do with this? And we kind of had a plan and an idea. but we we don't know i don't this was before i came on staff there but they did a they did a research and they did research on what does the community want what does the community need here and we were envisioning this whole different plan what the community told us was that they wanted more indoor sports facilities because there weren't enough of that and so we thought we've got this huge building let's make basketball courts indoor turf fields and a workout area and let's offer it to the community so that our church is open seven days a week as a service to the community and it's been a huge blessing we've been open for over 11 years now um and uh it's just been a huge blessing to our community to be able to serve it in that way but we use the research to be able to determine what the what the community needed yeah yeah and i know that area so it's it's grown a lot yeah um and just the need i mean youth sports is big like i don't think any youth pastor would argue with you Can you come to group tonight? No, I got this. All the time. So it's so much different than when I was growing up. I mean, sure. But sure. [Tammy Burdick] Yeah. [Tom Pounder] Okay. So as you kind of work through the process, are there other tools or things that you utilize to help churches as they're trying to learn more about their community and what's best to serve them? [Tammy Burdick] Those are the biggest ones, is doing the audience research. I think that's a nuance that I forgot to leave out. It's not just about knowing the community, also knowing your actual congregation as well. So being able to apply that same information to understand, to compare and contrast both your congregation as well as the surrounding community. And that's one of the biggest ones. Being able to talk with people one-on-one is incredibly insightful. So you can kind of go big with the research, being able to have those interviews, to talk to people individually, to hear their specific words. That's powerful. That's powerful. And so that's like one of the things that I'll include towards the end is how church leaders can do that. Cause I actually strongly believe that even though that's, this is what I do on a regular basis. And there's very specific ways to get the information you're looking for. I do think those are conversations that all church leaders should be having, regardless of whether their title is seeing your pastor or, you know, the, the volunteer who runs the greeting team. Like it doesn't matter. Like you should, you should always be talking to people. [Tom Pounder] So you don't just talk to the main pastor or board of elders. You talk to a variety of people within the church staff and the volunteers? [Tammy Burdick] We can. We absolutely can. It really depends. Usually our main point of contact, if it's not the senior pastor, then it tends to be like the communications director, if it's at a larger church. But being able to talk with as many leaders as makes sense. And that's possible. If you think about what it looks like for someone to go from a church guest to a committed member, that's a lot of teams. That's a lot of people that's involved all along the way. And so when we're going through the larger community research, being able to have as many people present as possible so that everyone is hearing it, the same time they're getting the different perspectives they're saying like oh like remember that thing that happened like with with that new gas like could we do something in the parking lot help you know solve whatever problem and you can solve that problem like right there because everyone's at the table so you know at different stages we think we bring we bring different people in yeah what how long is the process you would take from maybe start to finish what what's the process look like in length in length you know really that depends on on being able to schedule the meetings okay that's good that's that's true that's true but i would i would say you know if we're if we're talking about just doing the research and having the workshops I mean, if we could fast track that and get that done within four to six weeks. But for the most part, and with most of the churches we've worked with simply because of meetings and scheduling and stuff, you know, it tends to be closer to the three month mark, but not because I'm not. [Tom Pounder] Like I've been trying to schedule with you for a few weeks and you're just like so busy. [Tammy Burdick] So it's just like, you know, you caught me, you caught me at my downtime of the year. So there is that, there is that, but yeah. Yeah. And then also, you know, we have a, you know, the smaller churches, um, you know, if you've got your leaders. have like a regular nine to five job yeah or if you have a pastor who's bi-vocational which does happen too yeah you know it but fast track it you know we can do that within four to six weeks but really the the thing i you know i try to encourage our um our church leaders to keep an eye on is just like what's the next step and let's just get to that point and let's remember what it is that we're trying to get done here [Tom Pounder] specific coming up you know we we try to keep that in mind yeah as well yeah well i think what you do is awesome i mean because i think it's so important and i think again as i just gave the example about my own personal church without the research we wouldn't know how to best serve our community so i think that's really important about what you do um as we wrap up quickly tell me a little bit more about firm foundations and how you guys got started and you know what what what do you what are you at now [Tammy Burdick] Yeah, so Firm Foundations Marketing started about four years ago. Tyler and I have actually worked together for 15 years. Oh, wow. Prior to Firm Foundations, we worked in the newspaper industry. We worked for a large regional publisher down here in Southwest Virginia. Wait, the Roanoke Times? It was the Roanoke Times. Yeah, yeah. So we worked together for a long time in a lot of different ways. And then four years ago, we started of firm foundations with the intent of helping churches to better understand their surrounding communities so that they can transform lives. And so that has been our mission. And the best way to probably get started with learning about what that can look like for your church would be to go actually to go to ministryreset.com. um and there uh folks can download a guide um just packed with some of those questions that i talked about earlier so it's it's 50 questions growing churches ask um and it's a way it's it has questions just for different groups of people you know whether you're talking to young interested in talking to young adults you've got a young family in front of you um you're you're talking to some of your older members of your church and there's different things that people have going on in their in their lives and digging into that a little bit a little bit more so like we would love to be able to work with every church that listens to your podcast but a great first step yeah um is to download that guide that's awesome okay so ministryreset.com i'll include it in the link and um we'll we'll share that [Tom Pounder] um how how if someone was like i gotta follow tammy now i want to follow her what's what are your social platforms that you're most on other than twitter [Tammy Burdick] yeah to twitter i'm th burdick which i know you'll include that um in the show notes the rest of our social platforms um have been quiet um because we've really been doing a lot of listening and talking um to our our church leaders um and so that's that's the most active place that we're at right now um so um and then we have a i send out a an email at least once a week with helpful tips and information um so today's um email was all about looking at the copy that's on your website and a subtle tweak that you could make so that I have an email that goes out every week. [Tom Pounder] Where is your email? How do they sign up for the email? [Tammy Burdick] So there's two ways that they can do that. If you get the guide, then you have the option of being on the email list. So that's probably the easiest way to do it. And I will get you our subscriber link. um after we hop off the podcast perfect that'd be awesome rather than give you a big long url that people are like wait what did she say i'll put it in the show notes that's good okay last question last question for you uh are you a coffee or tea drinker what's in the cup oh well right now it is tea because it is in the afternoon and i've become my mother and i cannot have super caffeinated drinks after after a certain time of day which reminds me so much of her um but first thing in the morning it's coffee like i've got that coffee pot is preset tom like that's great it is ready to go when i wake up are you are you black or do you put creamer or sugar in it too or what oh i'm i'm a black coffee drinker [Tom Pounder] Cheers to you. [Tammy Burdick] Cheers. [Tom Pounder] Well, Tammy, it was great having you on. I envision having you on more in the future. [Tammy Burdick] That would be awesome. [Tom Pounder] This is great. Best of luck to you. And then we'll catch up soon. [Tammy Burdick] Sounds good. [Tom Pounder] All right. So what do you think? What kind of questions or thoughts do you have right now after hearing Tammy and I talk about this? There is, again, tremendous value here in doing research. It's just we got to do it the right way. And having someone like Tammy. walk you through it or her marketing firm firm foundations marketing walk you through it it would be a very useful thing for you to do and so she's giving you that great guide that if you just go on her site and again i'm going to have all her links on the show notes so if you just go on her link and just start the process with her she's going to really help you and your ministry So I'm really excited for you to connect with her. She's been great to talk to you over the past few weeks. And so I think that doing research can have a tremendous impact in your church and your ministry for the long term. So I would strongly encourage you to do that. But if you've got questions, you've got thoughts, if you've got experiences, definitely hit me up on Twitter at TAPounder. I would love to kind of carry on this conversation with you. And Tammy would probably hop on this conversation as well because she's very active on Twitter. So definitely go on there and check it out and let's continue this conversation online. All right, heroes, well, that wraps it up for another Church Digital Sidekick podcast. Thanks so much for joining me. As always, subscribe to this if you want to. It's on iTunes, it's on Spotify, it's on YouTube. There's lots of different opportunities for you to connect there. I would also encourage you to go to the Church Digital. Not just do we have the podcast network that I highlighted earlier in the show, but we also have some coaching, we have cohorts, and we have tons of blog posts out there that encourage you in your ministry today. So make sure you go to thechurch.digital.com. today all right heroes well i hope you have a great rest your day a great rest week and until next time have a great one