GospelGraph use cases: illustrative scenarios for churches and networks
Five common decisions, and how the map and field report could inform each one.
These are illustrations, not client stories. No church, person or result on this page is real. Each shows which questions to ask and which layers answer them.
What are these use cases?
This page describes illustrative scenarios: typical place-based decisions a church, planter, elder team or network faces, and how GospelGraph’s tract-level layers could inform each one. They are composites of the kinds of questions the tool was built to answer. They are not case studies of real congregations and they report no outcomes. Named stories from churches will only be published with their permission. The real, published work so far is listed at the end of this page.
Every scenario follows the same rhythm, taken from the methodology: name the decision before you look at data, read the standing level before the movement, check what each layer actually reads, and bring the result to people who know the ground.
How might a planter compare two nearby neighborhoods?
Picture a planting team with two candidate neighborhoods ten minutes apart that look similar from the car. The team runs a free field report on an address in each. The first question is access: what is each tract’s Gospel Desert Index tier, and is the nearest evangelical church inside the tract or just across a boundary? The second is weight: what is each tract’s need pressure, and which of the five Shalom domains carries most of it? The third is direction: did each open, hold or harden between 2020 and 2024 on the Gospel Impact Metric?
Two tracts with the same tier can call for different postures. One may be a hard place that is getting better; the other may look comfortable and be sliding. The neighborhood personalities and the built-form state then show who lives there and whether the streets give a new church anywhere to meet people. The data narrows the choice. The team still walks both neighborhoods at different hours and talks with the pastors already serving nearby.
How might a network find under-served places across a metro?
Picture a regional network deciding where to put its next three plants. Its leaders open the map explorer, filter to Arid and Desert tiers (a GDI of 60 or more), and set the access gap beside need pressure. The GDI methodology splits the two at a GDI of 60 and a pressure of 50: high access gap with high need is flagged for planting assessment, partnership and field validation, while high access gap with low need is a place to build reach before pressure arrives.
The result is a shortlist of 8–12 candidate tracts, the size the GDI methodology suggests, and a ranked conversation for regional leaders. It is not a planting target. Church planting site selection walks through the full three-stage workflow.
How might an elder team prepare for neighborhood outreach?
Picture an elder team about to send volunteers door to door for the first time. Before anyone knocks, they read the field report for the church’s own street. The personalities section tells them which household patterns live nearby and what a typical week looks like, so they can choose a time that does not compete with a commute or a second shift. Each guide includes sections such as What Backfires and What They Are Hungry For, so the team can avoid the approach most likely to sound like an outsider’s pitch.
The domain breakdown shows where the weight sits, whether in Provision & Work, Life & Health or Household & Generations, which helps the deacons think about what kind of care would build trust rather than add demand. Then the team listens on the doorstep and lets what they hear correct what they read.
How might a church read its own parish?
Picture a church that has been on the same corner for decades and wants to know whether its neighborhood has changed around it. The congregation’s area may span three or four tracts. On the map, the leaders compare those tracts side by side: one may carry heavy need pressure and be opening; another may be holding; a third may be hardening fast. Reading them as one "neighborhood" would hide all three stories.
Here the limits matter most. A rising GIM in a tract where the church has served for years is an encouragement and a reason to ask why, not proof that the church caused it. The two-era change is known to within about seven points either way for an ordinary tract, so the leaders treat small differences as noise and look for patterns across several tracts and several years.
How might a denomination read its whole roster?
Picture a denominational office that wants to know where its congregations sit relative to the hardest ground. Each congregation is placed on the census tract it occupies and read against the same national layers: access, need, movement, built form and household mix. The question shifts from "where are we strong?" to "where is the frontier we are not on?"
This one is not only an illustration. GospelGraph has published roster studies of exactly this kind, listed below. They are research documents built from each denomination’s own roster or directory and national data, not client engagements.
Which real GospelGraph field studies are published?
These are real documents. Each describes its own method and states its limits beside its findings.
- The Frontier the PCA Is Not On: every congregation in the PCA roster placed on its tract and read against fourteen layers of national data.
- State of the Field: Assemblies of God, with companion studies of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian and Orthodox Presbyterian churches.
- Which Churches Stand On Their Own: how Assemblies of God polity classes line up against the hardest ground the denomination holds.
- Anne Arundel County Findings: Gospel access, wellbeing and neighborhood personality across all 130 of the county’s neighborhoods.
- State of the Field and The desert moved to the growth edge: national readings of the same layers, the first across 83,344 census tracts.
Common questions
Are these real client case studies?
What is the quickest way to try one of these use cases?
Can GospelGraph tell us whether our ministry is working?
Try the first scenario on your own street
Run a free field report for your church’s address, then open the map to compare the tracts around it.