Americas Top 43 Ripest Towns for Church Planting

In my previous blog article I highlighted 9 statistics about Oneonta that attracted us to start a church here. Specifically, we were looking for a community that had all of these things going for it :

• A college town.
• Town growth (or the lack thereof).
• Percentage of population with degrees.
• Poverty levels.
• Church-to-people ratio.
• Percentage of people unaffiliated with any religion.
• Percentage of people who live/work in the community.
• Percentage of people who commute to the community. 
• Town size.

We exhaustively compared these statistics to every college town in the lower 48 states. This helped us to locate a community that we felt would most benefit from a new church like the one we were envisioning.

Objectively Ranking America's College Towns

Methodology: For every one of these 9 categories we assigned a maximum value of 10 (90 points max). We then ranked each statistic from 1-10, in accordance with the national average. Next, we totaled the values of all 9 statistics and divided the sum by the maximum score (90), in order to arrive at a percentage/score for the town. This allowed us to rank and compare prospective church planting communities by percentages, with the higher the percentage equating to the greater the need the community has for a new church like The Redemption Movement.

It was a very revealing study that highlighted the need for church planting in America. To narrow down our search, we came up with a list of every town that scored more than 60%, which produced this list of the top 43 ripest college communities for church planting, 2009:        

1. Hanover, NH.................pop. 8,532...........86.9%
2. Boulder, CO...................pop. 93,552........78.7%
3. Middlebury, VT............pop. 6,380...........78.4%
4. Laramie, WY.................pop. 27,469..........75.3%
5. Oneonta, NY...........pop. 13,225..........74.9%
5. Macomb, IL...................pop. 18,701.............-
5. Iowa City, IA.................pop. 67,062.............-
8. Ann Arbor, MI..............pop. 115,092........74%
9. Missoula, MT................pop. 67,165...........73.5%
10. Oxford, OH..................pop. 22,210..........72.6%
11. Corvallis, OR................pop. 51,125...........71%
12. Carbondale, IL............pop. 20,413...........69.9%
13. Fairfield, IA.................pop. 9,163.............69.6%
14. Lamoni, IA...................pop. 2,420............69.4%
15. Mansfield, PA..............pop. 3,223.............69%
16. Glenville, WV...............pop. 1,465.............68.8%
17. San Francisco, CA........pop. 764,976.........66.9%
17. Lawrence, KS...............pop. 89,852...............-
19. Keene, NH....................pop. 22,893...........66.8%
19. Ithaca, NY....................pop. 29,974................-
21. Manhattan, KS.............pop. 51,707...........65.9%
22. Bar Harbor, ME...........pop. 2,752..............65.7%
23. Columbia, MO..............pop. 99,174............65.3%
24. San Luis Obispo, CA....pop. 43,516...........64.9%
25. Big Rapids, MI.............pop. 10,596...........64.7%
25. Houghton, MI..............pop. 6,924.................-
27. Brattleboro, VT...........pop. 8,160..............64.6%
28. Terre Haute, IN..........pop. 58,932............63.7%
28. Chadron, NE................pop. 5,489..................-
30. Ames, IA......................pop. 54,745............63.4%
30. Bangor, ME..................pop. 31,853.................-
32. Duluth, MN..................pop. 84,397............63.2%
33. Farmington, ME..........pop. 4,159..............63.1%
34. Auburn, AL..................pop. 54,348............62.4%
34. Portland, ME............... pop. 62,825................-
36. Bozeman, MT..............pop. 37,981.............62.1%
37. Prairie View, TX..........pop. 4,513..............61.9%
38. Charleston, IL..............pop. 20,296...........61.3%
39. Spokane, WA...............pop. 200,975.........60.4%
40. Muncie, IN.................. pop. 65,410...........60.1%
40. Kirksville, MO..............pop. 17,139................-
40. Lebanon, NH................pop. 12,729................-
43. Urbana, IL....................pop. 39,484........... 60%

Subjectively Singling Out Our Destination

You will notice that Oneonta is tied for 5th at 74.9%. Choosing Oneonta was a subjective choice made by considering objective data. With Oneonta ranked fifth, this list of 43 may appear deceiving, but for us, choosing a community that scored strongly in all 9 categories was more important than the town's total score. For example, a town could rank highly despite not scoring in all 9 of the required categories. Safe to say, Oneonta scored highly in all 9 categories.

The benefit of having a list like this is that it helped narrow down the subjective search of studying the community's culture for the purpose of finding a city that would be a good fit for our church--a process that would have been impossible to do for every college town in America. For this subjective look at our potential community, we asked questions like:

• Is there already a church in the community doing what we want to do? 
• How many new churches are in the community? 
• Could we effectively minister to the community's culture?
• Would we enjoy living there?
• And of course, finding that "special something."  

Notice that this whole process was guided by the desire to start a new church based on a community's need for a new church, as opposed to looking for a community where a new church is in high demand. This need-based approach to church planting has proven to be one of the biggest challenges for our church plant. 

At the end of such an extensive research project, we prayerfully ended up in Oneonta. If we didn't do this project, we wouldn't have moved here, seeing that we previously had never heard of Oneonta. Also, unlike other "ripest cities for church planting lists" that used different criteria (and never listed Oneonta), our research allowed us to apply different criteria based on our unique calling, passions, and giftings. 

In July of 2009 we moved to Oneonta, New York to plant The Redemption Movement, and the rest is history. If you're a church planter looking for a community to start a new church in, feel free to contact Pastor Kaler for assistance with drafting a similar model for your own ministry.