Is There Hope for Upstate New York's Dying Communities?

The Carpenters celebrate adding +1 to Otsego County's population in 2014.

Otsego County's most recent population numbers are in. We've experienced a 1.76% population loss since the 2010 census (-1,094 people). This trend is consistent with population changes in the surrounding counties, and upstate NY in general.

• Read more from AllOtsego.com, "Otsego County Loses 1,094 People, 1.76% Since Census."
• Read more from The Daily Star, "Census shows local counties are dwindling."

When Laura and I moved to Oneonta in 2009 to start The Redemption Movement, Otsego County's population change since 2000 was +0.9%, with Oneonta down 0.4%. This statistic is one of a handful that drew us to Oneonta--a move which most modern church planting organizations would have advised against. 

• Read more from The Redemption Movement, "Why Oneonta, New York?"

You see, when it comes to starting a new church, denominations will almost exclusively invest resources into growing communities. Unfortunately, such a focus comes at the cost of overlooking the dying communities. As commonsense as this strategy appears, there's actually one huge aspect of ministry that it neglects: hope, or to be more specific, the lack thereof.

The perspective I bring to this conversation is of someone who grew up in a dying rural community. My experience has taught me that communities struggling with population loss also struggle with hopelessness. And since moving to upstate New York, I can confirm that this attitude of hopelessness is prevalent in the local population. 

• Read more from Prntly, "Study shows Upstate NY is the worst place in US to live."

In fact, I would say that I know WAY more people living here who are only still living here because they can't scrape together enough money to move out of state. Plus, in my almost 7 years here, I've had an unusually high number of New York friends move to states with better economies and job opportunities. By far, these disenfranchised NY citizens far outnumber the people I've encountered who love living here and are committed to making the best of it.

Also in my background is time spent living in cities which possessed a growing population and a growing economy. The dichotomy between these two environments is stark, with the growing communities generally being a more positive place to live. 

Suffice to say, the dynamics of how one would conduct a church ministry in a growing community verses in a dying one are equally drastic. For example, cities that have found economic success are filled with people without want. Sadly, this can turn "going to church" into a consumeristic endeavor where the church with the best (fill in the blank) is sought after by the devout. Whereas people living in a dying community don't much care for the trappings of the mega church model with its light shows, big screens, and programs. Instead, these people are first and foremost, looking for hope.

I know that, statistically speaking, it doesn't make sense to start a new church in upstate NY, much less Otsego County. Although, when it comes to understanding that the church has been given a mission to spread hope to people that are lost, hurting, and hungry for hope, that's when starting The Redemption Movement in such an unlikely place begins to actually make sense.

Now, I'm not advocating that starting a new church in a dying community is a silver bullet that will turn everything around. However, it's my belief that, if a church movement successfully spreads hope to the hopeless, then good things will begin to happen and positive changes will take place in the surrounding community. Consider the following benefits of how a church can positively influence a community lacking hope, by giving it something to hope for.

• When people have hope, drug abuse and addiction loses its grip on lives, and drug epidemics are curtailed (drugs being a well-known problem for Otsego County).
• When people have hope, they believe enough in their future to invest in it.
• When people have hope, they believe enough in their future to fix their past mistakes.
• When people have hope, they have a purpose and a desire to share their hope with others.
• When people have hope, they long to participate in a spiritual community with those who share their hope (instead of believing the church to be irrelevant). 
• When people have hope, instead of looking for the first opportunity to escape the problems in their community by moving away, they become intentional about sticking around and looking for ways to remedy them. 
• When people have hope, instead of looking for the first opportunity to escape a tough family situation by divorcing or leaving, they stick to their wedding vows and do the work it takes to repair a broken marriage.
• When people have hope, people have babies and they stick around to raise families. This in turn ensures that a community will have a future. 

At The Redemption Movement, Jesus is our hope and we're on a mission to proclaim this Good News to all who are lost, hurting, and in need of hope.  

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.