Following an agricultural metaphor (2 Cor. 3:6-8), there are three kinds of "harvest" information that can help you to make wise ministry choices.
The harvest field.
Jesus said to look upon the fields ready for harvest (Jn 4:35). In order to pray the Lord to send out workers into the harvest, we must know where people are responsive to the gospel. Although the Lord leads some persons to hard, unresponsive areas, he directs most of us to where he has prepared populations for his gospel.
In every geographical region and city, we must learn what are the nations, tribes, languages, classes, and castes, all the barriers by which people distinguish and separate themselves and limit their communication and trust. For every social group will require a Christian ministry that will love it, pray for it, penetrate it, learn about it and share with it.
Harvest field information will include social identities, population counts, ethnographic descriptions, locations, concentrations, political alignments and spiritual commitments. This information must be analyzed, charted, published and presented to prayer conferences, ministry planning groups, and cooperative bodies. Ministry plans will be made from this information.
When you do harvest field research, share your findings with your church, you colleagues, with cooperative movements and with other ministries that will use it to launch new works. Too often, various ministries seek to win the same social groups to faith, while neglecting other groups, because they do not know about them or do not know that they would be responsive.
The harvest force.
When you have identified a social group whom you believe the Lord wants you to win to faith in him, then seek out other ministries who will cooperate with you and yet others who will provide spiritual services to the people whom you will win. It takes many different kinds of ministries to prepare a people for faith, to win them, to make disciples of them, to train their leaders, to provide their literature and media, to translate the Bible, and so on.
You must find out what are the ministries that already operate in the same geographical area or social group, what ministries are near enough to send in workers, what ministries can provide special services like broadcasting, publishing or training. Also sekk to find ministries that are willing to send missionary teams into the area, especially those who have a similar cultural and economical background.
These ministries must have access to the harvest field and harvest force information, pray over that information, form partnerships, seek resources, allocate personnel, and remain cooperative between themselves.
The harvest yield.
As ministries launch their efforts and support their personnel in their work, the Lord will keep his promises. Social groups will be reached, new believers will be won, new churches and cells will start, workers will be trained, new methods will be found, new attitudes and notions will influence the populations.
It is vital to on-going ministry planning, cooperation and expansion to know where people are most responsive or resistant, what are the means and methods that are useful to the Holy Spirit in bringing people to faith, churches to maturity and new ministries into existence. Continual research must be conducted to track the spread of the gospel and ints impact.
That information must be communicated to the participating ministries, so that they can confirm or adjust their methods, deploy personnel into unreached, responsive areas, hold praise and prayer conference, and seek yet other cooperative ministries that can fill the gaps that appear.
As harvest yield information is compiled from various ministries and regions, local ministries can adopt more productive methods and mission leaders can train new workers in better methods.
See also Ministry ResearchMinistry information is of two kinds: descriptions and measurements, or qualitative and quantitative.
Descriptions
are made from observations and from interviews with active participants. Descriptions are usually written up as short stories that illustrate a social group’s daily practice of its religion, economics, education, family structure, political system and so forth. This kind of information helps workers to understand the people and to relate the gospel and scripture to them in ways that they can understand.Measurements
are made with surveys, report forms and questionnaires that provide statistics about peoples changing knowledge, attitudes, values and behavior. This kind of information is useful to ministry workers to plan their messages, choose their methods and evaluate the outcomes of their ministry activities. It can also show which methods are producing results that please the Lord.Both kinds of information gathering require workers to make many notes and to keep careful records. Often a research specialist can give training to your workers and can help to analyze information and to determine its importance.
All descriptive notes should be labeled with the date and place they were made, and about what kind of group of people. Measurements should be made only to find information that you believe you need and that people can truthfully provide to you.