As you probe to learn more about the cultural context in which you will establish your church, a profile of the people you are seeking to serve begins to emerge.

Normally, people profiles in the past have only been done on unreached people groups, by cross-cultural missionaries. Today, church planter training 101, you need to do a people profile. It used to be that just missionaries would do people profiles. The wider the gap between the culture of your past and the culture of your ministry focus group, the more difficult and the more important it is, for you to have a deep understanding of these people.

Through the people profile, you are finding answers to the three primary questions that are the essence of your mission statement.

1) Who are you called to serve?

2) What are their greatest needs?

3) How will your church help meet these needs?

This is something you do now, but this is something you should never stop doing. It's almost like the person who does scriptural exegesis when they're in seminary and then they never do it again. The person who does cultural exegesis when they start a church plant and they never do it again.

What I've given you here are some sample ministry people profiles from North America that I've just kind of randomly, subjectively chosen to show diversity of people groups in a North American context. Notice the first one, New York City urban professional. Extremely bright. These are highly proficient. These are usually experts they have years of counseling, self analysis. They're very sexually active. They are absorbed in their careers. They have a liberal social conscience. They are commitment weary. They're phobic. Very private, individualistic. They're somewhat lonely. Experienced numerous transitions. Highly secularized if they have two or three religions or spiritual systems. A very deep mistrust of organized religion and especially evangelical Christianity 

Isn't it interesting how negative that people profile is and how positive the impact of this particular church has been on the city? Be sure to make the connection there, because there was great intentionality in understanding who these people are. What they are adverse to, what they are drawn to, what they are repulsed by. That was a key to their own understanding of what would shape their ministry.

Look at Southern California: suburban professional. One is an urban professional, this is a suburban professional. Well educated, likes profession, likes where they live. Health and fitness are high priority. Family. These kinds of things. Notice the next one, a multiracial center city. Then a small center city professional. My encouragement to you is to look over these four. Just as seed thoughts. By developing a first draft people profile, you then need to begin answering the question, what are their greatest needs? You need to be acutely aware of the kinds of the kinds of things that deeply burden the people in your ministry focus group. Do you know their major artery bleeds? Basically, do you know the things that keep them up at night?

As you begin to develop your people profile and determine their needs, I want you to use just this classic grid. What are their greatest physical or economic needs? Don't think that because someone is upper middle socioeconomic that they don't have needs. They're just in incredible debt and it's actually crushing them. It's one of the number one issues that destroys their marriage. There are needs across the spectrum. It's not just food and shelter.

What are their greatest social emotional needs? What are their greatest mental educational needs? What are their greatest spiritual moral needs? You're beginning to think deeply through different perspectives. I want you to put on the lens of the physical and the economic. Then you put on the lens of the social, emotional needs. The mental, educational needs. The spiritual moral needs.

When the needs of your ministry focus group have been more clearly understood, you should then start exploring practical ways that the gospel in word and in deed could begin helping to meet these needs. How do you learn to weep over your own Jerusalem? Incarnationally, you come alongside them.

I want you to actually be thinking, what is uniquely good news to them? How does the good news of the gospel show itself uniquely to them in light of their specific woundedness? In light of their brokenness? In light of their darkness? In light of their unique crookedness? What is uniquely spiritually radioactive about the gospel to them? What good news do you bring them in light of the things that keep them up at night?

Through the emerging ministry of your new church, you should always be exploring practical ways that the gospel can help straighten that which is made crooked by sin, ways the domain of darkness can be pushed back through the light of the gospel. How is the ministry of the gospel the ultimate solution to all their needs both personal and social? What will be good news, uniquely to them? How will your church help to meet these needs?

What you're doing is seeking to contextualize the gospel in this unique context. The problem is, frankly, most church planters are answering questions that their ministry focus group is not really asking. Most church planters are offering ministries that usually are not connecting with the real needs of the people in the ministry focus group.

What are most church planters doing? They're normally doing what they have had done to them in their church. They're just basically repeating their model that was in another culture, often in another generation or even a previous generation.

The gospel is the ultimate solution to everything, both personal and social, but most of the time that's just a trite slogan. Here is where a church planter says, "Okay. How is this true with these people? One size doesn't fit all." You've got to recognize what is the brokenness, what are the needs.

Yes, you always emphasize prayer and evangelism and those kind of priorities on the upfront. But in terms of the ministries that you have in light of infiltrating, contextualizing, and becoming incarnational, frankly it depends. It depends on what their needs are. It depends on what their brokenness is.