THE CHANGING FACE OF
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND ITS MINISTRIES IN
THE GREATER LOS ANGELES METRO AREA
(GLAMA = LOS ANGELES & ORANGE COUNTIES)

Our perception of reality concerning our community--our piece of the fragmented metropolis--needs to change in the light of new information now available concerning the ethnic and religious composition of GLAMA and its component parts.

This new information is the result of over three-years of fieldwork by a team of researchers, led by Clifton L. Holland of IDEA Ministries. Holland, a veteran missionary with over twenty years of experience in teaching and research in Latin America and the Caribbean regions, was challenged in 1990 by Dr. Ralph D. Winter, Director of the U.S. Center for World Mission (USCWM) in Pasadena, to apply the same missiological research methods that Holland has using in Mexico City to Los Angeles, a city now called "The Capital of the Third World."

Consequently, since 1991 IDEA Ministries has been a catalyst for the creation and maintenance of a computer database of information on ethnic and religious diversity in the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area (GLAMA), as well as for training other organizations in the use of the database and associated software. Holland has been a pioneer in the design and production of a user-friendly software program to help others create "Church Directories" for major cities, regions or whole countries; this program (a run-time application in Clarion created by Alan R. Young & Associates) is called IDEA Church Directory Software (ICDS).

The first model computer work-station that Holland setup for this purpose was located on the campus of the William Carey International University (WCIU) in Pasadena in January, 1992. Together with volunteers from other organizations, Holland created an "Urban Resource Center" that trained personnel from local Christian universities and graduate schools in urban geo-demographical research methods using ATLAS GIS software. In December of that year, the "Urban Resource Center" was moved to the facilities of the Bresee Institute for Urban Training, located at the First Church of the Nazarene of Los Angeles (Third and Vermont Streets). This project was sponsored by COULD (Consortium for Urban Leadership Development), founded in 1992, of which IDEA, WCIU-USCWM and the Bresee Institute were founding members, along with a half dozen other Christian educational institutions with an urban focus.

Holland and his associates have helped other organizations develop similar databases, with similar hardware and software, both in the Los Angeles area and in other regions, including the Inland Empire (part of Riverside and San Bernardino counties) and a national database of Hispanic Protestant churches. Since June of 1993, Holland has helped a dozen organizations in GLAMA become operational in the use of the ATLAS GIS computer mapping software, while several dozen sites are using the ICDS program for research purposes (see GLAMA-NET).

The fruit of these labors can be seen, also, in the production of a series of resource directories in hardcopy and in hundreds of computer-generated maps and other graphics on GLAMA and its sub-regions. IDEA Ministries, in a sincere desire to share with the Christian public this expanding body of information and to encourage Christian organizations in outreach to changing communities, is now offering copies of our research reports and graphics at a fair market price.

Included with this report are several pages of information about our software, databases, hardcopy reports and graphics that can be ordered by mail or by phone.

To help whet your appetite for the kind of information that these computer-generated reports and graphics can provide, we have included a series of graphics that will give you an overview of the contents of our databases, as well as a better understanding of the changing mosaic of ethnic and religious diversity in the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area (GLAMA).

For further information, please contact us at the following address:

IDEA-PROLADES MINISTRIES
P.O. Box 3533, Santa Cruz, CA 95063-3533
(1-800) 682-5832
E-Mail: prolades@racsa.co.cr
Internet:  www.ideaministries.com

Last Revised March 22, 2002