Is research important for the Church today? In what way? And what is this spiritual mapping thing?

Here are two definitions of spiritual mapping:

The discipline of diagnosing and responding to the spiritual dynamics at work in a given community. Otis: The process of superimposing our understanding of forces and events in the spiritual domain onto places and circumstances in the material world. Victor Lorenzo: The sum of divine revelation, plus research, plus proven facts, whose objective is to provide complete and accurate information about the identity of spiritual powers that rule over a region, their size of operation, and the forms and methods they use to influence the people and church of that region

As with secular research, there are really two type of research: basic and applied.

Applied research, such as done by the DAWN (Discipling a whole Nation) is easiest to justify because it has specific goals and you can measure progress against those goals. For example, you can do an ethnic profile of a community, define what ethnic groups are not being reached with the Gospel, and do church planting initiatives based on the research. Actually, you can do research to define any unreached group - such as a particularl generational group - and then target a church for that group.

Basic research, as with other fields, is more much difficult to justify but can potentially yield big rewards. After all, that was how the transistor was invented. George Otis, Jr. is probably one of the biggest pioneers in spiritual mapping as it relatess to basic research. His research mission has been to identify cities and regions that have been totally transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit and look backward to see what factors were a part of that. His book Informed Intercession describes the factors he found were related. One of these was diagnostic research.

In my own Portland area, basic research revealed some interesting bindings on the local church. Years ago when the pioneers moved west, they had the dream of creating another Eden again. Through storms, snow, wars, and other dangers they moved west to Oregon. Once here, however, they often felt they had made it on their own and developed a strong sense of independence. Today, the fastest growing churches in the area are the independent churches. In fact, even before the white man came here this was the only area of the country in which the Native American tribes could not come together against the white man. A store near my house once carried the name ‘ I Made it Myself”. That, in truth, is the motto of the city. It is good in the sense that the churches are free of much of the inertia that binds churches in many other areas and the Holy Spirit can do what it will. It’s bad in the sense that there a strong sense of independence and little accountability and seems extremely difficult to get the churches working together for any city transformation.