Welcome
The CREC HotSpot Project exists to serve CREC churches and church planters, and to help people who would like to see a new CREC church in their area.
The HotSpot map provides detailed data about the geographical distribution of people who consume CREC-related online content. Check it out for yourself below.
Existing churches
Integrate demographic data into your mission strategy by identifying locations where interest in a new church plant may be high.
Local networkers
Contact us to start building a community of people keen to join with you in starting a new CREC church.
Church planters
Evaluate potential church planting locations, and focus your community-building efforts in areas where interest is likely to be high.
Understanding the HotSpot map
The HotSpot map displays the geographical distribution of people who consume CREC-related online content. It’s highly intuitive – a deeper red color means more people, a lighter color means fewer people. Try exploring it for yourself, or click the “Details” tab for more explanation.
Darker colors mean that more people in a particular area consume that particular type of content.
The numbers on the scale give a relative indication of the audience sized in different areas, allowing a comparison between different locations. (Note: they do not relate quantitatively to the numbers of users or subscribers.)
This type of scale (technically called a “logarithmic scale”) is necessary in order to distinguish clearly between areas with very high audience levels, moderate audience levels, and low audience levels. If a linear scale were used (1 … 2 … 3 …), it would be practically impossible to make these distinctions, because the image would either be dark red everywhere, or only the places with the very highest audience figures would have any color at all.
“All data” combines the data from all four sources: Blog and Mablog, Canon Plus, CrossPolitic, and Theopolis. Each source is equally weighted at 25% of the total.
The radio buttons marked “85%” switch to a heatmap that focuses on just one of the online sources. For example, “Canon Plus 85%” means Canon Plus contributes 85% of the data for the heatmap, with the other sources contributing only 5% each. By contrast, on the “All data” heatmap, the four sources of data are all weighted equally. These options allow users to see which of the different CREC-related online sources are most popular in particular locations.
“Population normalized” means that the audience figures in a particular area are divided by the population in that area. By contrast, the other heatmaps simply show the total audience size, regardless of local population. This allows us to see where our audience may comprise a large proportion of a local population, even when the total audience size is quite small (e.g. check out the small rural communities around Moscow, ID). Conversely, it allows us to see where a large audience size may be the result of high local population density, rather than a high proportion of people consuming CREC-related content (e.g. Los Angeles). To put it another way, the “population normalized” data indicate what fraction of the local population consumes our content compared to the total population in a particular location, whereas the other heatmaps simply indicate the size of the audience, irrespective of the local population. Both sets of data are important in evaluating local demographic conditions.
The “Show churches” checkbox displays the locations of all CREC churches.
That’s a complex question. If you’re a church or church planter actively considering a new church plant, please contact us for a personal consultation to discuss these details.
If you have further questions, please check out the technical details, below. Alternatively, please contact us for a free personal consultation.
HotSpot map
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About
The CREC (Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches) has been blessed with significant numerical growth in recent years. Our existing congregations are growing in size – some extremely rapidly. Every year, an increasing number of new churches are being added to our ranks, and our church planting efforts are moving forward at an increasing pace.
However, church planting efforts are frequently hampered by uncertainty about the degree of interest among the wider population in prospective church planting locations. The CREC HotSpot Project is designed to address this need by allowing Pastors, church leaders, and church planters to see the level of interest in CREC-related online content in the areas of interest.
Moreover, there remain many areas of the country where no CREC church exists, but where many local people would love to join one. If that’s you, the CREC HotSpot Project allows you to build local networks by making contact with others who may want to join them in establishing a new CREC church.
Existing churches
Are you a Pastor or Officer in a CREC church, seeking to identify promising locations for potential future church plants? The HotSpot map allows you to identify areas that are home to significant numbers of people interested in CREC-related online content. Get started now, and contact us if you have any questions or require a more detailed consultation.
Local networks
Would you like to join a CREC church, but the nearest congregation is too far away? Explore your local area using the HotSpot map, and share it on your social networks to raise awareness among your friends. Then contact us to share your details and get in touch with other like-minded people who live near you. We will help you to build relationships locally, and your local CREC presbytery will be able to guide you through the process of establishing a new CREC church plant.
Church planters
Cut the guesswork from your church planting efforts, and start relying on real-world data, using the HotSpot map to evaluate potential church planting locations. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, or want to make contact with potential church plant members near you.
Technical details
Over one million data points were sampled from more than eight thousand geographical locations, measuring user engagement with CREC-related online content. No names, addresses, or other personal data were collected during this process.
These data were used to create a series of heatmaps, allowing church leaders, prospective church planters, and others to identify geographical locations where significant demand may exist for a new CREC church plant.
Sampling: Over 1,000,000 data points were sampled from more than 8000 different geographical locations across the contiguous US, measuring user engagement with Blog and Mablog (number of user interactions between July 2022 and July 2023), Canon Plus (number of subscribers as at April 2024), CrossPolitic (number of downloads via Dropwave), and Theopolis (number of user interactions between April 2024 and April 2024). Local population data were also gathered. No names, addresses, credit card details, or other personal data were collected during this process. Project lead: Brian Points.
Data centers: Data points originating from known data centers were identified, and their influence on the data assessed. In most cases, the effects were so negligible (<1% of local data arising from non-data center locations) that their effects could safely be ignored. In three cases (Ashburn, VA; Boardman, OR; Quincy, WA) it was determined that the data would significantly distort the local heatmap landscape, so these three geographical locations were omitted, resulting in a loss of approximately 2.5% of the total available data. However, all these three data centers draw from a wide geographical area, so the distortive effect of this small percentage loss on the final heatmap landscape will be negligible. Project lead: Steve Jeffery.
Mercator correction: The latitude values θ for each geographical location were scaled to virtual latitude values φ (see below), in order to ensure precise mapping onto the Mercator Projection used by OpenStreetMap. Project lead: Steve Jeffery.
Matrix construction: A region from latitude (θ) 0° to 50°N and longitude 125° to 65°W was divided into a 376×376 matrix, and the values of local population and user engagement variables (Blog and Mablog interactions, Canon Plus subscriptions, CrossPolitic downloads, and Theopolis interactions) were summed for all the geographic locations within each cell , creating five 376×376 matrices representing the geographic distribution of each variable. Project lead: Ben Jeffery.
Data processing: The values of the four user engagement variables (Blog and Mablog interactions, Canon Plus subscriptions, CrossPolitic downloads, and Theopolis interactions) within their respective matrices were normalized to the same maximum value, to scale the data appropriately for visualization, and to account for the fact that an annual online subscription reflects much greater interest in the underlying content than a single online interaction. The resulting matrices were then combined to create five visualization matrices, one with equal weight assigned to all four user engagement variables (“All data”), and four others in which one of the user engagement variables was weighted at 85% and the other three at 5% each: “Blog and Mablog 85%”, “Theopolis 85%”, “Canon Plus 85%”, and “CrossPolitic 85%”. Each of these five matrices were then normalized with respect to the local population to create five more visualization matrices: “All data, population normalized“, “Blog and Mablog 85%, population normalized“, “Theopolis 85%, population normalized“, “Canon Plus 85%, population normalized”, and “CrossPolitic 85%, population normalized”. Project lead: Steve Jeffery.
Visualization: The ten visualization matrices were plotted as heatmaps using a Python Script, applying a natural log transformation and the “Reds” color scale. The resulting pngs were overlaid at 50% opacity on a Mercator Projection using OpenStreetMap, along with the locations of all CREC churches, and appropriate toggle functions to allow switching between the different overlays. Project lead: Steve Jeffery.
Our agreements with the suppliers of the data (Blog and Mablog, Theopolis, Canon Plus, and CrossPolitic) stipulate that we won’t isolate their data completely from the other sources of data. We have instead produced weighted heatmaps for each dataset, in which 85% of the signal comes from a single sources, allowing users to discern qualitatively the major source(s) of a local signal.
Each shaded rectangle represents the traffic from all the locations within that region. If even a small portion of the rectangle overlaps land, that’s sufficient to generate a traffic signal in that area.
Our agreements with the suppliers of the data (Blog and Mablog, Theopolis, Canon Plus, and CrossPolitic) stipulate that we won’t make the raw data publicly available. If you have specific questions about particular aspects of the data, we may be able to answer them; if this is the case, please contact us.
Yes. The HotSpot project is an ongoing endeavor, and new and updated data will be added as it becomes available.
Yes, if you like that sort of thing. Please contact us.
Sure – right here. The axes represent the real latitude values (i.e. before transformation for Mercator projection).
You’ll notice that there are some significant areas from which no data was collected. This is because the population density is extremely low in those areas. It is of course possible that there are some people in very sparsely populated areas such as south-western Oregon or southern Utah who consume CREC-related content, but they are likely to be few in number, and church-planting efforts in such locations will inevitably be shaped by other priorities than the likely size of a prospective congregation.
Rob Hadding, Brian Points, Youbesh Dhaubhadel, Ben Jeffery, and Steve Jeffery. For more details, check out the team.