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For church leaders

Free resources

These tools and guides are freely available. They help you read local statistics carefully and check public claims before discussing them with your team.

Start with the evaluation guide

Reading local evidence: a guide for church leaders walks through seven questions to ask when you encounter a statistic or claim about your area. It includes a reusable sentence frame and has print-friendly formatting.

More from Streetlight Brief

  • Local Report examples — historical reports that show the editorial format. They are examples, not current community guidance.
  • Methodology — how qualified evidence is screened, what each source class can support, and what standards should be applied before sharing it.
  • How We Use AI — where artificial intelligence helps prepare reports, what safeguards constrain it, and what it will never do.

Public reference tools

Each tool below is published by a government agency or research body and is freely accessible. Each one has an actual geography, a defined time period, and clear limits on what it can tell you.

  • United States Census Bureau QuickFacts (opens in a new tab)

    Useful for: Population, age, income, and housing context for states, counties, cities, and towns.

    Limit: These are durable estimates, not a weekly change. American Community Survey figures carry margins of error and reflect multi-year collection periods that may lag several years behind the current date.

  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention PLACES (opens in a new tab)

    Useful for: Modeled small-area estimates for chronic disease, health outcomes, preventive care, and health-related behaviors.

    Limit: PLACES produces statistical estimates. It does not diagnose individuals and cannot establish that a specific person or congregation currently has a measured condition.

  • National Weather Service Active Alerts (opens in a new tab)

    Useful for: Authoritative warnings, watches, and advisories with defined alert areas, effective times, and expiration times.

    Limit: An alert is authoritative for the alert type and its geography. It does not prove that every household within the alert polygon experienced impact.

  • Association of Religion Data Archives (opens in a new tab)

    Useful for: Religious-congregation membership, adherence, and denomination data gathered through decennial religious censuses.

    Limit: Results depend on which religious bodies participated, the geography boundary selected, the survey year, and the counting method. ARDA data does not establish current worship attendance or what local groups are experiencing.

These resources are free and do not require an account. Evidence can inform discussion but cannot replace local relationships, qualified expertise, prayer, discernment, or church leadership.