01 / Know their name
The neighbor is no longer an abstraction, demographic category, or anonymous person behind a nearby door.
38.9784° N 76.4922° W
See the Lost. Know the Lost. Love the Lost.
Ministry intelligence for the places the church is called to love.
2027 Ministry & Partnership Guide
Anne Arundel County, MD
Annapolis · Shady Side · Arnold · Crofton · Odenton · Maryland City · Ferndale · Edgewater ·
Annapolis · Shady Side · Arnold · Crofton · Odenton · Maryland City · Ferndale · Edgewater ·
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01
01 / The Mission
Anne Arundel County, Maryland
This county will not be reached accidentally.
The Hood Shepherd is building the tools and the long-term plan to help churches know and love every neighbor in Annapolis and Anne Arundel County.
The goal is ambitious but concrete.
Annapolis
5–10years
Build toward reaching the city within five to ten years.
Anne Arundel County
20–30years
Build toward reaching the county within twenty to thirty years.
We are not defining reach as a mailer delivered, a door knocked, or a stranger counted at an event. We begin with something slower, more human, and more difficult.
Know their name. Share a meal. Understand their burden.
02
02 / The Field
16 of the county’s 128 neighborhoods are gospel deserts. They are not where you would guess.
A gospel desert is not a place with no church. It is a place where faithful churches are too far, too few, or too unlike their neighbors to reach them. Darker means harder to reach.
Select a neighborhood to see its numbers · GospelGraph, Oct 2026
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03
03 / The Last Mile
The hardest distance is often the shortest.
Seminary
Pastor
Congregation
Neighbor
Strong delivery systems
The last mile
That is the last-mile problem.
A church may possess the message, the people, and the desire to reach its community—and still lack the relational pathways that carry the gospel to the people living immediately around it. That is not merely a motivation problem. It is also a logistics problem.
The Hood Shepherd exists to help the church cross that final distance. Crossing it starts with a definition of reach that almost no church has written down.
04
04 / A Definition of Reach
What does it mean to reach a neighbor?
Three marks of reach
02 / Share a meal
Hospitality creates time, mutuality, and the possibility of a relationship deeper than a ministry transaction.
03 / Understand their burden
Listen until you can name the pressures, fears, responsibilities, and hopes shaping their actual life.
We know how many people live here. Our mission is to make sure they are no longer strangers to the church.
05
05 / Posture
Pray for revival.Plan for faithfulness.
We should pray for God to accomplish in a season what human effort could not accomplish in a generation.
But extraordinary revival cannot become our only strategy for ordinary obedience.
The extraordinary
An unexpected season of gospel movement
Prayed for. Welcomed. Entirely God’s to give. Never something a ministry can schedule, engineer, or count on.
The ordinary
Sustained monthly stewardship
Planned. Measurable. Repeatable across decades. The work the church can begin this month, in this county, with these neighbors.
06
06 / The Tools
What your giving builds
Six tools
GospelGraph
Maps gospel presence and neighborhood conditions in every U.S. census tract.
Field Reports
Turn local data into clear questions and next steps for churches and planters.
Gospel Movement Research
Studies past revivals for patterns the church can learn to notice.
Hood Shepherding Workshop
Helps a church find what stands between its people and its neighbors.
Forthcoming book
Frees ordinary Christians from guilt-driven evangelism.
Writing, teaching, discipleship
Carries the work into sermons, articles, and relationships.
07
07 / Free Resources
thehoodshepherd.com
Equipping is free, and it is for ordinary Christians.
Most of the people who will cross the last mile do not work for a church. They live on the street they are called to love. Everything on thehoodshepherd.com is published for them, at no cost, with no account required for the public resources.
Neighborhood personality
A free lookup that matches an address to its neighborhood type, so a believer can begin with a description of the place instead of an assumption about it.
Thirty neighborhood types
Each type is described in plain, second-person language — the rhythms, pressures, and hopes of daily life — so the reader recognizes a neighbor rather than a data category.
Gospel Intel Packets
One printable guide per neighborhood segment: what to notice, what to ask, and how to listen well. Small enough for a small group to work through together.
Free for the county
The county is covered free of charge while the model is proven here. Donor support is what keeps the resources free as coverage widens.
Nothing here is held back for donors. Giving is what keeps it free for everyone else.
08
08 / The Roadmap
Begin locally.Build patiently.Learn openly.
Keep scrolling to watch the plan unfold
Start with one city. Widen to the whole county.
Today30 years
- —Verify every church and ministry in the city
- —Map neighborhoods and relational gaps
- —Recruit and equip a first network of churches
- —Measure relational reach, anonymously
- —Refine a model that can repeat
- —Extend the map across the county
- —Connect every neighborhood to an accountable church
- —Equip new cohorts of ordinary Christians
- —Revisit every field as it changes
Annapolis
Glen Burnie
Odenton
Shady Side
09
09 / Beyond the County
Spain · France · Kenya
We only map a country where a missionary already knows it.
GospelGraph does not travel on its own. In Spain and France, the work is carried by partnerships with missionaries already serving those fields — people who can tell us when an indicator describes local reality and when it is an American assumption wearing a translated label. Their judgment is the reason we are willing to begin at all.
Three fields
Spain
Phase one funded at $6,000 · with local missionary partners
Spain needs its own reading, not an American model. Phase one finds credible Spanish data, maps church presence, and tests it with partners on the ground.
France
Partner-led · scoping · with local missionary partners
France starts the same way, with missionaries who already live there. Early work asks what data exists and what French churches actually need.
Kenya
Phase one funded at $6,000 · local consultation required
Neighborhood data is thinner here. Phase one works with Kenyan ministry leaders to find local equivalents and define what GospelGraph can responsibly say.
The proposed budget funds phase one in Spain and Kenya at $6,000 each. France advances through partner capacity and designated gifts.
10
10 / Generosity · Feature
What does faithful participation look like from where you are?
Years ago, Aaron discipled a man whose life had become entangled with the criminal-justice system. When he was running from the law, Aaron walked with him and helped persuade him to turn himself in.
Their relationship did not end at the prison door.
Inside jails and prisons, this man began gathering people around Scripture and starting Bible studies. The setting changed, but the call to serve Christ did not.
Recently, he felt led to support The Hood Shepherd from the little available to him. Through his mother, he now gives $60 every month from his prison canteen account.
$60
per month
canteen account
canteen account
Sixty dollars can sound modest in an annual report. From a canteen account, it is anything but modest. It represents sacrifice, conviction, and ownership in the work of the gospel.
We share his story with his permission, not because everyone should give what he gives, but because partnership is not reserved for people with wealth, status, or freedom.
The work belongs to the whole body of Christ.
11
11 / Sustaining the Work
What sustainable ministry capacity requires
$72,000
per year
$6,000
in monthly recurring support
$4,300 current
+ $1,700 needed
Each square $100/mo
Current recurring support is approximately $4,300 per month. The remaining gap is $1,700 per month, or $20,400 in annual recurring commitments.
Proposed forward-looking sustainable-growth budget
Personnel and payroll costs$43,200
Free Field Reports$7,200
GospelGraph Spain — Phase One$6,000
GospelGraph Kenya — Phase One$6,000
Ministry relationships and outreach$3,600
Stability and contingency reserve$6,000
Total$72,000
Proposed forward-looking allocation, not audited historical spending.
Partnership levels · tap one
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partners at {{ lvAmt }}/mo would close the $1,700 monthly gap.
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These examples illustrate what support can make possible. Unless specifically designated, gifts sustain the shared mission and are directed where most needed.
ResponseWill you be one of the eleven?
The next stage of The Hood Shepherd does not depend on one enormous gift. It depends on a community of people who believe the church should understand the people and places it has been called to love—and who are willing to sustain that work together.
Your partnership creates the focused capacity to research, build, write, teach, equip churches, and pursue a patient plan for reaching Annapolis and Anne Arundel County.
Partners
Faith Community
Lighthouse
Downtown Hope
Peachtree Corners ARP
Kingdom Analytics
Grace Downtown
Bay Area CommunitySee the Lost.Know the Lost.Love the Lost.
The Hood Shepherd is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
[Contact Email] · [Mailing Address]
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