The Find Page
This search will allow you to locate churches near a specified street address, street intersection, ZIP code, city, county, or telephone area code. In order to use this search function:

1. Select the type of location to search near from the dropdown menu.
2. Enter the location information in the available fields.
3. Specify the radius within which to search.
4. Click on "Find Nearest Good $ense Churches".

Please Note: Searches for or referring to a ZIP code, city, county, or telephone area code will find the exact geographic center of the type of location selected. For example, a search to find all Good $ense churches within a 10-mile radius of ZIP code "60641" will return a list of all churches within a 10-mile radius of the geographic center of "60641".

The Map/Results Page
The map and results for the search criteria you selected is broken into two parts:

1. The map itself, with the radius you searched within specified
2. A table listing all Good $ense churches within that given radius

The Map

• Good $ense churches are marked on the map with a small green triangle.
• Clicking on the map will zoom in or out (depending on the setting of the Zoom Toggle switch) on the area clicked.
• The zoom level can also be set by selecting a level from the dropdown list beneath the map.
• A printable map can be viewed by clicking the appropriate link at the top of the map.
• The full map can be viewed by clicking the appropriate link at the top of the map.
• The map can be panned north, south, east, or west by clicking on the arrow buttons in the grey border around the map.

The Results Table

• A brief tally of the number of churches located matching your search criteria is displayed immediately above the results table.
• Clicking on the icon in any row of the first column of the table will center and zoom the map to the church in that row.
• A printable table can be viewed by clicking the link at the top of the table.
• If available, the church's web site will open in a new window by clicking the "Go" link in the "Web Site" column.

A Brief Mapping Tutorial
Let me assure you that it is our desire to see every church located with absolute accuracy by our mapping system. However, the reality of mapping technology today is that such a desire cannot be fully attained. Have you ever gotten bum directions from MapQuest or Yahoo! Maps? The brief primer on mapping systems below may help to explain why.

There are two pieces to any mapping system: the map data and the map rendering software. The map data is a map that has some sort of information plotted on it. Map data manufacturers take up-to-date address lists (usually from the United States Postal Service for US addresses) and match up each address with its given latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates. This match-up of addresses with coordinates is what constitutes the map data we use. Sounds simple enough, right? However, different map manufacturers use different map projection systems, which means that different map manufacturers will potentially match a given address with different coordinates on a given map!

Two commonly used projection systems are Albers and common cylindrical. Albers is what is known as an "equal-area" projection system, in which areas on a sphere, and the areas of any features contained on it, are mapped to the plane in such a way that two are related by a constant scaling factor (Snyder 1987, p. 4). Cylindrical projection, on the other hand, refers to any projection in which lines of longitude are mapped to equally spaced parallel lines and lines of latitude (parallels) are mapped to parallel lines with arbitrary mathematically spaced separations (Snyder 1987, p. 5). Because cylindrical projection schemes have a troubling amount of arbitrariness in how they locate postal addresses, we use the Albers projection data for our system. But Albers and cylindrical are only two of many projection systems, each with its own adherents and mapping philosophy. A quick look at this site will show you just how many projection systems there are in use today! And, please note, each one will locate postal addresses at slightly different locations on a given map.

Map data manufacturers publish updated datasets at most twice annually; most publish updated datasets only once annually. This means that any new construction, renaming of roads, etc., will result in addresses being located inaccurately by any given mapping system until new map data becomes available and is installed. The WCA does not determine when new map data becomes available; we are at the whim of the map data manufacturers.

The second piece of a mapping system is the map rendering software. This software is what allows the WCA to plot a given set of addresses on a map. There are several vendors for this sort of software; we use a package called RouteMap IMS, which is available for sale through ESRI. We have an annual maintenance plan with ESRI, which allows us to stay current with software updates and map data once annually. We usually update both data and software in the first quarter of each year.

On Monday of each week, we pull a current list of addresses from our database and then send that list to the RouteMap IMS mapping software. It compares those addresses against the ones it has plotted in its map dataset. If there is a match, it will place the address on a data layer in the map. If there is not, that address will not be located. Simple enough, right? However, plotting addresses by street address results in between 10% and 15% of the addresses being unsuccessfully located on the map. There is another possibility: We can plot addresses by ZIP code instead. This means that upwards of 99% of addresses will be located on the map, but it also means that no one address can be located with pinpoint accuracy — i.e., there will be no exact matches between the map dataset and the list of Good $ense churches. To put it another way, the choice is between locating street addresses accurately but incompletely or locating them completely but inaccurately. Ah, sweet dilemma!

We plot addresses on our map by ZIP code. This means almost all addresses will be located successfully on our map. However, this renders door-to-door directions completely inaccurate, so we have simply disabled this feature on our mapping system. And, as always, P.O. Box addresses will not be located on this map at all.

As you can tell, mapping is far from the exact science you would think it might be. With so many variables in the mix (different sources for address data, different mapping projection schemes, time-sensitive location data that is infrequently updated, different plotting schemes in the rendering software, and pros and cons to each of these various alternatives), I hope it is easier to understand how any given address might be located at a slightly different location than it actually exists in physical reality. Thanks!

WCA Web Manager

[Snyder, J. P. Map Projections--A Working Manual. U. S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1395. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1987.]

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