by Steve Matthews, FaithX Senior Consultant
Growing Community
“Learning and innovation go hand in hand.
The arrogance of success is to think
that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”
William Pollard
Online Small Groups
This post is part of a blog series on
“Keeping Congregations Connected in the Face of COVID-19”
Click here for the previous post
I like working with FaithX. As consultants we are invited to bring our whole selves to the table. We bring our experience, our vocation, our vision, and we are invited everyday to innovate for the benefit of the faith communities and judicatories we accompany.
One way we experience innovation comes in the way Mary Frances, Ken Howard, and I collaborate with one another, and we also experience the excitement of innovation as we bring robust data to bear on the community contexts of the people we serve. We work with our partner DataStory to offer dynamic, informative, eye-opening resources to help organizations chart a path toward bolder and more creative visions than they might have been otherwise imagined.
Even in the middle of a pandemic we can help organizations find new connections for outreach, new community partners, and new ways of connecting parishioners – all potential avenues for ministry and growing community. A new COVID-19 tool, described here, allows you to see where vulnerable populations reside in your community. It maps drug stores and hospitals, and it can even allow you to see where your parishioners live in relationship to these vulnerable neighborhoods… and each other.
Mary Frances in her most recent blog post talked about building and growing community in the age of “Zoom.” I wonder if Zoom might be a way for church members who live in close proximity to connect and to brainstorm ways they might connect with their neighborhoods and support one another. Our location technology can help make this innovation possible.
In this time of great need, don’t let the urgent smother the important. Slow down. Pay attention to your assets and to your gifts and resources. Notice, name, and nurture them. Call them out and see how the Spirit might be inviting you to innovate for the sake of your neighbors.
Want to help your congregation more effectively engage the neighborhoods it serves?
Those who engage a full Neighborhood Missional Assessment or other consultative program from FaithX will receive a complete NMIR in interactive (dynamic HTML) format.
Important Note: A Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report can also be a useful tool for identifying the prevalence of at risk groups within your membership and ministry areas, and a Neighborhood Missional Assessment can help you identify the neighborhoods where they are most prevalent.
We have reduced the cost of NMIRs and NMAs by 10% for the duration of the COVID19 pandemic.
Want to help your judicatory identify emerging missional opportunities and challenges within its boundaries?
Click here to schedule a demo/discussion
of MapDash for Faith Communities
for Strategic Missional Planning
Important Note: In the days ahead Datastory will be adding COVID-related data to MapDash to all current and future subscribers (including incidence of COVID-19, hospital locations and capacity, Twitter feeds, location of doctors).
FaithX is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and Ken’s faith-based consulting practice at FaithX is carried out under an extension of ministry from the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
