By the Rev. Ken Howard
When FaithX launched back in 2017 we chose the following phrase as our vision statement:
We help congregations survive and thrive in challenging times.
We knew that challenging times were coming, based on research we published that same year, that congregations and the denominations and regional judicatories that support them were facing times of rapidly increasing change and uncertainty. But little did we know how soon and how fast the change and uncertainty would materialize; that right around the corner there would be a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that would break everything.
Perhaps we should have known. As Peter Drucker once said:
“Trying to predict the future
is like trying to drive down a country road at night
with no lights while looking out the back window.”
In retrospect, I would add to Druckers statement this caveat:
“…especially when you have to build the car while driving it.”
Forecasting even the immediate future in a time of escalating uncertainty and change is even more dangerous than being a passenger in Drucker’s car. Speculation in such circumstances can be little more than an educated guess: light on the educated and heavy on the guessing.
Yet speculate we must, asking such questions as,
“What qualities do we need to lead congregations and their judicatories
into a future that it is breaking in rapidly and uncontrollably all around us,
the final shape of which is impossible for us to predict?”
Here are some some suggestions as to what those qualities might be:
Vision
Perhaps the most important quality is nurturing our capacity for vision. Some would say agility is more important, but all the agility in the world will literally get us nowhere if we don’t know where we are going. Our inability to know with any certainty what will be the future physical form of worshipping communities makes it difficult to distinguish between those paths that move us toward that form and those that move us away from it. Yet even when we can’t know precisely the place we want to end up, we can still know what we want to be like when we get there. Knowing that we can evaluate the possible paths before us based on whether they move us toward or away from that vision. This is why our congregations and judicatories must possess vision in order to survive and thrive in an uncertain environment.
Agility
To survive and thrive in an unpredictable environment, our organization must develop agility. Agility means the power to move quickly and nimbly around obstacles and toward opportunities. But agility also means the capability to make vital decisions swiftly and effectively, deftly pivoting between paths containing varying degrees of danger and opportunity.
Rapid Experimentation and Hypothesis Testing
When operating in unfamiliar and rapidly changing environments, leaders of faith communities will frequently have to be making “educated guesses” as to the most effective course of action. To thrive in such an environment, we have to be able to rapidly make and test strategic hypotheses, quickly discarding strategies that fail the test and continuing with and perhaps tweaking strategies that pass it, repeating this process as often as needed. We recommend developing 90-Day Microstrategies, which focus on a single strategy for a limited time; examine results, then build on the strategy if it shows promise or discard if it doesn’t, and incorporate learnings into a new Microstrategy.
Actionable Metrics
To effectively test our hypotheses we must know how to develop evaluative measures that provide us with the data necessary to help us understand how well our chosen strategies are working, and whether and how we need to adjust course.
Context Attentiveness
In order to identify and steer clear of obstacles and move toward opportunities, faith communities must be able to actively and continuously assess their strengths and weakness, identify missional opportunities and challenges in the neighborhoods they serve, and leverage their strengths to engage the opportunities and overcome the challenges. We recommend using our Congregational Vitality Assessment for the former and our Neighborhood Insights Report for the latter.
Become more Lean
To put it bluntly, it is impossible to be simultaneously fat and agile. The more mass we gain, the more inertia comes with it. More inertia means we will have a lot more trouble changing direction, which by definition decreases agility. This means that if we want our organization to acquire the capability for agility, we must also help it become more lean. For us to become lean we must shed all forms of excess “weight” by eliminating all forms of waste.
To put it bluntly, it’s impossible to be simultaneously fat and agile.
—Ken Howard
If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that our congregations, judicatories, and denominational bodies contain many forms of waste. Traditionalism, dogmatism, clericalism, and any other “-ism” – in which a created form is worshipped nearly as much as the Creator – are ways in which we enable waste.
Another way we enable waste is our failure to exercise good stewardship of our congregation members’ time, talents, and treasure. If we truly desire to become lean, we must help our faith-based communities and organizations jettison every unproductive organizational process and structure.
Meanwhile, in the place of those things we have discarded as waste, we must leverage the unique gifts, skills, and callings of every person in our congregations and organizations to the fullest, knowing that getting lean reduces our inertia, which results in greater agility.
Finally, if we are to get lean in a strategic fashion, we must have a clear and transcendent vision (see above), so that we might distinguish between those aspects of organizational structure and process that support the vision – and must be kept – and those that do not – and must be eliminated.
Common Cause Community
In order to minimize competition and maximize collaboration between our congregations and judicatories we must be able to make common cause with those that have similar visions and are heading in similar directions. In set theory this is known as centered-set community, in which membership is determined by shared vision and goals, and it is the opposite of bounded-set community, in which membership is defined based on boundary conditions: all the ways in which we distinguish our organizations from others. To quote Jesus, we must possess the attitude of Jesus that “whoever is not against us is for us.” (Mark 9:40, Luke 9:50)
FaithX Can Help
Helping congregations and judicatories to achieve these qualities is what we at FaithX do best, providing both tools and consulting to helping you not just survive but thrive in challenging times.
For more information, contact us at info@faithx.net.
