Something Old and Something New
A New Year of Product Development at FaithX

By Ken Howard

I’m sure most everybody has heard the Victorian Era wedding poem:

Something Olde, Something New,
Something Borrowed, Something Blue,
And a Sixpence in your Shoe.

Well, that last verse was a new one for me. What’s a sixpence, anyway?
(Actually, a sixpence was worth six pennies in Victoria and would be worth 2.5 pence today.)

Anyway, there’s plenty of “NEW” happening at FaithX in 2025 as some of the OLDE goes away. Six new things, in fact: new and more powerful versions of the Congregational Vitality Assessment and the CVA Judicatory Platform, the formal launch of the Judicatory Vitality Assessment, and three new data mapping products, all available from FaithX, all launching early this year.

A number of developments have led us to the realization that we need to have more control over the design, use, and pricing of tools we use in our work with congregations and judicatories. So we are bringing all of our tools “in house,” in our webspace, on platforms we own. In practical terms what this means is that we have to enter the field of product development, which is something new for us, and especially for me. Who knew that when I went off to seminary 30-odd years ago (there’s your “something olde”), I would someday be engaged in software development. In any event, its a paradigm shift and challenge for us, and adapting to change is something that we are good at and excited about.

In that regard, I imagine this pivot is not unlike what many congregations and judicatories frequently face these days. New realities require new responses but always centered on a clear vision of why you exist and what God is calling you to do. And while change can be hard, it also can be exciting…and growthful.

And now, on to product development…

Congregational Vitality Assessment 3.0

In the six years since its launch in 2018, the Congregational Vitality Assessment (or CVA) has become a household name in congregations around the U.S. and even around the world. More than 2,000 congregations in 20 denominations in all 50 states and 2 U.S. territories, and 7 foreign countries. The only entirely research-based online congregational vitality and sustainability diagnostic inventory, the CVA rates 11 aspects of congregational life and functioning and two aspects of congregation. Congregations can take the CVA multiple times over several years to track their progress toward their vitality and sustainability goal. 

Click here for more information on CVA 3.0, including its new user-requested features.

CVA Judicatory Platform 3.0

Originally developed in response to judicatories in several denominations, the CVA Judicatory Platform (or CVA-JP) allows judicatories to administer the CVA to the congregations in their charge, add judicatory-specific questions, and receive the results directly. The CVA-JP allows judicatories to monitor the vitality and sustainability of their congregations over time, using the results to spot common strengths and weaknesses among their congregations and utilize these results for planning purposes, including the development of vitality intervention strategies.

Click here for more information on CVA-JP 3.0, which will also include new user-request features.

Judicatory Vitality Assessment (2.0)

How healthy is your judicatory? Want to find out? The Judicatory Vitality Assessment (JVA) may be exactly what you need. The JVA is the first and only research-based, online diagnostic tool for assessing the vitality and sustainability of dioceses, presbyteries, synods, and other judicatories. It will examine 16 vital areas of judicatory functioning, help your judicatory diagnose its vitality and sustainability, and identify its internal and external organizational strengths and weaknesses. It will also help your judicatory develop and prioritize strategies to improve vitality and sustainability by leveraging strengths to engage opportunities. Click here for more information on JVA 2.0.

MissionMaps for Faith Communities

Also launching early this year is FaithX’s new MissionMaps for Faith CommunitiesTM platform.¹  MissionMaps is an online, interactive demographic mapping and reporting tool, designed to help judicatories and their congregations explore the neighborhoods the serve, identifying missional opportunities and challenges, in order to develop strategic missional engagement strategies. MissionMaps will be available in three editions: MissionMaps Exec, MissionMaps Basic, and MissionMaps Premier.

  • MissionMaps Exec is perfect for missional planning on a budget. It combines our 7 most-requested interactive map layers with the ability to generate Neighborhood Insights Reports, which provides 40+ important demographic and analytic data points in easy-to-interpret infographics. Click here for more information on MissionMaps Exec.
  • MissionMaps Basic is a great tool for deeper, more extensive exploration of the neighborhoods around your congregations. It contains 60 data map layers curated by FaithX and access to a vast collection of data layers available though Esri, the world’s largest repository of demographic and analytical data. It also provides access to Neighborhood Insight Reports in an interactive format, employing dynamic HTML. Click here for more information on MissionMaps Basic.
  • MissionMaps Premier is the most powerful version of MissionMaps, including the ability to deploy custom analytic layers based on the location of your judicatories congregations and parochial reporting data you provide. Available custom analytic data layers include: congregational vitality, sustainability, and margin for improvement, the same analytics for parochial schools, drivetime boundaries, and much, much more. More on MissionMaps Premier coming soon!

So good things are coming and they’re coming soon. Watch this space for more information on each of these products on our blog this month.

¹ FaithX previously collaborated with Datastory to provide MapDash for Faith Communities with faith-community-specfic demographics and analytics provided by FaithX on its MapDash platform. Datastory was recently acquired by a large international marketing corporation and will no longer be providing those faith-community specific tools.