By Mary C. Frances, Executive Director and Senior Consultant

Last Friday, as I was pulling out of my driveway to go to the hardware store, I received a notification on my phone of an impending dust storm. Having lived in the Chicago area almost all my life and never experiencing a dust storm here before, I presumed the alert must have been an error. About 15 minutes later the alert was repeated and I realized that something was, indeed, blowing up all around us.

I think most of us can say that once we lived in a time when the news was reliable, data was data and alerts would have been immediately trusted. Unfortunately, times have changed. But at FaithX, we still believe that data should be reliable, and we strive toward that goal on a daily basis.

At FaithX, everything we do is grounded in data. The Congregational Vitality Assessment helps congregations understand what they believe and know about themselves. MissionMaps and the Neighborhood Insights Report help congregations know more about their neighborhoods and extended community. Sometimes, when the data doesn’t quite match up with someone’s lived experience, they assume that the data must be wrong. In fact, anecdotal evidence and hard data may contradict each other but also both be correct. For instance, people in my small neighborhood often think that our city is predominantly white because it once was and because our neighborhood is 98% white. Objective data shows that our city is just over 50% white with a substantial portion of the population represented by Asian, Hispanic, and Black communities. That doesn’t mean that what my neighbors see when they walk around the block is wrong, it means there is more to the story.

We believe it is vital for every congregation and judicatory to have reliable data when making decisions around clergy transitions, stewardship and capital campaigns, strategic planning as well as church planting and renewal. All of the data in the Neighborhood Insights Report is updated at least annually, with some of it updated monthly. When you are planning your next big decision, let us help you with some very reliable data. Reach out to us at info@faithx.net.