By Ken Howard
FaithX Founder and President

Coming off our national celebration of Independence Day and the country’s 250th birthday, we thought that “Freedom” would be a good theme for our blog this month.

But that immediately begs the question: freedom to do what?

Freedom is like motherhood and apple pie (or is it mother pie and applehood): it’s easy to say, nobody will argue about it, and it carries a lot of emotional valence. But that’s because freedom, as a concept, is kind of amorphous.

So we have to ask ourselves, especially as faith communities, how will we put our freedom to good use for our congregations and for the communities we serve?

People often ask us what the “X” in “FaithX” stands for, and I often answer that it stands for “eXperimentation” (yes, I know that’s cheating a little), but it makes the point that our congregations need to use their freedom to try on new ways of putting our faith into action, both in worship and outreach.

If COVID taught us nothing else, it taught us the painful but valuable lesson that we really don’t know how faith communities work anymore. It taught us that we have to release our grip on the “WHAT” (the familiar ways that worked in the past) and rediscover our “WHY” (our reason for being), then eXperiment with new ways of putting that “WHY” into practice, building on what seems to work and moving on from what doesn’t.

But “X” can also stand for the unknown. And the unknown can be scary. But it can also be full of opportunity, growth, and unexpected delight. As Forrest Gump’s Momma taught him, “Life is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get.” And some of it’s going to be delicious.

So for the rest of July and beyond, lean into your X’s: eXperiment, eXplore, eXpand, eXceed, eXperience, eXcite, eXpress, and eXpect the uneXpected. And may you have an eXtraordinary summer.