The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Missio:Engage – Transforming our faith communities for the sake of our neighborhoods

Adapted from the writings of Tom Brackett

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
– Jesus

“Who is my neighbor?”
– A rich young ruler

The simplest way describing missio:Engage! is to think of it as yet another way to ask the age-old questions, “Who are our neighbors?” and “How is God calling us to love them?”

Or to unpack those questions further…

What would it be like if our faith communities and their dioceses loved their neighborhoods so much that they were willing to transform themselves for their sake and the sake of the Gospel?

What would it be like if we had eyes to see the God’s hand at work in the world around us and the courage to become God’s partners with God’s Spirit in that work.

What would it be like if we were part of larger community of practice that would help us anticipate, identify, and engage the missional opportunities emerging from the blossoming cultural diversity of our communities.

The groundwork for missio:Engage! was laid in July of 2018, when the Episcopal Church passed two enabling resolutions calling for the creation of  a “Community of Practice that works with congregations and their bishops to help them…better engage the cultural realities of their communities for the sake of launching new ministries and multi-cultural missional initiatives.”*

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FaithX and Datastory begin work on TEC missio:Engage! Pilot project

We are proud to announce that FaithX and Datastory were recently chosen as primary contractors for the Episcopal Church’s new missio:Engage! Initiative. Which means that Strategic Missional Consulting by FaithX and MapDash for Faith Communities by Datastory are now recommended resources for those joining the new missio:Engage! Community of Practice. Our work has has already begun on a missio:Engage! pilot project with the combined dioceses of New York and Central New York.

FaithX consultants worked with diocesan designees to collect key parochial report data, to be analysed for indicators of individual congregation vitality and sustainability, as well as for diocese-level indicators of missional opportunity. And Datastory is now in the process of analyzing this data and provisioning a diocese-specific missio map dashboard for each diocese.

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Using Science to Find the Faithful: FaithX and MapDash Feature in WhereNext eMagazine

FaithX and MapDash for Faith Communities were featured in an article published this week in WHERENEXT, an online eMagazine of Esri, the international GIS company that provides much of the data that powers MapDash. The author’s team interviewed FaithX founder Ken Howard, and faith leaders representing several FaithX clients, including:

Scroll down for an excerpt from and a link to the WhereNext article…

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Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report – A New MapDash Feature

By Mary Frances, Senior Associate Consultant

The Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report is a snapshot of data from a 15 minute DriveTime (or other DriveTime of your choice) around a given address.  It’s just one of the many features available to you via MapDash for Faith Communities.  Put in the address of a local congregation or town and quickly find out generational predominance, median age and income, unemployment rate, access to transportation, and much more.  At a glance, you can start to identify where you might need more information and what to do with the information you have. If you can get all this at a glance, wouldn’t you want to dig deeper?

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Search-in-Place: A More Effective Strategy for Clergy Leadership Transition

Search-in-Place:
A More Effective Strategy for Clergy Leadership Transition

by Ken Howard

If I told you that there was a shorter, less painful, and more effective way to handle clergy leadership transitions, would you want to hear about it?

I thought so…

Traditional Transition

It would not be an understatement to say that clergy leadership transitions are not one of those experiences that most congregations look forward to. In fact, a senior warden I know once described her parish’s rector search as an AFGO (another “frigging” growth oppotunity). Another compared it to hitting his thumb with a hammer, “because it feels to good when you’re done.”

Not a surprising reaction, I suppose. Even when transitions result in a positive outcome—a leader that everyone loves—the intervening process is not entirely pleasant. First the current leader leaves, which can be rather jarring, since it often happens without much warning—a month or two at best (because nobody wants to be a lame duck leader). It can sometimes feel to the parish like a family feels when a parent has died or abandoned them. Then a interim minister is called, and that comes with its own set of issues. It’s long (the old rule of thumb is month of interim for every year the departing pastor has been with the congregation). It’s meant to shake up entrenched ways of doing things, which is jarring even when necessary and done right, but if not done well, seems like change for change’s sake: pain for no gain. Meanwhile, there’s always a lull in attendance, since congregational life feels like it’s “on hold,” but if the interim is offending too many people, it can turn into an exodus. Finally, the new leader arrives and “everyone” is happy… except for the people who aren’t. Some depart in the first month. Others, like the search committee (yes, the search committee, according to research), will leave over the next two years.

The ironic thing is, most of the transition actions described above are intentionally disruptive. Because the traditional transition model assumes that most congregations, if left to their own devices, would be so averse to change and so desperate for certainty, that they would stay stuck in their entrenched ways, cut short the search process, and make the mistake of calling a new pastor that is exactly like the departed pastor (if beloved) or exactly the opposite (if despised).

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