The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Is there such a thing as Structural Racism?

by Mary Frances

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were catching up on some episode of Real Time with Bill Maher.  While I don’t always agree with him, he often has interesting guests and it can be helpful to hear differing points of view.  But I sat bolt upright in my seat when I heard him say to a guest, “We hear all this talk about structural racism.  I don’t even know what that is, is that even a real thing?”  I quickly pressed the pause button and proceeded to rant for more than a few minutes (apologies to my husband).  Is structural racism even a thing?  Well, I would certainly call it more than a “thing.”

There are probably several similar definitions for structural or systemic racism but this one that (hello, Bill Maher) I found quickly and easily seems to fit the bill: Structural racism refers to the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice. These patterns and practices in turn reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values and distribution of resources, according to Dr.Zinzi Bailey, ScD, MSPH.

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Online Worship Beyond Covid: Who is Your Target Audience?

On March 1, 2020, few mainline congregations offered an online worship opportunity to their communities.  By the end of March 2020, the majority of mainline congregations had found a way to provide an online presence for those seeking to continue to worship during the Covid shutdown.  For the most part, we saw that online services were shorter, had less music, less time (if any) for communion, and some even had online coffee hour afterward.  Services remained posted online and available for days, weeks or months after the original airing and continue to be viewed.  Many leaders boasted of having people attend their online worship services from other states and even other countries.  It was an unusual time for our country and for the Church.  

The sense of crisis has passed and, from what we have learned, our attention to the online worship community has passed along with the crisis.  As you can see from the Episcopal Pulse survey above, the majority of congregations continue to offer streaming but only 3% offer an online worship service that is actually designed for an online community.  Instead, what we offer is the opportunity to observe other people worshiping, and that has really never been a draw for anyone except shut-ins who have had no other option.  

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The Almost Post-Covid Church

by Mary Frances

I’ve been getting this question a lot lately from my coaching clients.  What should we be focusing on this Fall?  Will things be “back to normal or should we still be adapting our ministries due to Covid?”  Well, no one can really say if we are in post-Covid times or not.  If you ask my family, they’d probably say “not” since half of them are recovering from Covid right now.  We may, in fact, be entering the Covid endemic.  

Covid will most likely be with us all the time now, just like seasonal influenza.  So, how do we think about ministry in light of this ongoing presence of Covid?  Here are two key things to think about as you make plans for the coming months:

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Vitality Improvement Program Accepting Applications… What is vitality anyway?

By now, we hope that you have heard the exciting news! The FaithX Project is now accepting applications for our Vitality Improvement Program for Small Congregations (VIP).  VIP is a 3-year program designed specifically to provide reduced-cost resources, coaching, and consultation to small Episcopal congregations through their dioceses that will allow congregations to assess their vitality and sustainability, then develop effective vitality and sustainability improvement strategies by better engaging the neighborhoods they serve.

What do we mean when we talk about vitality?  While the term has been bandied about a lot recently in terms of congregational health, we have some very specific ideas about it.  We will be helping congregations address 10 key areas of congregational life: 

Vision, Mission and Discernment
Lay Engagement and Empowerment 
Context Awareness and Inclusion
Change Readiness
Dealing with Differences
Spiritual Life and Worship
Formation, Education, and Training
Outreach
Leadership and Organization.
Stewardship

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Data-Grounded Outreach

by Mary Frances

When I was in my first call (feels like forever ago), someone asked me about my target audience.  The question seemed absurd to me at the time.  Wasn’t it obvious that we would take anyone who came through our doors?  Why would we focus on one particular part of the population to the exclusion of others?  Wasn’t everyone in need of the good news of the Gospel?  How little I knew back then!  Understanding your target audience is, indeed, key to reaching people.  It’s not surprising, for instance, that young people were not impressed by presidential candidate Joe Biden’s bus with the word “Malarkey” scrawled across the side.  Did they even know what malarkey meant?  And older people were less attracted to the technology emphasis repeated over and over again by once candidate Andrew Yang.  But Biden was looking to reach older people and Yang was looking to reach younger people, so their approaches were inherently different.  Who are you trying to reach and how will you know where to find them?

The best tool I have found for identifying your target population is the Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (NMIR) from FaithX.  It’s easy to read and inexpensive.  You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on a data subscription.  This 2-page report has over 40 data points and it comes in a pdf or dynamic html version, the latter of which offers clickable data behind the data.  It will also provide data for three different drive or walking times such as 5, 10 or 15 minutes, or for a custom distance or time, therefore tripling the amount of data you receive.

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