The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Congregational Vitality Assessment: ahora en español

By the Rev. Ken Howard

The FaithX Project and the Episcopal Church Foundation are happy to announce that the popular Congregational Vitality Assessment is now available in Spanish.

This has been in the works for a couple of months now, first with the questions, ratings, and prescriptive paragraphs of the survey itself and then with the entire website on which it resides. The first step was an AI translation. And because Artificial Intelligence can sometimes be artificially unintelligent with small details like colloquialisms, we sought the help of a translator to find and correct any faux pas. And as we learn more about the languages spoken by CVA users, we plan to bring more translations online. As always, the SIngle Congregation Version of the CVA remains FREE. 

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When the paradigm shifts, everyone goes to Zero

church-sign-no-experts

by the Rev. Ken Howard

In my discussions with congregational and diocesan leaders around the Church of late, I have noticed a shift in the conversation.

Faith leaders were already beginning to face the facts about their congregations before Covid: acknowledging that, at best, they are on a plateau and that, at worst, they are on a slow but slippery downward slope, not just in membership numbers, but also congregational vitality and engagement. This trend has been made even clearer and its pace accelerated by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Another shift is that fewer leaders are clinging to the old canard that there are “other ways to grow than in actual number,” recognizing that readiness to grow is a powerful indicator that talk of willingness to change is more than lip service.

These are healthy signs. Getting over our resistance to facing the reality of our condition is half the battle for the future of the Church.  As Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (though it may really piss you off first).

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Our Free CVA Webinar, the Glitch of all Glitches, and an Unforeseen Opportunity

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade… right?

The lemons…

Life dropped a huge pile of lemons on us today as we were starting our long-awaited Congregational Vitality Assessment webinar.

The lemons started falling as soon as we “opened the door” to attendees. Suddenly, we began to see a flood of emails and texts from people who couldn’t get in. 

The Glitch…

Apparently, the glitch to end all glitches had happened. As far as we could tell, the handoff from Eventbrite and Zoom wasn’t working right. Some people got in with no problems. Others got in quickly once we sent them the webinar link directly. And some couldn’t get in even with the direct link.

In any event, after 10-15 minutes of panic-y workaround, we were able to get around 50 people in the door, including some (but not all) of the people on the waiting list. As the doctor said in Young Frankenstein, “Could be worse… Could be raining.” Providentially, since we were all on Zoom, even if it had been raining, it wouldn’t have made it a total washout.

The Lemonade…

We already had planned to send all attendees the webinar video, presentation StoryMap, and resource link, so that helped.

The lemonade boils down to this: 

We were able to reopen the webinar so that everyone on the waitlist will be able to get the video and other resources.

AND… 

Reopening the webinar also means that any of you who hadn’t signed up for the webinar can now register after the fact, and get all the stuff the regular attendees are getting. 

How about that for turning lemons into lemonade?

Click here to register for webinar video, presentation “deck,” and resources

7 Steps to Improved Vitality

Or what do you do after taking the Congregational Vitality Assessment

by the Rev. Ken Howard

So your leadership team has taken the Congregational Vitality Assessment. You’ve got your diagnostic scores and recommendations in hand, and you’re asking yourselves the question:

Now what?

The next step is to do a Missional Assessment: a seven step process to validate and help your congregation improve its vitality by leveraging its strengths to offset its weaknesses and more effectively engage the missional opportunities and challenges emerging in the neighborhoods you serve.

Here are the steps we recommend:

  1. Review CVA results and recommendations with congregational leadership and with the congregation. Identify your congregation’s 2-3 areas of greatest vitality strength and 2-3 areas of greatest vitality weakness.
  2. Conduct a demographic assessment of the missional opportunities and challenges in the community your congregation serves. Identify the 2-3 greatest missional opportunities and the 2-3 greatest missional challenges.
  3. Find consensus around greatest strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges. Select 1-2 of each.
  4. Identify the areas of congregational vitality strength that you can leverage to effectively engage missional opportunities and challenges in the community, and to effectively address areas of congregational vitality weakness.
  5. Identify strategies to engage identified community opportunities and challenges, and address identified areas of vitality.
  6. Determine which strategies you feel capable pursuing yourselves and which you might need help with.
  7. Implement strategies. Start small, experiment, and build on successes.

The steps may seem simple at first glance. And in a way, they are fairly straightforward. But if you are looking for a quick and easy fix for your congregation’s vitality issues, you’re going to be disappointed, because the process of vitality improvement is neither quick nor easy. 

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Be the First in Your Neighborhood

by The Rev. Ken Howard

Early Adopter Discount on Forthcoming CVA Judicatory Version

It’s hard to believe that it’s been only seven months since we launched the online version of the Congregational Vitality Assessment in collaboration with the Episcopal Church Foundation. Yet we’ve come a very long way in a very short time.

And this spring we will launch CVA 2.0 and along with it a new CVA Judicatory Version (CVA-JV). 

CVA 2.0 will feature a totally redesigned GUI (graphical user interface), based on user input, for a much enhanced user experience.

CVA-JV was not even a gleam in our eyes when we launched CVA 1.0, but rather, its creation is a response to requests from several judicatories (i.e., dioceses, synods, districts) across the U.S., and its design is based on their input.

CVA-Judicatory Version will allow judicatories to directly coordinate the administration of the free CVA to their congregations and receive anonymized vitality and sustainability diagnostic summaries from those congregations. CVA-JV will have a customized judicatory-specific dashboard that will allow them to add locally relevant questions (which won’t affect the diagnostic scores) but will provide them important information about their congregations, such as race/ethnicity, types of ministries/programs, and more. In addition, the language of the CVA will be customized to the various denominations and faith traditions that might use the CVA, as well as a Spanish language version. We anticipate that many judicatories will use the CVA-JV to supplement the rear-view-mirror data they get from the parochial reporting mechanism with real-time vitality diagnostics that their congregations can use to improve their own vitality. 

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