Dec 01 2018

Support FaithX with a Final 2018 Tax Exempt Donation

Planning ahead for 2019?
Looking for one last tax exempt donation to maximize your charitable deductions?

Support FaithX

Designate Your Tax Deductible Gift One of the Following Ways

Where Most Needed
Helps us develop programs and resources more quickly and at a lower cost.

Small Church Scholarship Fund
Helps us scholarship smaller congregations or judicatories with limited resources.

SHERM Journal
Supports our new peer-reviewed journal, Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry.

Dialogue Across Differences Program
Supports the Dialogue Across Differences Facebook group, website, and programs.

The FaithX Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
and a GuideStar Silver participant.

Nov 29 2018

Why does MapDash for Faith Communities Cost More?

“Why Is MapDash for Faith Communities^TM cost more than other demographic programs?”

It’s a question we get asked a lot. And it is true that an annual diocesan subscription to MapDash is more expensive than other programs, though renewal costs in subsequent years are somewhat less than the first year. And this is before adding the cost of guided strategic missional assessment and planning that we recommend for the first year. Which brings us to a second question we get asked a lot…

“Why would I want to pay more for MapDash and even more for several days of consultation over a 3-6 month period? Why can’t we just use the cheaper program and do the missional assessment and planning work ourselves?”

I know, that’s actually two more questions. And all three are reasonable questions to ask.

And yes, of course you could do all those things. You could pay a lot less by subscribing to a less expensive program and doing all the demographic assessment and planning without any help.

But there are a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t do those things… and why you should invest more in MapDash subscription and in guided strategic missional planning.

There’s a reason that MapDash for Faith Communities is costs more.

It has to.

It has cost more because it is loaded with judicatory and congregational analytics that aren’t available anywhere else.

Analytics are what the name implies: practical faith community metrics derived from an analysis of key internal and/or external factors. And MapDash for Faith Communities contains eight faith community analytics unavailable elsewhere:

Congregational Vitality Index (CVI)
Congregational Sustainability Index (CSI)
Sustainability–Viability Margin Index (SVMI)
Missional Opportunity Index (MOI)
Missional Context Report (MCR)
MissionWebs
DriveTime Analysis (15 min)
Study Area Stats

Of course, we could provide MapDash for Faith Communities at a lower cost if we left out these eight judicatory-specific analytics. But that would make it less valuable.

Which brings us to a second reason that you should invest more in MapDash…

Because it IS more valuable.

The analytics it provides makes MapDash exponentially more valuable.

Where else could you go to get an annually updated assessment of vitality for every congregation in your judicatory with a single mouse-click? Or a five-year projection each congregation’s sustainability?

Where else could you go to see every area of projected emerging missional opportunity in your judicatory at a glance? Or every area of emerging missional challenge?

Where else could you go to see the area of greatest influence and attraction of every congregation in your judicatory? Or the areas of greatest competition among congregations?

[Read more…]

Nov 21 2018

Introducing a New Publication from Our Research Director!

The “Sons of God” as a Polemic against Royal Immortality:
A Philological and Literary Comparison of Genesis 6:1–4 and the Epic of Kirta

by Darren M. Slade

Have you ever wondered what Genesis 6:1–4 is all about with its weird and cryptic description of “sons of God” taking the “daughters of men” as wives? And who in the world are the Nephilim!?!

The Research Director of the FaithX Project, Darren Slade, has just published a new article in Evangelical Journal exploring a never-before-seen theory about the literary and philological parallels between Genesis 6 and the ancient Ugaritic Epic of Kirta.

The purpose of the article is to identify the function of the “sons of God” in the literary and socio-historical context of Genesis 6:1–4. The article first presents presuppositions to the research, as well as the importance of Ugaritic literature in biblical studies. The investigation then presents a comparative study with the Ugaritic Epic of Kirta and a potential new theory regarding the Genesis pericope. It concludes by suggesting that literary parallels may reveal the Epic of Kirta as a close paradigm for understanding the function of the Genesis passage, concluding that the specific sin of the “sons of God” may not have been unsanctioned marriages, adultery, polygamy, or rape. Rather, the biblical account could act as a polemic against the belief that divine kings obtained immortality through marriage and reproduction, which exacerbated Yahweh’s decision to eradicate humanity and to demonstrate the finiteness of these so-called ancient god-kings.

Check out the article for free by clicking here.

Nov 15 2018

FaithX Site Suffers Malware Attack… and a few of you can help

Late last week FaithX.net suffered a malware attack. The malware in question had an innocuous name – I mean “Hello Dolly” sounds harmless, right? Indeed, we didn’t realize it was an attack when we first discovered the program on our Plugins page. But it did one heck of a lot of damage – before we identified and removed it, about a third of our files we gone and the menu structure was scrambled.

Some of the files were old and unused. Some were simple and easily recreated. But one page in particular was a real loss…

Our “Testimonials Page”

Every link to our Testimonials page instead took us to the dreaded “404 Page Not Found” page. Better than the “white blog screen of death,” I suppose. But still quite a blow.

We’ve been able to find many of the lost testimonials in the sender’s original emails (so glad I’m so bad at deleting old emails). And we’ve restored many others from memory. But others are seemingly nowhere to be found.

So here’s how a select few of you can help…

If you are one of those people who provided us with a testimonial for MapDash for Faith Communities, our Missional Journey consulting program, or one of our consultants – Mary Frances, Steve Matthews, or me – and could send it to us again or recreate it, we would be forever grateful.

If you are not one of those people, but have been using MapDash or worked with one of us, or even had a demo and were impressed, and are willing to write a sentence or two about it, that also would make us very happy.

If you fall into either of those groups, and you want to help, just jot a few thoughtful words in an email and address it to ken@faithx.net, and you can be one of…

The Few, the Proud, the Testimonializers

Nov 08 2018

Free Range Priests, Free Agent Pastors, and Other Emerging Ministry Models

By Jim Papile – Retired Episcopal Priest/Church Starter, and Free-Agent Priest

From time to time, we like invite a different voice to the FaithXperimental blog.
Today’s guest blogger is the Rev. Jim Papile (a classmate of Ken’s from Virginia Theological Seminary).

Although I’m not a real big fan of announcements in the middle of the service, as a freelance supply priest I am aware of what my responsibilities are, and what they are not. I serve two small congregations, one Sunday at a small exurb parish of about 30 congregants per Sunday, and the other an urban parish with about the same numbers. I preside at the Eucharist on alternate Sundays. On the Sundays I am not present, the congregations either hire other supply priests or have licensed lay members read Morning Prayer and preach.

On this particular Sunday, I was heartened to hear of all the projects the congregation was involved in within their community. Time, talent, money—there were more things than much larger parishes I had served got involved in. I took a few moments at the end of the announcements to let them know how impressed I was with all they were doing in the community, and how lovingly they visited and tended to the sick and the shut-ins of their community.

After the service, a member of the church’s vestry thanked me for my words and explained how they were able to do the work they did because they did NOT have a full time priest. “We have not had a rector since 2014,” she told me, ”and without having to pay salary, pension, and health care, we have around forty thousand a year to do ministry, and we get different priests, withdifferent preaching and liturgical styles. We love it!”