Faith (eXperimental)

By the Rev. Ken Howard I recently reconnected with a classmate from my high school days. Our first several exchanges focused on updating each other on what had happened in the decades since our graduation. Once we discovered that both of us had become Christ-followers, the discussion turned to sharing our respective points of view on a variety of […]

by Ken Howard I know… It’s been a while. My bad. These last few weeks I’ve been simply swamped with the task of writing proposals on deadlines, and generating money came first. I guess that’s just “the way of the world,” right? Our friends at St. Philip’s, Scotts Valley, in the Episcopal Diocese of El […]

By Ken Howard Part 2: Jots and Tittles – Applying Midrash to the Words of Jesus In my previous blog post on Midrash, I reflected on the dilemma in which the Church finds itself today: attempting to apply univocal, linear approaches to the study and interpretation of Scripture in a world in which both science […]

by Ken Howard Part 1: The Need for a Deeper Method of Bible Study A number of you have asked me to expand on comments I made in Paradoxy commending the ancient Jewish method of Bible study and interpretation known as Midrash as well-suited to the post-modern world in which the Church finds itself today: a world […]

by Darren Slade Part 3 of the series “The Dis-Integration of the Church” – click here for part 1, click here for part 2 Table of Contents Is Theology & Strictness the Principal Factor? Data on Denominational Switching Are Liberals Turning to Evangelicalism? Not Really. Why Theology is Not the Main Reason for Church Growth Religious […]

Dear Colleagues in Ministry, Most of you know in your heart of hearts that institutional Christianity his facing serious headwinds: unprecedented levels of change, from within and without, that challenge our ability to adapt, as well as rising uncertainty that threatens to paralyze us with fears for our survival. Well, I’m here to tell you […]

By Ken Howard That the recent presidential election turned the existing political and social divide in the United States into a gaping chasm is news to no one. And it should also come as no surprise that this chasm of division has extended to conservative and liberal Christian denominations. Yet what is not as widely […]

By Ken Howard I am pleased and excited to announce the publication of my peer-reviewed article, “The Religion Singularity,” in the International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society. The full title of the article is “The Religion Singularity: A Demographic Crisis Destabilizing and Transforming Institutional Christianity.” In this article, I trace the emergence and […]

  As you may have heard, a number of congregations around the country are employing Paradoxy: Creating Christian Community Beyond Us and Them as the basis for conflict transformation dialogue groups in the wake of the last election. One of those congregations, an Episcopal Church in the Diocese of El Camino Real, has agreed to […]

Part 2 of the series “The Dis-Integration of the Church” click here for part 1 By Darren Slade In my last posting, “Religious Homophily: A Theory of Conservative Church Fragmentation,” I presented sociological and psychological support for the notion that “conservative” Christian churches (principally, those whose congregations adhere to exclusive theological beliefs) fragment and divide because […]

Part 1 of the series “The Dis-Integration of the Church” Darren M. Slade Editor’s note: Darren Slade is Director of Research at The FaithX Project. He contributes regularly to the FaithX blog, both curating research on church fragmentation and offering original contributions of his own, such as today’s post. This post is updated and expanded from […]

Date: March 26, 2017 (The 4th Sunday in Lent) Preacher: The Rev. Ken Howard Location: Church of the Holy Apostles, Arbutus, Maryland. Text: John 9:1-41 Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’

  Dear FaithX Friends, We are happy to announce that late last year we achieved several of our early organizational goals: We incorporated The FaithX Project as a Maryland corporation. We achieved 501(c)3 Nonprofit status as an organization with a religious, educational, and philanthropic purpose. Ken’s coaching, consulting, and training work under FaithX was approved as […]

by Ken Howard The response to our Paradoxy Congregational Conflict Transformation 10-Pack Giveaway has been great. In the last 10 days 20 congregations from San Francisco to Washington DC have claimed free group discussion 10-packs along with facilitator guidelines and other downloadable resources. And they are putting them to use right now to move beyond the tension […]

The recent presidential election left faith leaders and their congregations between rock and a hard place, struggling with questions like: How do we counteract our current epidemic of out-of-control “othering”?   How do we engage issues of justice and truth without alienating without deepening the divisions between people who disagree? How do we maintain our […]

By Ken Howard A common quandary I hear expressed by leaders of faith-based communities and organizations is… How can I help my community adapt to a rapidly changing world without forsaking our traditions? And my answer to this quandary is: It depends… Specifically, it depends on what you think traditions are good for. If we think of our traditions as holy […]

Conflict resolution experts ask President-elect Trump and other government officials to take a stand to reduce post-election violence Hundreds of post-election reports of vandalism, beatings and threats since the US election have prompted dozens of leading experts in conflict resolution to urge Donald Trump and government officials at all levels to take an urgent, public […]

By Ken Howard Write the vision; make it plain… so that a runner may read it. Habakkuk 2:2 This is the second of two blog posts on Minimum Viable Belief, the term I have used to describe the driving vision of a faith-based community or organization. Minimum Viable Belief – or MVB – is the […]

By Ken Howard Okay. Let’s review. This blog series began with several posts discussing the phenomenon I call the Religion Singularity, in which the total numbers of denominations and worship centers (local faith communities) worldwide is growing and splintering considerably faster than the total number of Christians, driving relentlessly downward the average number of Christians […]

By Ken Howard It is said the the Chinese word for “crisis” is formed from two ideograms: one which signifies danger, the other opportunity. For some time now we have been discussing the crisis now facing the church. This phenomenon, which we have called the Religion Singularity is the runaway the growth-by-fragmentation in the numbers of denominations and worship centers at […]

By Ken Howard I’ve been told that in the writing of every book there comes a time (or times) when the author begins to wonder whether all the effort he or she is putting into the project is worth it. For me it usually comes when I am about a third of the way into the […]

A slide presentation… By Ken Howard                   Click here for the full power point show.

By River Damien Sims The first twenty five years of our life were filled with certainty. We knew who God was and that “He” made us in a certain way, no matter what. But in that certainty we were filled with fear, depression, and a horrible sense of being the “bad boy” because we were  […]

Part 2: A Proactive Solution? By Ken Howard In our last blog post on this topic, we discussed the increasingly complex relationship between faith communities and local governments: allies in seeking the common welfare of the community, adversaries on property tax policy, and on land use policy, a little of both. Across the country, local […]

By Ken Howard Part 1 – The Problem: An Increasingly Complicated and Adversarial Relationship Part of the increasing uncertain environment faith-based communities and organizations are facing is their relationship with local government. Faith communities and local governments once saw each other as natural allies. But as local governments face increasing pressure to find new sources of […]

By Darren M. Slade FaithX Research Coordinator According to a Pew Research Center survey in 2016, nearly half (49%) of American churchgoers have actively sought a new church home at least once in their lifetime.[1] Roughly three-in-ten Christians (29%) sought a new congregation within the last five years.[2] While the main reason for this pursuit […]

In a lighter vein, today we offer our readers a article sent to us by the Rev. Robert Cornner, a retired Episcopal priest with an encouraging presence and a dry sense of humor, speaks to any “Nones” that happen to read this article about 10 ways they might just be Episcopalians, based on their beliefs. Dear Nones, According to […]

by Ken Howard For the last month or so we’ve been providing you with information about what lies ahead for faith-based communities and organizations, and how you can prepare them for a turbulent present and an uncertain future. Today we pause briefly — a la NPR — for a brief “pledge drive.” Our next email will resume our regular educational programming. WHY […]

Our last three articles have focused the nature and impact of the Religion Singularity… namely an increasingly turbulent and unpredictable environment. This we we shift toward what it takes to survive and thrive in that environment. Agility To survive and thrive in an unpredictable environment, our organization must develop agility. Agility means the power to move quickly […]

By Ken Howard                   If the Religion Singularity is true… If denominations and churches are growing/fracturing at a considerably higher rate than the worldwide population of Christians, driving a massive downturn in the size of those institutions… What is the future of religion? What is the future of […]

By Ken Howard This article is the third in a series on the Religion Singularity. Click here for Part 1. Click here for Part 2. Organizing and sharing the data about the Religion Singularity continues to be an eye-opening experience for me. It has been enlightening to observe the responses of different groups of people. […]

The FaithX Project is happy to welcome aboard our new Research Coordinator, Darren Slade. Darren’s role on the FaithX founding team will be as a Researcher, Editor, and Consultant, conducting and curating research related to the Religion Singularity and Vision-Guided Experimentation. Darren is a published theologian and systematician who specializes in historical and speculative theology, as […]

[excerpt from press release to be released on July 20] Author, faith leader, and church futurist, the Rev. Ken Howard will feature as a presenter and panelist at the 9th Biennial International Meaning Conference, to be held in Toronto, July 28-31, 2016. Dedicated to the themes of “Spirituality, Self-Transcendence and Second-Wave Positive Psychology,” the conference is […]

This is the second post in five-part series. Click here for Part 1. The impact on denominations: Death by black hole – oblivion – fragmenting and shrinking at such a rate that they are unlikely to be sustainable by any means. The impact on worship center – a choice:  Black hole or wormhole – fragmenting and shrinking at […]

The FaithX Project: Experimental Faith Communities for an Undiscovered Future is not going to be your average, run-of-the-mill, sit-on-the-shelf book.  Instead, it is going to be an open-source book by practitioners for practitioners. How are we going to do that? To begin with, the seven practices of Vision-Guided Experimentation are the author’s distillation of observed experimental […]

This post is the first in a five-part series on the Religion Singularity. Religion Singularity is a term I first coined in a paper entitled “Singularity: The Death of Religion and the Resurrection of Faith,” presented earlier this year at the 2016 Conference on Religion and Society in Washington, DC. If the term “Singularity” sounds […]

Welcome back to FaithX News! It’s been about a month since our last issue! Which means we have a lot of new things to share… And one old thing. The New Things:  We completed our after-action learning review of our Kickstarter campaign, which didn’t reach funding but from which we learned a lot and gained several dozen very […]

A Letter to the Church How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you! How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you! I would like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made […]

By Ken Howard and Jon Howard Lean before Lean Was Cool Several of you have been asking more about the genesis of The FaithX Project: What led to this idea of Minimum Viable Belief and pushed me in the direction launching this new endeavor? In late 2013, my son Jonathan, then CEO of a medical […]

By the Rev. Ken Howard With a little under two weeks left in our Kickstarter crowd funding campaign, it is important to be clear about what’s at stake in the FaithX Project. After more than five years of analyzing worldwide demographic trends affecting Christianity, I believe I can say with a high degree of confidence […]

By Ken Howard At a recent conference I was asked to speculate about what our parishes would look like a decade from now. My answer was brief: “One thing I can say with certainty is this: The only way our churches will look like they do now is if they have been stuffed and mounted […]

Dear Friends, We are pleased to announce the inaugural issue of FaithX News, which you may read by clicking here or on the image above. In this issue of FaithX News you will find articles on the following: •  FaithX The Book •  The FaithX Community •  FaithX Consulting Services •  Coming soon…The FaithX Project Kickstarter Campaign […]

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. More and more leaders are beginning to face the facts about their congregations. More are beginning to acknowledge that, at best, they are on a plateau and that, at worst, […]

By Ken Howard In yesterday’s post, I identified seven common myths about church plants and church planting and did a little myth busting. Today I’m going to go the other direction. I want to share with you 14 Facts about church planting. While I made an editorial decision not to clutter up the narrative with […]

By Ken Howard There are a lot of myths floating around about church start-up…or what some call church plants. What I want to do here is list them, bust them, replace them with facts, and then let you make up your own mind. While I made an editorial decision not to clutter up the narrative with […]

by Ken Howard Step 1: Take this ten-item quiz to discover whether your faith community is undead In case you haven’t noticed, Zombies are becoming more popular these days. Gone are the old-time Zombie movies with their slack-jawed, shuffling Zombies. Nowadays the Undead are appearing in Zombie action movies, Zombie romantic comedies, Zombie Bollywood flicks, even Zombie […]

By Ken Howard Faith communities could learn a few things from Starbucks… Starbucks is one of those places that, even if you don’t go there, you know it’s the place to go. It’s the number one coffee shop in the United States, maybe even in the world. It’s almost like Starbucks was selling something addictive… They are, […]

by Ken Howard and Wendy Dackson Alrighty then! Our recent blog post “10 Ways the Church is Like Downton Abbey” got quite a lot of views. So, like our friends in Public Television, we decided to renew Downton Church for a second “season.” And the theme for season two is “Eight Lessons the Church Could Learn from Downton Abbey.” Indeed, there much agreement in the […]

By Ken Howard & Wendy Dackson [Simulblogged on FaithX and Past Christian] It all started a few days ago, when Ken came across an Episcopal Church Meme on Facebook and reposted on his own Facebook page with a comment about how it reminded him of Downton Abbey (and not exactly in a good way). The meme in question, displayed below, showed the Presiding Bishop, along with several other resplendently attired […]

by Ken Howard Lord Sandwich:   “I have heard frequent use of the words Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: but I confess myself at a loss know precisely what they mean.” Lord Warburton:   “It’s very simple old chap. Orthodoxy is my doxy. Heterodoxy is anyone else’s doxy.” An exchange between John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, and William Warburton, Bishop of […]

By the Rev. Ken Howard Earlier this month the Pew Forum published its anxiously awaited research report, America’s Changing Religious Landscape, a survey of how religious affiliation and demographics have changed between 2007 and 2014. The biggest news in the report: the dramatic drop in the percentage of the U.S. population who claim Christianity as their religion of choice, and […]