Strategic Missional Consulting
In the spirit of Christmas, we are offering another FaithX book giveaway.
From December 17–21, Kindle versions of Paradoxy: Creating Christian Community Beyond Us and Them and Excommunicating the Faithful: Jewish Christianity in the Early Church will be available free by clicking on the images or links below:
If you’d rather have a paperback version of Paradoxy, (shipping cost extra), click here.
We hope you enjoy them both and wish you a merry and blessed Christmas!
FaithX follows research relevant to those experimenting with new ways of organizing and being faith communities. When we find relevant research, we curate it here on the FaithXperimental blog and provide a link to download the full publication. We also post it on the Research section of the FaithX website.
The latest research of interest is the Vital Congregations Report – 2018, authored by Linda Bobbitt and published by the Congregational Vitality Project of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Here is the research abstract:
What does a congregation mean when they describe themselves as spiritually vital? How does a congregation become vital? What is the relationship between vitality and sustainability? Does the answer depend on the faith tradition? This study asked leaders from 10 different faith traditions to answer these questions. We found remarkable similarities across all traditions while also discovering the unique perspectives of each. Their answers illustrate distinct understandings about the way people interact with God and different perspectives of God’s promise of hope for the world.
Click here to download the Congregational Vitality Report and explore these answers.
Planning ahead for 2019?
Looking for one last tax exempt donation to maximize your charitable deductions?
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.
“Why Is MapDash for Faith CommunitiesTM 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:
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?
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.