The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Reborn?

by Steve Matthews

Sometimes when I need a time of reflection, I que up “Pray as You Go.”  PAYG is a daily online resource produced by Scottish Jesuits. It offers daily readings on scripture, some prayerful music, and often something thoughtful to ponder.  Earlier this week, the lectio divina was based on the conversation with Jesus and Nicodemus (John 3:1-8). The line that jumped out at me was, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew.”  

I grew up in a very judgmental evangelical environment so the term “born anew” or “born again” does not invoke life-giving images. In the reflection that followed the PAYG readings, I tried to ponder these words and concepts and my reaction to them.  About an hour later I found a post on Facebook from White Eagle, Hopi indigenous dated March 16, 2020 (just at the start of the pandemic).  White Eagle is talking about seeing the approaching pandemic as fodder for a vision quest.  Regarding vision quests she writes, 

Allow yourself to take advantage of this time to perform your vision seeking rituals. What world do you want to build for you? For now, this is what you can do: serenity in the storm. Calm down, pray every day. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day.

Good things emanate; what you emanate now is the most important thing. And sing, dance, resist through art, joy, faith and love.
Resist – Be reborn

There’s that word again, “reborn.”  What images/memories/meanings do these words have for you?  I am realizing that they don’t have to be static for me.  As I have reread John 3:1-8 this week and the message from White Eagle, I find myself reflecting on the communal and personal trauma I have experienced in the past year.  I am ready to be re-born and ready to nurture new life in those around me and in the communities where I am embedded.  I want to join a community that sings, dances, resists through art, joy, faith and love. I also need to emanate this energy to others.On April 21 from 1:00-2:00 EST, FaithX is hosting a webinar entitled “Mapping Systemic Racism in our Rural Communities.”  Growing up in a rural Appalachian community that was 95% white, I naively didn’t think we had racism in our town.  My perspective on this is being reborn.  I now see that the communities of color in my hometown were/are located on the least desirable land.  I see the lack of representation in leadership.  I hear the language of the dominant culture differently, and since the 1980’s the demographics of this community have changed dramatically with a large influx of people from Mexico and Central America.  We are not who we thought we were, but have our systems and structures been reborn to reflect this change?  How are your rural communities changing?  We at the FaithX Project believe that compelling data combined with communal discernment can enable us to see our small towns and rural communities with new eyes and help us begin to address racism in creative ways that nurture new life, new possibilities. Please join us by registering here!

Liberating Structures for Ministry

by Mary Frances

A few months ago, I stumbled on a Facebook invitation for something called Liberating Structures for meetings.  It turns out this is a collaborative of folks who think that meetings shouldn’t be boring, they shouldn’t be predictable, and most of all they shouldn’t be required if they aren’t really necessary.  I suppose that the last year of more Zoom meetings than usual helped to pique my interest and so I dove into a couple of weeks of webinars (yes, more Zoom meetings) and started to learn about this interesting group of ideas and tools. 

The more these ideas percolate in me and the more I get to try on these new ideas, the more I think we need something like Liberating Structures for ministry.  We could start with “are all these meetings really necessary?,” but then we could get down to the meaty stuff like “why are we doing this?”  and “is this really important anymore?”  or “are we just doing this because we have always done it?”  And my favorite, “is our leadership organized to hinder or help support ministry?”

[Read more…]

Mapping Systemic Racism in Rural America

A Reflection and a Webinar

by Ken Howard

Click here to register for the webinar

Why is FaithX offering webinars on systemic racism?
I thought y’all did data-grounded missional discernment and demographic mapping.

We at FaithX get this question often these days. 

And my own first, somewhat snarky response is usually, “Exactly!”

But I then offer a somewhat longer and more serious explanation: That we at FaithX felt we had to bring our expertise and experience to bear on Systemic Racism because it is the frequently-unnoticed ‘base map’ underlying all the work that we have done since we launched in late 2016.

Of course, the more obvious thing revealed in visual form by our mapping was the clear, continuing, and pernicious segregation of race and ethnicity. But as we dug down deeper into various issues affecting neighborhoods, we also saw the impacts of systemic racism visually revealed there as well. We saw historical evidence of how in places where “redlining” was imposed, actions taken in the aftermath of the Great Depression had reverberated down the decades with impacts that continue today. Not just an almost one-to-one relationship between official redlining in the 30’s to the unofficial patterns of segregation we see today, but a relationship between the patterns of racial and ethnic predominance today and a host of negative impacts from chronic-diseases, to access to health care and insurance, to local government educational spending, to educational attainment. And we believed that the visual evidence that was so emotionally convincing to us that it would not only be equally compelling to others but would define for them concrete issues in their own communities that they could take concrete actions to address. Rural America may not have experienced official “redlining,” but the presence and the impacts of Systemic Racism are as real there as anywhere else.

[Read more…]

Spring Training 2021

by Steve Matthews

Are you familiar with the Cactus League or the Grapefruit League? Well, it’s the time of year when professional baseball teams (and usually their fans) flock to Arizona (Cactus) and Florida (Grapefruit) to train and play in these regional short-term leagues in preparation for the real games later in the spring.  I’ve never been to spring training, but I understand it is a fun and exciting time and a unique time to see your favorite players up close (and maybe get an autograph or two).

What is your congregation training for these days?  Are you having any fun?  Where is the excitement?  For over a year we have spent a lot of time in reaction mode trying to recalculate and adjust based on new realities.  I wonder what we have learned about agility, adaptability, new technology, communication, patience, and negotiation. In the months ahead we will continue to adapt to Covid’s new realities.  The skills we have learned will continue to be part of our training, and what proactive training do we need to be incorporating into our communal life?  Who knows what the season to come will be like for us, but the call to co-create a playing field where God’s justice and joyous communion is primary and “the dignity of every human being” (and all beings) is honored never ceases. 

[Read more…]

Covid and Congregations: What’s in Store for 2021?

by Mary Frances

Our Webinar series continues on April 27, 2021
Click Here to Register

Covid, Covid, Covid!  

A little over a year ago, you might not have heard about it or given it much thought.  Today it’s in the news all day, every day.  But sometimes it’s hard to know what to think.

In local news today, the governor of my state (Illinois) is about to bring us into Phase 5 which, I think, is pretty much fully open… keeping the mask mandate, though.  I saw Dr. Fauci on TV a few days ago.  He said not to rush to open, that there is still a lot of concern about variants and, at this point, only a small percentage of the population has been fully vaccinated.  And recently, my 90-year-old mother tested positive for Covid while under hospice care and in the dying process and yet they offered to treat her for Covid if we wanted.  For her sake we declined but then I wondered, what would that treatment look like?  As I said, sometimes it’s just hard to know what to think, who to believe, and how to live out our lives in what is not really a post-Covid era… yet.   

[Read more…]

FaithX is Datastory Affiliate