The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Groundbreaking Free Congregational Vitality Assessment Tool Launches Version 2.0

Germantown, MD | New York, NY – The FaithX Project in partnership with the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF) is pleased to announce the launch of version 2.0 of the Congregational Vitality Assessment Tool (CVA), available at no cost for immediate use.

After 10 years of research and implementation of a paper-based CVA tool, the digital version was built in early 2020. The Congregational Vitality Assessment tool is designed to provide a congregation with an assessment of its Vitality (how healthy it is) and its Sustainability (whether it has the people, financial, and contextual resources necessary to survive). The vitality section carries the bulk of the assessment, measuring ten areas of congregational functioning, such as Vision and Mission, Leadership, Lay Empowerment, Worship, Formation, Stewardship, and more. 

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Mission and Vision and Plans, Oh My!

How CVA 2.0 can put your congregation on the road to vitality

by the Rev. Hunter Ruffin, Rector – Epiphany Church, Tempe, AZ

Version 2.0 of the free Congregational Vitality Assessment will be officially released on August 5, 2021, along with our new, subscription-based CVA Judicatory Dashboard.

Click here for more information or to try a sample of the CVA

It’s a familiar narrative in just about every congregation these days: attendance numbers are shrinking, the children are fewer in number, and the people in the parish want to do something (anything!) to reverse the trend. The question that almost always looms large at the start of any such process is simple and, in its own way, profound: Where do we begin? 

 I entered a narrative similar to this when I accepted the call to serve as the next rector at Church of the Epiphany in Tempe, Arizona. In fifteen years’ time, the parish dwindled from an average Sunday attendance of 353 to an average Sunday attendance of 182 prior to the pandemic. It was clear that things were not going in the direction that any parish wants to see. It was abundantly clear that we needed to do something, but it was less clear what that something was.

After a lengthy discussion, lots of research, and even more prayer, the vestry discerned that they could do the visioning work without spending a lot of money on a consultant. Surely, we could find the resources we needed to launch a strategic visioning process that would fold in a good chunk of the parish. The thing that was less clear to us was whether we could do that whilst in the middle of a pandemic. After all, Zoom fatigue (can we shorthand this as Zoomtigue?) was already an affliction most of us suffered through on a daily basis.

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Tools for Data-Grounded Discernment During Leadership Transition

By Katie Romano Griffin,
Faith Board Member and Associate Minister at Cedar Lane Church

Over time, all religious communities evolve to be more homogeneous. Mine is no exception. Leadership transitions, while often a time of grief and uncomfortable change for a congregation, are one of the best times for a congregation to realign its mission and purpose with the needs of the larger community and transform from what my colleague Abh Janamanchi calls a Sacred Society (closed to larger community needs) to a Holy Community (a place of love and holy experience connected to the greater community). 

In the midst of the pandemic (which is its own kind of transition process), our congregation engaged FaithX to help us with exploring our own strengths and weaknesses, along with the missional opportunities and challenges in the community we serve. For the latter, they introduced us to a tool called a Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (or NMIR for short). As someone who has worked with congregations in transition on church growth, I can see how this tool could be useful on both sides of the transition process. 

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American Religion: Census and Singularity

Public Religion Research Institute (PPRI)* has released its eagerly awaited 2020 Census of American Religion and the results are eye-opening.

One of the key findings of the 2020 Religion Census – that white, conservative, Evangelical denominations had plateaued and were declining, while Mainline denominations have stabilized and begun a slight uptick – almost precisely parallels what we predicted in our earlier publication, The Religion Singularity.** Published in early 2017, in the International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, the paper projected that the number of Christians per Worship Center was entering a period of increasingly rapid decline driven in large part by defections from conservative Evangelical denominations, most to join the ranks of the Nones (meaning “none of the above” or unaffiliated).

According to the Religion Census the number of white Evangelical has dropped precipitously from 23% in 2016 to 14.5% in 2020, a decline of more than one-third in 14 years. The decline appears to be driven by an exodus of Millennials and GenZ-ers, some of whom are joining (or returning) to Mainline denominations, but the vast majority of whom, while still considering themselves to be Christians, are choosing not to affiliate with a denomination.

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Total Christian Clergy Deaths Resulting from COVID-19


by Darren Slade, PhD – FaithX Director of Research

Over the past year, the FaithX Project, in partnership with researchers from the Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR), conducted a study to answer one very important question about clergy deaths:

How many Christian “clergy” members, from all denominations and traditions, died as a result of the COVID-19 virus?

While the study can only provide estimates and statistical probabilities, the research is finally complete and the preliminary numbers are in.

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