The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

FaithX & Datastory at CEEP Conference | Feb 20-23

How can we love our neighbors if we don’t know who they are?

How do we answer the question, “Who is our neighbor?” when our neighborhoods are changing so fast that our traditional ways of learning about them can’t keep up?

How do we learn how to learn at the speed of change?

If answering these questions for your congregation is important to you and you will be at the CEEP Conference in Boston on February 20-23, drop by our booth and discover how FaithX and Datastory and are helping faith leaders engage in data-grounded discernment for the future of the Church.

Visit Us at Booth 29

We’ll give you a complimentary Missional Intelligence Report about your community. 

FaithX and Datastory help faith communities and the organizations that support them answer these questions and more with Datastory’s MapDash for Faith Communities missional intelligence program and missional strategy development consulting from FaithX.

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Correlation is Not Causation: Why Theology is Not What Makes Churches Grow

by Darren Slade

In this article, I will seek to answer whether theological conservatism and strictness play a vital role in denominational switching, as well as what factors cause churches to grow numerically. In the end, the idea that liberal theologies cause a deterioration in mainline Protestantism, while conservative theologies produce growth, is an oversimplification of the relevant factors that account for congregational development. Though theological conservatism tends to correlate with numerical expansion, it does not do so consistently and in all cases. Nonetheless, correlation does not equate to causation. Conservatism and strictness are merely two among a myriad of other influences that are present among growing churches, including (most notably) higher birth rates, higher youth retention, and a focus on evangelistic efforts.

Click Here to Read the Article
Correlation is Not Causation:
Why Theology is Not What Makes Churches Grow

Forecasting Emerging Missional Opportunities – Creating the Missional Opportunity Index (Part 2)

As you learned in last week’s post, the Missional Opportunity Index (MOI) is a version of what marketing professionals call a Market Texture: a map-based representation of emerging market conditions based on a predictive algorithm composed of relevant correlated demographic factors. To generate the MOI, the program starts by creating a quarter-mile-square matrix across the entirety of a diocese, district, or other judicatory. Then it “drops a pin” on one of those thousands of points, samples the population with a 15-min drive from that point, and extracting 5-year projections of four demographic factors that drive Missional Opportunity (MO).

These four opportunity-related factors are:

  • Population Growth.Increasing population in an area is directly related to MO, as it represents an influx of new and unaffiliated people and/or a rapidly increasing rising generation.
  • Diversity Growth. Increasing diversity in an area is directly related to MO, becauseeven if area population has plateaued, it represents turnover in the current population. 
  • Generational Balance.Increasing imbalance between older and younger cohorts is inversely related to MO, as rapidly increasing or decreasing median age predicts reduced financial resources.
  • Qualified Population (a measure of population vs. competition).The number of same denomination worship centers competing for the population with a 15-min DriveTime is inversely correlated to MO.

The MOI map below represents Missional Opportunity in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. The map represents areas of high MO in medium-to-dark green, areas of moderate MO in yellow-to-light-green, and areas of low MO in orange-to-dark red. It forecasts that several areas of high Missional Opportunity will be emerging in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland over the next five years, each of which will require different missional strategies to effectively engage.

[Read more…]

Forecasting Emerging Missional Opportunities – Creating the Missional Opportunity Index (Part 1)

A good hockey player plays where the puck is.
A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.

Wayne Gretzky
(Canadian professional ice hockey player – 1979 to 1999)

Missional opportunity is like hockey in this respect: If you wait to engage it after it has already emerged, it is already too late to engage it effectively. If you do want to engage missional opportunity effectively, you have to be there, prepared and ready, where and when it emerges, because if you wait, you will be forced to play a losing game of reactive catch-up after the fact.

Say you are considering starting a new congregation. If you wait until a growing community has developed a sufficient number of people to populate and financially support a house of worship, the rising price of real estate will have made purchasing the property on which to construct it cost prohibitive (if there are any suitable properties that have not already been snapped up by builders or more forward-thinking denominations). Similarly, if your established congregation waits to adapt its ministries to its changing neighborhood until the transformation is complete, one-time newcomers may have set down roots in congregations that loved them enough to adapt to them. No, you have to be willing to take the risk of predicting where and when the opportunity is going to be doing what is necessary to be there.

[Read more…]

Announcing a New Publication by Our Research Director

Have you ever wondered if there are certain psychological variables that could potentially influence or distort someone’s observation of a “miracle”?

With all the claims of people having witnessed a bona fide miracle today, from both Christians and non-Christians alike, it seems incumbent for critical thinkers and spiritual discerners to evaluate each miracle eyewitness and the potential for psychological misrepresentation.

The 3rdedition of the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religionhas just announced the publication of an article by FaithX Co-Founder and Research Director, Darren M. Slade, entitled “Miracle Eyewitness Reports.” 

[Read more…]

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