The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Coming Soon: Online Congregational Vitality Assessment

By the Rev. Ken Howard

In 2017, FaithX released a prototype of the Congregational Vitality Assessment: a first-of-its-kind research-based diagnostic inventory for measuring congregational vitality and sustainability. In late 2018, FaithX and the Episcopal Church Foundation entered into a collaboration to bring the CVA online in digital format, where it could be made available for free to a wider audience. That collaboration is about to reach fruition. The CVA has now emerged from beta-testing with a tentative launch date of mid-to-late September.

The Congregational Vitality Assessment 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. The assessment can be completed by a single congregational leader, a congregational leadership group, or the entire congregation.

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You Can’t Go Home Again: Leading a Hybrid Congregation

by The Rev. Ken Howard

This blog post on leading a hybrid congregation includes registration information for a webinar of the same name

Click Here for Webinar Information

You can’t go home again
because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory
– John Steinbeck
Travels with Charley in Search of America

I recently watched a YouTube video of “The Dancing Priest” performing a parody of the popular Broadway tune, “You’ll Be Back,” from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s play, Hamilton. 

Right from the start it was good for laughs watching an Anglican priest sing and dance this number, especially since we know that George III was not only King of England but also Defender of the [Anglican] faith. And it’s so easy to see the parallels between the original and the parody.

You’ll be back – wait and see – just remember how it used to be.
You’ll be back – time will tell – when we kick this virus back to hell.
When we finally open the door, we will get back together even better than it was before.

The humor in these lines is real. But they are often poignant when you think about them a little in light of the possibility of instituting a hybrid congregation. Because at the same time it helps us yearn to believe those words, it also reminds us that our wishes to return to our pre-Covid ways are no more likely to be granted than those rebellious colonies were to return to the “loving” arms of Mad King George.

No. We can’t go home again. It is time we look at what’s necessary to lead a hybrid congregation. Of course, we may eventually return to our buildings. But while they may look the same and evoke fond memories of a feeling of being home, it will never feel the same. It can’t. Because as individuals and as congregations, we have changed. In many ways for good, both literally and figuratively.

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The Truth Needs a Good Story

By the Rev. Ken Howard

Falsehood flies and Truth comes limping after
– Jonathan Swift (1710)

Jonathan Swift’s comment seems just as relevant now as it was when he wrote it in 1710. Both lies and truths tell a story.

Why is it that a lie and a false story travel so much faster than truth? Why do people seem to latch onto lies so much more easily?

I think it’s because lies always have better stories. Lies are stories: false stories but stories all the same. Their stories are often better because they are free to create them from scratch. Human beings are pattern seekers and meaning creators. We want there to be a reason for things. We don’t like chaos, unpredictability, or lack of control. And we much prefer it when the reason comes wrapped in a simple story that ties everything together and puts a bow on it. 

People who spread lies are free to create them from scratch, free to write a convincing narrative, free to write emotionally satisfying script at plays to their own biases about good guys and bad guys, and to give the listener the satisfaction of being one of the good guys. As H. L. Menken once said, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.”

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Church in a New Reality: Now What?

by Mary Frances

This post is part of our Keeping Congregations Connected series and includes information on our upcoming webinar: Reopening Church in a New Reality: Re-Visioning in a Changing Context.

We used to say “The more things change, the more things remain the same,” but in 2020, that old saying has been turned on its head.  Today the one thing that remains the same is change. We live in a new reality. Each day we turn on the news or look at our social media feeds to find our way of life challenged as never before.  In the midst of so much change, how do we move forward? How do we think about thriving as the church rather than just surviving?

In the weeks after Covid-19 hit, churches across the country pivoted from in-person worship to online worship in the blink of an eye. I’m not sure the church has ever seen such a rapid change without major resistance! There were no committees, no focus groups, no church council discussions. It just happened. And it was good. Churches adapted to their new reality.

Then we began to address what other essentials needed to change.  Online giving took priority, new ways of doing pastoral care, phone trees were initiated, and members were contacted one by one.  “Are you okay?,” we asked.  “Do you need anything?”  “Can I pray for you?”  All was well.  Congregations were now safely ensconced on Zoom or Facebook Live.  Whew!

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Non-Proselytizing Evangelism: The Heart of the Church

by The Rev. Ken Howard

This is a busy week for FaithX (a major webinar and two videocast presentations at a major conference). So we are publishing one of Ken Howard’s earlier blog posts on the difference between evangelism and proselytizing.

When I broach the subject of evangelism to members of my own Anglican-Episcopal tradition, I get two distinct kinds of responses, depending on whether the hearers are conservative or liberal in their theology. Conservatives Anglicans, while a distinct minority in the denomination, are pretty gung-ho on the evangelism thing. The notion of non-proselytizing is almost completely foreign to them. They make jokes like, “to most Episcopalians evangelism is a ‘four-letter word,'” and try to encourage the rest of us to get out there and start making converts for Christ. Liberal (and even moderate) Anglicans, on the other hand, tend to be rather uncomfortable with the whole idea of evangelism. Oddly enough, they tell the same evangelism jokes as conservatives but they sound a bit more nervous when they do, because to them it really does feel like a four-letter word.

Several years ago, when I began to suggest the possibility of a non-proselytizing evangelism, my clergy colleagues looked at me I had just started to speak in tongues. My liberal friends were like, “Is it even possible to engage in evangelism without proselytizing? And do we even want to do it if it isn’t?” Meanwhile, my conservative friends were like, “Why would anyone even want to do that? Isn’t proselytizing the point?” And both of them were like, “Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”

Indeed, the two terms do sound a little discordant when we first try to say them together. I’m guessing that’s because evangelism equals proselytizing is pretty much the only kind of evangelism paradigm that the Church and most of its members has in its institutional memory. Most of us have no other concept of evangelism other than as a way to convert people: to get them to change their religious affiliation from another faith tradition to Christianity or even (sadly) from one Christian denomination to another. But I prefer to think of it as more of a paradox than an oxymoron. Because it wasn’t always this way…

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