Sep 24 2020

Public Health Expert on Tap: What’s Ahead for Congregations

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed last week and came upon a congregation having a midweek service. The camera angle was from the back of the congregation and the quality wasn’t great but I could still see what was going on. People looked kind of spread out around the space. A few were moving around. I didn’t see anyone wearing a mask but some with their backs to the camera might have been. A worship leader was standing in front of a microphone at the top of the center aisle. She spoke about a song she wanted them to sing during Sunday worship and was going to teach it to them right then, let them practice it. I was so surprised! I felt like I could have been watching a super spreader event in action, somehow complicit by just watching. I quickly moved on.

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Sep 10 2020

Webinar Reminder

Leave No One Behind: How to Lead a Hybrid Congregation (9/16 – 1:00pm ET)

Webinar Description:

In times like these, it’s true that you can’t go home again, at least not if you’re a congregation and not if you expect it to be the same as when you left it. The impact of COVID-19 has changed all of our congregations for good. Our online worship services have brought new people to worship, young and old, some of which you will never see again if you try to bring your congregational life to its pre-COVID state.

Participants in the webinar will explore ways to restart in-person worship, fellowship, formation, and other ministries, without abandoning the gains (and the people) of our online church presence.

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Sep 03 2020

Combating Clergy Burnout in a Pandemic

Mary Frances
FaithX Senior Missional Consultant

It’s become a regular refrain lately from my coaching clients: This just isn’t what I signed up for. I don’t recognize ministry anymore. I don’t know how to do ministry anymore. Maybe it’s just no longer my call.

The spring flush of the Covid-19 crisis has turned into the late Summer dog days of ministry. Let’s face it, back in March when we all locked down, no one believed for a minute that we would still be here. According to recent research from the Barna Group,

What Clergy Are Reporting

47%
struggling with ministry to children and youth

44%
struggling with a hybrid model of ministry

46%
facing challenges to maintaining growth and momentum

35%
fear they are nearing personal burnout

90%
concerned that outreach efforts will be disrupted by the pandemic

100%
concerned that fall worship will be disrupted by the pandemic
and that there is nothing they can do about it.

Barna Group (August 2020)

Certainly, this is a time of uncertainty and change. Going back to the way things used to be isn’t really an option. If you are among the 40% of churches open for worship, you know that it doesn’t look or feel the same as it did back in February. The longer this goes on, the harder it is to imagine what the future will hold for congregations, for denominations, for faithful people. It is precisely in this kind of uncertainty that we need to grow our resilience muscles.

I never thought much about resilience in my life until I was preparing for ministry. When I received the results of my required psychological exams, there was a whole section on my high level of resilience. I had sought support during my divorce. I went to counseling when faced with life’s challenges. I had a mentality of picking yourself up by your bootstraps. But, in the years since I received that report, I have, of course, faced other adversities. And in the back of my mind, this little voice reminds me that I have a high level of resilience. And another voice says, “it sure doesn’t feel like it today.”

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Aug 27 2020

Adapting to the Covid New Normal: A Research-Based Blog Series

Introduction by Ken Howard

In some ways, it seems like we’ve spent an eternity of waiting since Covid-19 forced our congregations to close. Yet in other ways, it seems like too many things to change in too little time. Regardless of denomination or religion, it seems like a tsunami swept away all our normal ways of congregational life in a second, leaving us all to re-think, re-engineer, and rapidly iterate almost everything. It almost seems like God is making use of these “Covid Times” through which we are navigating to re-shape us as congregations, cutting off all our talking about all the ways our faith communities needed to change if they were to survive (let alone thrive), and telling us to get on with it.

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Aug 20 2020

Beyond COVID: Moving forward Together!

by Steve Matthews
Senior Associate Consultant with FaithX

It’s funny how fast our intentions and plans change these days. In a country full of planners and achievers and “do-ers,” there are not a lot of stable structures on which to build our agendas and long-range plans. Sometimes it’s hard to feel like we are gaining ground because the ground keeps shifting. We thought COVID-19 would be over by now (or at least under control), yet it is still alive and well in our communities. Our “normal” lives are still disrupted. People are still getting sick and dying. It’s not personal. The virus is just doing what unchecked viruses do… like all critters, they propagate.

So now what? Perhaps, it’s time we stop living our lives in reaction to COVID. We have adapted worship. We meet on-line. We gather in church parking lots. We have worked hard to adapt to the ongoing threat. While this pandemic will not last forever, it is here for now. It is part of our global reality.

As communities of faith, we could develop a bit of a victim mentality to this impersonal virus. Even if we don’t acknowledge it, our actions and plans in the age of COVID can be in reaction to the newest threat or perceived threat of this pandemic. The author and theologian Walter Wink wrote, “The greatest obstacle is simply the belief that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. That is the addict’s excuse.”

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