The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Getting Out Ahead of COVID-19: Mapping Neighborhood Vulnerability and At-Risk Populations

by The Rev. Ken Howard
at-risk populations

This blog post is part of a series on strategies and tools for helping congregations survive and thrive in the face of the COVID crisis.

Click here for the previous post

From what I am hearing from most of my sisters and brothers of the cloth, it would not be overstating the case to say that the Coronavirus pandemic has turned their lives as faith leaders upside down, along with just about every idea they have about how faith communities are “supposed” to operate. It has begun to seem like every task has become incredibly urgent and they are running as fast as they can just to keep up with the havoc the COVID crisis is wreaking with their congregations and the (sometimes) at-risk populations they serve.

So how do we move past this “tyranny of the urgent” and get out ahead of COVID-19 with a little short-term organization and a little longer-term planning?

One way to do this is through data mapping and analytics. Data-mapping is a way to visualize all the data bombarding us – and our congregations and neighborhoods – in context. Analytics are a specialized form of data-mapping that help us analyze, evaluate, and make decisions based on the data before us.

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A Time for Outreach (Part 2)

By Steve Matthews
Outreach Time

Keeping Congregations Connected is a series on strategies and tools for helping congregations survive and thrive in the face of the COVID crisis.
Click here for the previous post.

Last week, Mary Frances, Senior Associate Consultant with FaithX, wrote a blog encouraging churches to continue to think about outreach time. It can feel scary and maybe even premature to think about reaching out to our neighbors and inviting them into our faith communities again; but as Mary pointed out, the limitations of COVID-19 are challenging us to find new avenues of faithfulness – even with regard to outreach in a time of quarantine and social distancing.

FaithX can help. As experienced church planters and church redevelopers, we have learned to think strategically and creatively. We also see great value in “trying things on” to see what practices and experiments might work. 

One tool of great value to faith communities right now is a free COVID-19 resource available through our affiliate, Datastory (click here for the link as well as other COVID19- resources). With this tool you can identify populations in your neighborhood at greatest risk. What connections and possibilities might emerge for outreach time if your church hosted an online session using this free resource and invited your church leaders as well as leaders from other neighborhood faith communities and nonprofits? This creates the possibility for collaborative ministry as well as building important relationships in the neighborhood.

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After the In-Reach, Time for Outreach…

By Mary Frances
Time for Outreach

Keeping Congregations Connected is a series on strategies and tools for helping congregations survive and thrive in the face of the COVID crisis.
Click here for the previous post.

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that just about everything you learned about how to do church has been turned upside down in the last several weeks. You have led your congregations through change that may have taken decades previously, you have turned on a dime to offer virtual worship, online bible study, and calling teams for pastoral care. 

And to all of that I say, well done!

And now that you have all of that (AND Easter) under your belt, is it now time for outreach?  How do we make sure that the people outside of our communities can access what we are doing online?  How do we continue to invite, connect, and serve? I realize that this may seem a bit extreme to some, yet I think about the disciples, in the upper room after the resurrection, scared for their lives.  And what did they do? With the blessing and breath of Jesus upon them, they went out into a very scary world and told about what they had seen and experienced. It’s our turn to tell about what we have seen and experienced.  Perhaps we can’t go out physically, but we can still connect and invite. The time for outreach is now.

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Before You Go Back to the Building: Preparing for the Recovery from COVID-19 (a free webinar)

FREE WEBINAR
Before You Go Back to the Building:
Preparing for the Recovery from COVID-19
April 28, 2020 | 4:00-5:00pm | On Zoom
click here to register

It’s fair to say that our ideas of how to be and do Church have been turned on their heads over the last several weeks, and many of us are just starting to think about what it might be like to return to some semblance of “normal.”  Some churches may have found new opportunities through online gatherings, but most of the people we have spoken with are anticipating being with their community in the church building again. Some judicatories have advised their congregations they can go back in early May, others at the end of May, while still others want to wait and see. The wisdom of any of these ideas remains to be seen, as does the question of whether the new normal will be anything at all like the old normal. As the old saying goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans,” but sooner or later we will be able to come out of isolation and have the opportunity to gather our communities in person again. 

So wouldn’t it would be a good idea to go back with a plan in mind: a plan based on a vision – a plan imbued with flexibility, a plan that is sensitive to a greatly-altered context, and a plan that is based on discernment grounded in data?

We want to help you with this. 

In this webinar we will provide you with tips on how to use demographic and analytic data to maintain context awareness as you develop your plan to make it through the transition into whatever our new normal will be. We will provide you access and orientation to a free tool (MapDash for COVID-19) that will ground your discernment in that kind of data. Data that can help you help your people and your neighborhoods survive and thrive in new ways in the aftermath and recovery from COVID-19.

click here to register for the webinar

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Connecting Congregations and Communities (A COVID Webinar)

By the Rev. Ken Howard

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020, The Rev. Ken Howard, Executive Director of The FaithX Project, delivered a webinar on the entitled Strategies and Tools for Keeping Congregations and Communities Connected During (and after) the COVID-19 Crisis. In the webinar, Ken discusses

  • How to use technology to keep congregations connected through worship, fellowship, formation, and other congregational functions.
  • How to use interactive demographics to identify and engage at-risk populations in our neighborhoods.
  • How to use interactive analytics to identify and engage vulnerable neighborhoods.

You will find webinar video below

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The FaithX Project, Inc. is 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a religious and charitable purpose operated as a ministry by the Rev. Ken Howard under an extension of ministry from the Episcopal Bishop of Washington.