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Mar 19 2020

Keeping Congregations Connected: Strategies and Tools for COVID-Related Outreach

By the Rev. Ken Howard


Keeping Congregations Together in the Face of COVID19 is a blog series on strategies and tools for doing and being what God is calling your congregation to be and do in the current pandemic.
Click here for the previous post


How can our congregations do effective outreach while the COVID pandemic makes social distancing necessary?

How can our congregations contribute to controlling the Coronavirus?

These are two important questions to ask and answer during the current pandemic (and there are likely many more)…

First, ground yourself in hard data from reliable sources about Coronavirus and COVID19: What is it? What does it do? How does it spread? How can people both protect themselves from the virus and avoid spreading it to others? How do you know you might have it? What do you do if you think you do? What COVID-related resources are in your area?

Reliable, data-grounded sources and resources include:

  • CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Perhaps the most authoritative source,  the CDC has pages for general, faith-based, community, and individual-oriented COVID information and recommendations. 
  • Your State and local government or local health department websites. My local government, for example, has a COVID19 Information page and a COVID Closures page.
  • Your Judicatory or denominational websites. My own Judicatory, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, for example, has an entire page dedicated COVID information and resources, including links to all local health departments within its bounds, and my denomination, the Episcopal Church, also has a very useful Concerning COVID19 information and resources page, including links to the COVID advisory pages of most of its dioceses. The Episcopal Church Foundation is also compiling a curated list of COVID resources.
  • MapDash for Faith Communities. Those judicatories and congregations who have or have access to this powerful demographic and analytic missional assessment and planning platform will soon be receiving updates to their dashboard, including localized data on incidences of COVID-19, hospital locations and capacity, locations of doctors, COVID-related Twitter feeds, and more. (Full disclosure: FaithX is an affiliate of Datastory, the GIS firm that developed MapDash with our assistance).
  • MapDash for COVID-19. A free version of MapDash focused specifically on COVID-related data.
  • COVID19 Tracking Dashboard. Johns Hopkins and ESRI partnered to develop this tool that provides regular infographic updates on the cumulative number of COVID infections, active cases, deaths, and recoveries by country, state, and some larger cities.
[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, Future of Faith, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: Beyond Online Worship, burden of care, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Coronavirus, COVID19, datastory, email tree, Esri, financial assistance, Johns Hopkins, Local Health Departments, MapDash for Faith Communities, neighborhood missional assessment, Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report, outreach opportunities, reliable sources, shut-ins, telephone tree

Mar 18 2020

What we learned from our experiment with online worship

By the Rev. Ken Howard


Beyond Online Worship is a blog series on strategies and tools
for doing and being church in the face of the current pandemic.
Click here for the previous post


In our previous post we talked about how a faithful response to the current pandemic involves more than simply live streaming worship services (congregations do not live by worship alone), but involves finding creative and experimental ways to do and be all the things that churches (and other faith communities) are supposed to be and do, and especially how we exercise our “burden of care” to our neighbors and neighborhoods. And that our responses may ultimately lead to our congregations and the communities they serve surviving and thriving together. 

Subsequent posts will deal with each of those things in turn. But let’s start with what we learned from our recent experiment with online worship (last Sunday), in cooperation with Church of the Ascension in Gaithersburg, which reached 51 people on Zoom and 900+ on Facebook Live.

So what did we learn?

Online worship is not enough. Not bad for a first try, but after literally patting ourselves on the back (because COVID kept us from patting each others backs) for a few minutes after the second of the two services ended, what we learned was that, while online worship was necessary, it was not sufficient, and there were so many other things we needed to figure out how to do and be while social distancing. And that realization led to this blog series.

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, FaithX News, Future of Faith, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: Beyond Online Worship, burden of care, church of the ascension, Coronavirus, COVID19, Facebook Live, google hangouts, online worship, virtual bulletin, Worship on Zoom, Zoom

Mar 17 2020

Keeping Congregations Connected (a series): Beyond Livestream Worship

By the Rev. Ken Howard

This is the first in a multipart series on strategies and tools for faith communities in the face of COVID19

The COVID19 pandemic is not the first time Christianity has been faced with the moral question of how to respond in the face of pandemic. In fact, the question is nearly as old as the Church itself. One of the first times was during the third century Roman plague. Something likely akin to Ebola, the so-called Cyprian plague (after Bishop Cyprian of Carthage) which ravaged the Empire from 250-270 CE.

Just as they had in the Antonin plague of the second century, the powerful and well-to-do of the Empire fled the cities for the relative safety of their countryside villas, leaving the rest of the populace to fend for themselves. As attested to by both Christian and secular writers of the time, just as they did in the previous plague, the Galileans (as they were called) did the opposite, staying behind and even coming in from the countryside to feed the poor, care for the afflicted, comfort the dying, bury the dead, and to attend to public hygiene, doing this not just for the faithful but for their entire communities, Christian and non-Christian alike. It was, as Bishop Cyprian put it, their burden of care. Two remarkable things happened: they helped curb the contagiousness of the plague (the death rate was as much as 50% lower in cities with Christian communities) and the plague (or rather their response to it) helped make Christianity extremely contagious, so that it spread rapidly throughout the Empire.

Today we are faced with a modern plague but the question is the same: how are we called to live in the face of it. And our answers may ultimately lead to our congregations and the communities they serve surviving and thriving together. How might this be?

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, FaithX News, Future of Faith, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: Congregational Life, Coronavirus, COVID19, Cyprian, Experimental Worship, Facebook, Facebook Live, Plague, Rome, Surviving and Thriving in a Crisis, Worship on Zoom, Zoom

Mar 11 2020

FaithX to host morning prayer on Zoom for Gaithersburg, MD Church this Sunday (3/15) in online worship eXperiment

By Ken Howard

The coronavirus can close houses of worship but it can’t stop the people from worshiping together online.

This Sunday (March 15) and next (March 22), FaithX will be hosting the people Church of the Ascension, in Gaithersburg, Maryland for two worship services on Zoom video:

  • 9:00am – Morning Prayer (in English)
  • 10:00am – La Oración de la Mañana (en Español)

Each service will be 40-45 min long.

The worship team will include:

  • Rev. Javier Ocampo, rector, will service as worship leader.
  • Rev. Eugene Wright, deacon, will preach a homily.
  • Rev. Ken Howard, FaithX executive Director, will host on Zoom and assist Padre Javier.
  • Jesse Velasquez will also assist.
  • We are still working on lining up lay readers and determining whether we can provide music.

Joining us for online morning prayer on Zoom will be fairly easy. All you need is a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer equipped with a built in camera and microphone, or a smartphone with the Zoom app installed.

Instructions for Computer Users:

  1. Make sure your computer’s video camera is working and microphone is turned on and muted.
  2. About 5 minutes before the service is scheduled to start, click on this URL: https://zoom.us/j/6234372948
  3. Zoom will then automatically load itself, give you the opportunity to test your video camera and mike, then place you in a waiting room (a virtual narthex) until just before the service begins.
  4. Padre Javier will then welcome you to virtual Church of the Ascension and begin the service (and may have further instructions).

Instructions for Smartphone Users:

  1. Make sure you downloaded and installed the Zoom app (available from the Apple App Store or GooglePlay).
  2. About 5 minutes before the service is scheduled, open the Zoom app and enter this meeting number: 6234372948.
  3. The Zoom app will then place you in a waiting room (a virtual narthex) until just before the service begins.
  4. Padre Javier will then welcome you to virtual Church of the Ascension and begin the service (and may have further instructions).

Because of the limitations of Zoom, participation in the interactive service will be limited to the first 100 attendees. However, we will post a recording of both services on the Ascension website.

Subscribe here to receive updates about this experiment

And remember, the “X” in “FaithX” stands for “eXperimentation.”


Want to help your congregation more effectively engage the neighborhoods it serves?

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FaithX is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and Ken’s faith-based consulting practice at FaithX is carried out under an extension of ministry from the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, FaithX News, Future of Faith, Posts by Ken Howard, Topics · Tagged: Ascension Church, Coronavirus, COVID19, Experimental Worship, Morning Prayer, Worship on Zoom, Zoom

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