Strategic Missional Consulting
FaithX helps churches and judicatories evaluate the impact of systemic racism on their communities by exploring “Data Layers.” We overlay data points including income, racial diversity, mode of travel, access to medical care, housing, employment, and of course, redlining (among others) to explore how history, politics, and policies have created barriers to equity and well-being based on race in our communities.
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As you may know, The FaithX Project is partnering with TryTank Experimental Laboratory in running a proof-of-concept experiment with the idea of using weekly microsurveys to keep a finger on the pulse of The Episcopal Church.
Every week on Tuesday afternoon we send out a new survey on a pressing issue. Then our volunteer respondents have until Friday afternoon to submit their responses.
Last week we asked these two questions:
Funded by a grant from Trinity Wall Street Philanthropies
By The Rev Ken Howard, Executive Director
Last week The FaithX Project proudly announced its Vitality Improvement Program for Small Congregations, made possible by a generous grant from Trinity Wall Street Philanthropies (a program of Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church) to create a Vitality Improvement Program for Small Congregations (V.I.P.).
By the end of this posting, 22 Episcopal dioceses or their congregations had emailed us requesting application forms when we kick off the program in July.
Needless to say, we are gratified by the interest our announcement has generated.
Apparently, we hit some kind of nail on the proverbial head.
[Read more…]By The Rev Ken Howard, Executive Director
We are excited to announce that The FaithX Project has been approved for a grant from Trinity Wall Street Philanthropies* to create a Vitality Improvement Program for Small Congregations.
Today’s congregations exist at a pivotal point in the history of the church, an existential crisis of accelerating change and deepening uncertainty driven by forces both inside and outside the church. We believe that congregational vitality is the defining issue for the church in this generation, if not this century, and that congregations – especially small congregations – and their judicatories are rapidly becoming unsustainable in their current forms. Only those with a clear vision, who ground their discernment in data about themselves and the communities they serve, and who are willing to take the risk of experimenting with new ways of being and doing church will survive and thrive in these challenging times.
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by Mary Frances
When I was in my first call (feels like forever ago), someone asked me about my target audience. The question seemed absurd to me at the time. Wasn’t it obvious that we would take anyone who came through our doors? Why would we focus on one particular part of the population to the exclusion of others? Wasn’t everyone in need of the good news of the Gospel? How little I knew back then! Understanding your target audience is, indeed, key to reaching people. It’s not surprising, for instance, that young people were not impressed by presidential candidate Joe Biden’s bus with the word “Malarkey” scrawled across the side. Did they even know what malarkey meant? And older people were less attracted to the technology emphasis repeated over and over again by once candidate Andrew Yang. But Biden was looking to reach older people and Yang was looking to reach younger people, so their approaches were inherently different. Who are you trying to reach and how will you know where to find them?
The best tool I have found for identifying your target population is the Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (NMIR) from FaithX. It’s easy to read and inexpensive. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on a data subscription. This 2-page report has over 40 data points and it comes in a pdf or dynamic html version, the latter of which offers clickable data behind the data. It will also provide data for three different drive or walking times such as 5, 10 or 15 minutes, or for a custom distance or time, therefore tripling the amount of data you receive.
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