The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

When “Perfection” is the Opposite of “Perfect”

by Ken Howard

A while back I was challenged on my assertions that the goal of Christian community was not to achieve and maintain perfection, and that neither Jesus Christ nor the Apostle Paul ever intended to start a religion called “Christianity.”

So I’d like to comment briefly here on the concepts of “perfection” and “religion.”

If we in the present day are not careful in our use of terms, we run the risk of overlaying the original meanings of the words of Scripture with our own connotations.

For example, we tend to think of perfection in the absolute sense, as in entirely without error, wholly without defect, as something or someone having achieved a state of being which is complete in-and-of itself.  When we hear Jesus say, “You are to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” we view it as reaching a state of perfection exactly like God’s state of perfection. However, the writers of the New Testament used the term in a more nuanced way. Our sense of perfect is close to the Greek “aortist” tense, which connotes an act that is complete and permanent. But in all the places where we are being asked to be “perfect,” the tense is not aortist, as in completed once-and-for-all, but “imperfect,” as in an ongoing process. Paul implies as much when he says “not that I have already become perfect” (Phil. 3:12) and when he says that God “will perfect” a good work in us “until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).

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Redeeming Columbus? A Reflection on the Occasion of Columbus Day

By Ken Howard

Few figures have fallen further than Christopher Columbus in the estimation of the general public. Once lauded as a courageous explorer and the discoverer of the new world, Columbus is now lambasted as a royal toady, sucking up to Queen Isabella of Spain to garner financial and political support for an ill-planned get-rich scheme, whose avarice and racism ultimately led to the decimation of the indigenous tribal populations and the enslavement of those who survived the slaughter. Even his eponymous federal holiday has suffered from his disgrace: while few are willing to go as far as giving up a day off from work, many have lobbied their respective state legislatures to change the name of the holiday to less onerous appellations, such as “Native American Day” or the somewhat ambiguous “Discovery Day.”  Comedian John Oliver, on his weekly show Last Week Tonight once featured Columbus Day in his occasional segment, “Why is this still a thing?”

However, if we dig underneath the trending opinions of the day, we would discover that real Christopher Columbus was a mixed bag: neither saint nor Satan.  Columbus was a Christian: a closet converso, some say, whose ancestors had converted from Judaism to Christianity to escape the Papal Inquisition of the 13th century, and who was now seeking the favor of Ferdinand and Isabella not long after the two monarchs had kicked off the not-unexpected Spanish Inquisition, which focused its suspicion largely on converted Jews. So at the very least, one might credit him with a certain degree of chutzpah.

Columbus was – as all historical figures are – a product of his age. Particularly, his thinking had fallen victim to the influence of the religious paradigm of his age, the Christendom paradigm, under which Church and Empire merged, and as the Church began to pull the levers of the Empire to achieve its ecclesiastical ends, it became something that the earliest followers of the Way would not have recognized, having transformed itself from an trans-religious movement centered in the love of Christ, to a hierarchical institution, proselytizing new members and enforcing the uniformity of its existing members through the use of power and (implicitly) violence.

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Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood? From Market Analytics to Missional Context Reports

This post is the last of a seven post series on MapDash Analytics

by Ken Howard

One of the many features of MapDash for Faith Communities that makes it unique among other faith-based demographic tools is an analytic report that we call a Missional Context ReportTM. MCRs were developed by FaithX as a way for faith leaders at the congregations and judicatory level to better understand the lifestyles of the people in their neighborhoods in order to better engage them. 

MCRs are one-page reports that translate market segmentation data into ten areas of key information and practical programmatic and ministry opportunities that congregations can use to better target their engagement strategies to the unique lifestyles of the dominant population segment in each of the neighborhoods that form the community they serve. These areas are:

  1. Communications and Technology
  2. Education and Formation
  3. Hospitality and Fellowship
  4. Leadership/Doership Skill Set
  5. Midweek Involvement
  6. Neighborhood Characteristics and Issues
  7. Outreach Opportunities 
  8. Stewardship and Finance
  9. Theological/Political Orientation
  10. Worship

You can find a sample MCR here

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New Study Finds Majority of Christians Do Not Have Meaningful Contact with Atheists, Muslims, or LGBTQ+ Community

An Interview with Dr. Stephen Merino, 
Assistant Professor of Sociology at Colorado Mesa University

By Darren M. Slade, PhD

As Director of Research for the FaithX Project, Darren Slade contributes regular posts the FaithXperimental blog curating recent research relevant to the future of faith and faith-based communities as they are published.

In a recently published sociological article entitled, “Religious Involvement and Bridging Social Ties,” Dr. Stephen Merino sought to investigate whether religious involvement in church ministry, beyond the typical Sunday worship service, was a meaningful predictor for creating “social capital” (i.e. social resources, relationships, shared values and norms, and a sense of trust and reciprocity) between church-going Christians and marginalized groups in society. He also explored whether this involvement resulted in Christians having a connection to different people groups, such as members of the LGBTQ+ community, people on welfare, people of color, Muslims, and atheists. 

What Dr. Merino found was that the majority of white Christians surveyed do not participate in civic engagement or other ministries outside of attending Sunday worship services. Furthermore, Dr. Merino found that the majority of church-going Christians do not have regular or meaningful contact with these marginalized groups, which has significant social and political implications for how Christians cooperate with and tolerate those who are different from themselves. 

This blog post conducts an interview with Dr. Merino about his findings and asks him to explore the implications of his study beyond what was written in his article. The interview concludes with this question: “As a result of your study, is it fair to say that on average, the majority of Christians do not have meaningful contact with atheists, Muslims, or members of the LGBTQ+ community on a regular basis?” Dr. Merino’s response: “I think that’s fairly safe to say. It’s probably also likely that evangelical Christians have the least contact with members of these groups.”

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Datastory Releases Greatly Enhanced MapDash 2.2

By Ken Howard

Earlier this month, Datastory released its much anticipated and greatly enhanced MapDash 2.2. 

It is amazing how far we’ve come so fast.

It was only two years ago that Datastory and FaithX teamed up to begin shaping a faith-based version of Datastory’s powerful MapDash demographic/analytic platform. Then in July of last year, after several rounds of rapid prototyping and testing in judicatories in five states, Datastory launched MapDash for Faith Communities, and FaithX launched consultative strategic missional planning programs that leverage its unique capabilities for faith communities and the judicatories that support them.

Even then the capabilities of MapDash went far beyond any demographic tool available at the time, bringing real time interactive experience and powerful analytics available nowhere else. MapDash 2.2, honed by input and feedback from actual users, goes even further, with an updated layout, more than double the data, and comprehensive improvements to tools and widgets. 

One of those tools is the new Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (NMIR), an infographic report designed to give users an interactive snapshot of their neighborhoods. As described in an earlier post, FaithX employs the MapDash NMIR as the core of its Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Assessment, a 3-hour, online consultation designed for congregations seeking to better understand and engage the communities they serve.

Some of the new data features of MapDash 2.2 include:

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