The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Redevelopment for the Rest of Us!

It wasn’t that long ago when the word “redevelopment” was associated with churches in need… maybe even in peril.  Some of these faith communities sought grants to repurpose buildings left vacuous by membership migration and/or declining interest in church overall.  Some just needed some revitalization and renewal regarding welcoming practices (guest parking, good signage, revamp the nursery for children, train friendly greeters, etc.).  Often there were mass mailings to local zip codes to inform the public about your church and your programming.  Occasionally, there might be some activity in which to invite the community. All of this is/was well-intentioned, but it was based on a false assumption: people are going to be drawn to us and come into our doors, if we do all the right things.

As you know, the culture has been shifting for a long time. In a 2020 Pew research study 65% of adults identified as Christian compared to 85% in 1990. This statistic points to the reality that, like it or not, all churches need to see themselves as perennially redeveloping churches.  Our buildings may be in great shape and our worship and programming sharp, but our spiritual infrastructure, our sense of values, mission, and vision may need a serious overhaul.  Very, very few people are going to come to us because we think they should (and certainly not enough to make up for the attrition of membership due to death and migration away from Christianity).

So what now?  What does redevelopment-for-the-rest-of-us look like in 2021? The answer is so simple… and so hard.  Take a deep breath. Here it comes. To be faithful to our mission, we must re-learn what it means to be a kind and attentive neighbor again.  We must relearn our neighborhoods.  We must know our neighbors and allow them to know us.  How can we know what it means to redevelop our churches for the sake of our neighbors if we don’t know who they are? What if the work of the Spirit and the opportunity we have been praying for, is happening outside the walls of the church, hidden in plain sight, and waiting for our “yes?”

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MapDash & FaithX Testimony – SD Synod

by Pastor Jonathan Steiner
Director for Evangelical Mission and Associate to the Bishop for Stewardship & Outreach
South Dakota Synod, ELCA

This spring we began using MapDash with FaithX as a tool for our ministry.  The South Dakota Synod is the network of roughly 200 Lutheran congregations across the state, and we have a variety of community contexts.

Using these tools has been a blessing for many of our congregations.  The first way we are using them is to help congregations have accurate information about their communities when they are searching for a pastor.  This helps them have a realistic picture of their context as they get started on that process.  We have integrated the infographic and lifestyle index reports as part of our site study.

We have also been using MapDash as a tool for congregations as part of a revitalization strategy.  When I meet with congregations, we ask them to take a couple hours to go through all the information in the reports, but then also dig into other areas of interest that they may have.  A church with a preschool will want to learn more about child care spending and school data, while a church with a feeding ministry will be much more interested in poverty statistics.

Learning about their community doesn’t immediately give the congregation a vision for their future, but it certainly helps them dream about what their call is.  I tell leaders that our call is where the needs of our neighbors meets the blessings we have on hand.  FaithX and MapDash help congregations see what is going on around them, and identify where their gifts are needed.

Finally, these tools help us understand our network of congregations more fully.  Using data about our own congregations, in addition to all the available information from MapDash, we are able to see opportunities in ministry.  Perhaps that area is strong, and we can focus on partnerships, while that area is nearly empty, and so they need to focus on a strong structure in-house.  

We are less than a year into our partnership, but we are excited to partner with FaithX for the MapDash tool.  It has been a blessing to us and our ministries.

Learn More about MapDash for Faith Communities

Stewardship Outside-The-Box: Changing GIVING Language Changes GIVING Behavior

by The Rev. Ken Howard

Pledge-Aholics Anonymous

For the first decade of my ordained ministry, I always hated stewardship season. I alway felt like I was being a bit dishonest with my congregation. I started out every “stewardship season” preaching about stewardship as a spiritual practice, when what we really wanted was for them to open up their wallets. And by the end of the season, we were increasingly talking about how much more of their money we needed to meet our budget (while still cloaking the need in spiritual terms). 

The Perils of Archaic (Yet Loaded) Language

With more and more newcomers having smaller and smaller religious vocabularies, words like “pledging” and “tithing” seemed less and less helpful. With each successive generation, they  sounded increasingly remote and archaic, yet at the same time increasingly loaded: like the way the rite of Holy Matrimony used to require the bride and groom to “plight their troth.” I was always having to translate, explaining that the word “pledge” was not as ominous as it seemed: “It’s only a best estimate of what you think you can give,” I would say, “You can change it at any time if your financial circumstances change.”

But increasingly, my explanations weren’t getting through. It seemed like every year people were taking longer to turn in their pledges, like they were taking it too seriously.

Sometimes, WAY too seriously…

A parishioner called during the annual pledge drive to apologize for the size of her family’s pledge (they were a young couple with two small children). This was their second pledge drive: for the second time in their lives they were considering what they would pledge to give. There were hints of guilty feelings and tearfulness in her voice as she said, “Father Ken, I’m calling to say we are so, so sorry that we will not be able to pledge as much this year as last. My husband lost his job this year and we had to take out a second mortgage to fulfill the pledge we already made.”

I was horror struck. 

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New Paradigms: The First Year

“…here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.”   – Paul Tillich

Paradigm: a typical example of something or model

About a year and half ago, FaithX made this invitation to our blog readers:

“FaithX is forming a working group called New Paradigms. We envision it to be a multi-denominational group of people who are interested in exploring, naming, and experimenting into some new paradigms for living as Christians in the world today, for what the Church can become. We will gather online on a regular basis, publish articles and blogs, offer webinars, and perhaps, eventually, an online conference. If you are interested in joining us, please email us info@faithx.net.”

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Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly.

Diocese of Long Island Launches Systemic Racism Mapping Project
in Collaboration with FaithX and Datastory

We are happy to announce that the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island just launched “Do justice – Love kindness – Walk humbly” in collaboration with FaithX and Datastory as part of their commitment to displacing systemic racism across the entirety of Long Island. 

The project grew out of action research and a series of webinars conducted by FaithX on mapping and mitigating systemic racism through interactive meaning-story creation. The Rev. Canon Claire Woodley, Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of Long Island, attended one of our mapping systemic racism webinars in early 2021, and the rest – as they say – is history.

Canon Woodley then reached out to FaithX with the idea of applying the concepts we outlined in our Mapping Systemic Racism webinars on a much wider scale, covering the whole of Long Island and embedding the results on the diocesan website for access by all of their congregations. We in turn reached out to our affiliate, Datastory, and together the three organizations spent the next six months in collaborative development of product and process.

Needless to say, the diocese is extremely pleased with the results and we all hope to see the idea replicated in other judicatories from other denominations, as well as in individual congregations.

But don’t take our word for it. Click here to watch Canon Woodley’s two short introductory videos or click here to see the completed “Do justice – Love kindness – Walk humbly” Datastory.


For more information, contact us at info@faithx.net.