The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Data is not Destiny!

FaithX and MapDash in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland

by Mary Sulerud

Ever since my first training in using MapDash, the words spoken by the Rev. Ken Howard, FaithX founder, have echoed in my head every time I opened up my laptop and connected it to a projector to introduce the program to another congregation in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland.

“Data is not destiny,” he said.

I always start with those words; then I quickly add something he also shared that day…

“It really helps to begin with dreams
that have some relationship with reality on the ground.”

I graduated from an Episcopal Seminary in the 1980’s, amid several successive ambitious national evangelism campaigns by the Episcopal Church. The prevailing truism of the time was: Attract young families with children and your congregation will be sustained and you will thrive in ministry. Our congregations learned that lesson all too well.

The trouble was that while that may have been true in another era, it was already losing ground in many places by the time I graduated in 1988. In effect, we were sending people out to find the membership equivalent of the Holy Grail. But we rarely asked congregational leaders to look at the reality of their own neighborhoods and to discern if the demographic reality of our neighborhoods was in any way related to the characteristics of the people who sat in the pews on Sunday.

What is changing in the congregations of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland is that they are employing MapDash to explore neighbors and neighborhoods. And while MapDash is an important and useful tool in a wide variety of settings, I am increasingly finding that it is most helpful to congregational leaders who are undertaking strategic planning in their congregations.

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FACT 2020: How Congregations Have Changed in the Last 20 Years

by Darren Slade, PhD – FaithX Director of Research

The organization, Faith Communities Today, along with 21 other Christian faith traditions, just released the results of the largest national survey of congregational trends in the United States. Spanning two decades of research (from 2000‒2020), the “Twenty Years of Congregational Change” reports findings from interviewing 15,278 congregations among 80 separate denominations and religious groups.

What’s significant about this particular survey is that it tracks multiple levels of change within American congregational life during both the pre- and early COVID era, much of which was predicted by the FaithX Project and its groundbreaking “Religion Singularity” research.

Continue reading to learn about some of the major highlights and results of the survey.

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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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