The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Our Newest Ad for MapDash and Strategic Missional Consulting

We are happy to highlight for you our latest combined ad for Datastory’s MapDash for Faith Communities and FaithX’s Strategic Missional Consulting.

We hope to see it featured soon in Net Results Magazine, North America’s most enduring and most trusted evangelism and church growth magazine. It is a wonderful resource, not only for church planters and church redevelopers, but for anyone seeking to be more effective in missional work. One of senior associate consultants, Mary Frances, was recently asked to be a senior writer for the magazine. If you haven’t already subscribed, we encourage you to check it out.

Click Here for a PDF Copy of the Ad

Introducing Mary Frances and Steve Matthews – Our Senior Associate Consultants

 

We are happy to announce that Mary Frances and Steve Matthews have joined with FaithX as senior associate consultants. Mary and Steve will be working alongside executive director and principal consultant Ken Howard in introducing MapDash for Faith Communities and Strategic Missional Consulting to dioceses and other judicatories around the United States. Mary and Steve are also co-developers of our Mentored Missional Journey program and will be occasional writers for our Faith eXperimental blog.

 

[Read more…]

A Mentored Missional Journey

 

 

As we launch MapDash for Faith Communities at the Episcopal General Convention Expo, we will also be launching an exciting new companion consultative program: A Mentored Missional Journey to the Future of Your Diocese and Its Congregations.

Developed in collaboration with the Episcopal Church and shaped by input from diocesan and congregational leadership from around the U.S., this 12-month program of mentored missional assessment and planning is designed to prepare dioceses to engage the emerging “New Americas” through strategic ministry development, congregational redevelopment, and new church starts.

The Church has entered a time of accelerating change and escalating uncertainty. Neighbor-hood transformation, which once took place over generations, now happens almost overnight, increasingly causing us to fall out of touch – and thus out of love – with the people and neighborhoods God is calling us to engage.

This program is designed to provide dioceses – and through them, their congregations – the tools they need to learn about their communities at the speed of change and to guide diocesan leadership through the challenging journey of deeply and systemically discerning and engaging the missional opportunity inherent at the intersection of faith communities, neighbor-hoods, and the Spirit of God.

In short, we help you learn to fall in love with your communities again.

 

Participating dioceses will complete the program with:

  • A broader understanding of the health of their congregations, the demographic trends in their neighborhoods, and the opportunities for missional engagement between congregations and neighborhoods
  • A deeper level of discernment about what God is already up to in their communities and neighborhoods
  • A clearer vision for what God is calling them to be and to do in response to what they have learned about their communities and how God is already at work in them
  • A pilot-tested, living strategy for engaging identified missional opportunities that have been identified in their dioceses

 

Stages of the Journey

1 – Data Gathering/Provisioning the Dashboard

Gather, consolidate and organize diocese-specific congregational and community demographics, analytics, and diagnostic data into one place, where it can be easily displayed, manipulated, and explored.

2 – Missional Opportunity Assessment

Enable diocesan leadership team to acquire a God’s-eye view of the totality of congregations and communities that make up their diocese and assess the health of its congregations and the characteristics of its communities in order to identify, explore, and engage emergent missional opportunities.

3 – Strategic Missional Planning

Facilitate the creation of a living strategy for the diocesan leadership team that addresses the opportunities identified in missional assessment.

Estimated Timeline – 12 months

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download an Illustrated PDF Handout about this Program

 

 

MapDash™ for Faith Communities to Go “Live” at TEC Convention Expo

Work continues apace to ready MapDash™ for Faith Communities for its public debut at the Weekend Expo at the Episcopal Church’s triennial General Convention.

MapDash™ for Faith Communities is an interactive, data-grounded, map-based tool for missional analysis and planning. It was developed by Datastory Consulting, in collaboration with The FaithX Project, and beta tested by diocesan and congregational leaders in five Episcopal Dioceses.

MapDash™ for Faith Communities enables dioceses to assess congregational health, identify missional opportunities, and promote collaboration among congregations. It gives congregations the capacity to better understand and engage the neighborhoods they are called to serve. And it empowers faith leaders at all levels to make better and faster decisions with objective data that augments natural intuition and wisdom.

MapDash™ for Faith Communities will be available on a subscription basis, primarily through dioceses and other judicatories. The standard bundle will include five dashboards: one Executive Dashboard and four Congregational Dashboards:

  • The Congregational Dashboards will allow congregational leaders to define their neighborhood in different ways, then select data maps that will help them understand their neighborhoods’ population characteristics, community issues, and community resources.
  • The Executive Dashboard is built on top of the Congregational platform and includes all of its features, plus important additional diagnostic features: a Congregational Health Assessment map layer and a Missional Opportunities map layer.

Our work on the Congregational Dashboard is nearly complete, with about a week left in our final beta test.

We have a little more work on the Executive Dashboard. The Congregational Health Assessment is a little over a week away from completing beta testing, while a couple of weeks remain to complete the Missional Opportunities map layer.

So if you are planning to attend the 2018 General Convention, come by, visit us, and get a demo at booth #837.

[Read more…]

FaithX Launches Peer-Reviewed Journal: Call for Board Members and Papers

After more than a year of planning, FaithX is launching a new peer-reviewed journal entitled Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (SHERM) under the leadership of its research director, Darren M. Slade, who will serve as SHERM’s General Editor. The first order of business is a call for Board Members and Papers (more information on this below). But first a little bit of background on SHERM and its purpose.

 

What is SHERM?
SHERM is a biannual, not-for-profit, peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes the latest social scientific, historiographic, and ecclesiastic research on religious institutions and their practices. SHERM is dedicated to the critical and scholarly inquiry of historical and contemporary religious phenomena, both from within particular religious traditions and across cultural boundaries, so as to inform the broader socio-historical analysis of religion and its related fields of study.

 

What is SHERM’s Purpose?
Inspired by Ken’s recently published research paper, The Religion Singularity, the purpose of SHERM is to provide a scholarly medium for specialists to publish advanced studies on religious trends, theologies, rituals, philosophies, and cultural influences in the hopes of generating enthusiasm for the academic and vocational study of religion while fostering collegiality among religious specialists. Its mission is to provide academics, professionals, and nonspecialists with critical reflections and evidence-based insights into religion and ministry.

[Read more…]

Subscribe