The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

FaithX to host morning prayer on Zoom for Gaithersburg, MD Church this Sunday (3/15) in online worship eXperiment

By Ken Howard

The coronavirus can close houses of worship but it can’t stop the people from worshiping together online.

This Sunday (March 15) and next (March 22), FaithX will be hosting the people Church of the Ascension, in Gaithersburg, Maryland for two worship services on Zoom video:

  • 9:00am – Morning Prayer (in English)
  • 10:00am – La Oración de la Mañana (en Español)

Each service will be 40-45 min long.

The worship team will include:

  • Rev. Javier Ocampo, rector, will service as worship leader.
  • Rev. Eugene Wright, deacon, will preach a homily.
  • Rev. Ken Howard, FaithX executive Director, will host on Zoom and assist Padre Javier.
  • Jesse Velasquez will also assist.
  • We are still working on lining up lay readers and determining whether we can provide music.

Joining us for online morning prayer on Zoom will be fairly easy. All you need is a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer equipped with a built in camera and microphone, or a smartphone with the Zoom app installed.

Instructions for Computer Users:

  1. Make sure your computer’s video camera is working and microphone is turned on and muted.
  2. About 5 minutes before the service is scheduled to start, click on this URL: https://zoom.us/j/6234372948
  3. Zoom will then automatically load itself, give you the opportunity to test your video camera and mike, then place you in a waiting room (a virtual narthex) until just before the service begins.
  4. Padre Javier will then welcome you to virtual Church of the Ascension and begin the service (and may have further instructions).

Instructions for Smartphone Users:

  1. Make sure you downloaded and installed the Zoom app (available from the Apple App Store or GooglePlay).
  2. About 5 minutes before the service is scheduled, open the Zoom app and enter this meeting number: 6234372948.
  3. The Zoom app will then place you in a waiting room (a virtual narthex) until just before the service begins.
  4. Padre Javier will then welcome you to virtual Church of the Ascension and begin the service (and may have further instructions).

Because of the limitations of Zoom, participation in the interactive service will be limited to the first 100 attendees. However, we will post a recording of both services on the Ascension website.

Subscribe here to receive updates about this experiment

And remember, the “X” in “FaithX” stands for “eXperimentation.”

Want to help your congregation more effectively engage the neighborhoods it serves?

Click here to schedule a
no cost preliminary missional intelligence discussion
and receive a sample Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report
for your location

Those who engage a full Neighborhood Missional Assessment or other consultative program from FaithX will receive a complete NMIR in interactive (dynamic HTML) format.

Want to help your judicatory identify emerging missional opportunities within its boundaries?

Click here to schedule a demo/discussion
of MapDash for Faith Communities
for Strategic Missional Planning

Support FaithX

FaithX is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and Ken’s faith-based consulting practice at FaithX is carried out under an extension of ministry from the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

Two Missional Intelligence Tools released in January

Two exciting missional intelligence tools were released in January:

Know Your Neighborhood (KYN), an online research tool deployed by Datastory for the General Convention Office of the Episcopal Church, will provide Episcopal congregations across the U.S an interactive snapshot of key congregational and neighborhood data. It will be available at no cost through the Research and Statistics page of Episcopal Church website (read official TEC press release).

Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (NMIR) version 1.1), developed by Datastory in collaboration with FaithX, is the next generation of an in depth, interactive, infographic report describing neighborhood demographic/lifestyle data and trends. It will be available to users who subscribe to MapDash for Faith Communities, and as part of Neighborhood Missional Assessments and other consultative services provided by FaithX (TEC’s Convention Office has negotiated discounts for NMIRs and other FaithX services accessed through the Know Your Neighborhood portal).

What’s the Difference?

Both the Know Your Neighborhood Report (accessed through the Research and Statistic portal)and the Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (part of MapDash for Faith Communities) are valuable tools to support strategic decisions.

Know Your Neighborhood provides users with a broad understanding of their community.

The Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report, when used as part of MapDash (optionally coupled with analytic and consultative services), empowers faith leaders with the ability to ask an answer questions at both a broader and deeper level.

[Read more…]

Back from EpiscoCon – Pleased with Results

By Ken Howard

Just back from EpiscoCon 2018. In recuperation and digging out mode, as you might imagine, feeling good about our roll out of MapDash for Faith Communities at the Expo. Briefly, here are the “stats”…

Number of Visits

  • More than 200 visitors came by the booth, as calculated by the number of our chocolate “earths” consumed (being by the lunch line helped).
  • 47 people asked for more information or otherwise showed significant interest.
  • 39 of these people were from Episcopal Dioceses (deputies/visitors/staff/etc.).

Organizations Represented

  • 26 of 99 (25%+) dioceses of the Episcopal Church.
  • 9 church-serving organizations (4 Episcopal).
And in the race for the most visitors, Diocese of Texas comes in first with 7, Diocese of Upper South Carolina second with 3, and Dioceses of Massachusetts, Milwaukee, Newark, Virgin Islands third with 2. Go Texas!
If you missed us, don’t worry. Here is some information on our MapDash for Faith Communities tool and our Mentored Missional Journey consulting program.
For more information or a customized demo, contact Ken Howard at ken@faithx.net.

Ecclesiastical Autoimmune Syndrome – Part 2

by Ken Howard

Today’s post is the second of a multipart series on Ecclesiastical Autoimmune Syndrome.
Click here for last week’s post.

Last week we began a discussion of Ecclesiastical Autoimmune Syndrome (or E.A.S.):  an emerging, infectious, but poorly understood pathology afflicting an increasing number of churches. E.A.S. occurs when the body of the Church turns against its own, perceiving healthy agents of corrective change as threat to “the way things are” and activates the organizational immune system, which then expels those threats from the organizational body. Like its human namesake, Ecclesiastical Autoimmune Syndrome drives churches to screen out of their leadership and its followership the very people who could bring life-giving, health-renewing change, while screening in those less likely to bring the discomfort that change – especially healthy change – inevitably brings with it. E.A.S. is slow-moving and almost unnoticeable, but is very frequently a systemic slide into death. The result of untreated E.A.S. is a church that would rather die than change

But what are the signs and symptoms of Ecclesiastical Autoimmune Syndrome and how do we learn to spot it before it becomes terminal?

Perhaps it would help to share some real life examples of how E.A.S. functions in various church organizations and processes.

[Read more…]

Missional Context Analysis (Part 2): How to Get to Know Your Neighbor(s)

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts on Vision-Guided Experimentation.

By Ken Howard

In our last post, we spoke about the need to “get outside the building” by engaging in a Missional Context Analysis. After all, we cannot fulfill the command to “Love your neighbor,” unless we first get to know our neighbor. We called the process of getting to know our  neighbors (and our neighborhoods) “Missional Context Analysis.”

In this post we will be discussing the steps in the process of Missional Context Analysis. In it we will be using terms that have emerged in the development of our Missional Context Analysis tool, Datastory for Faith Communities. You don’t have to use our tool, of course. Nevertheless, the steps are the same.

[Read more…]

The FaithX Project, Inc. is 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a religious and charitable purpose operated as a ministry by the Rev. Ken Howard under an extension of ministry from the Episcopal Bishop of Washington.