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Dec 10 2020

Hanukkah Light

by Steve Matthews

What time is it?

It seems there is a timelessness to life right now, and probably not in a good way. Our “normal” patterns and ways of marking time are disrupted.  Many people are unemployed, which affects the way they order their time.  Others, like health care workers, clergy, and teachers (just to name a few) are working harder than ever – working in person and online and in all kinds of synchronous and asynchronous combinations.  Thanksgiving patterns were different this year, and we can expect Christmas to offer challenges to our concept of “normal” time too.  

Fortunately, there are practices that enable us to experience “time” in ways that are grounding and nurturing.  On December 21 we will enter winter, and the changing of the seasons occurs regardless of who wins elections or what virus is afflicting us.  Can we sense the changing day length?  If we can’t appreciate the growing darkness, can we at least notice it and honor the rhythms of the earth that continue regardless of our human condition?  Many of our religious cycles (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost) occur every year, and while the way they are expressed may change with the current pandemic or other world events, their invitations to a deeper spiritual life expressed inwardly and in our actions is not muted.  These observances invite us to reflect and to celebrate God’s timeless and expansive love for us in ways that can embrace us in this current reality and even help us transcend the limited view of time our culture proffers.

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: Uncategorized · Tagged: COVID, faithx, gratitude, Hanukkah, map assets, menorah, pandemic, religious cycles, seasons, Thanksgiving, timelessness

Dec 03 2020

Announcing our 2021 Webinars (Part 1)

Co-sponsored by Gathering of Leaders and Episcopal Church Foundation

After ending 2020 on a high note (our webinar on Covid-19 Impact and Recovery Planning sold out!), we are announcing our webinar schedule through June and our webinar topics through April.

As always, we remain open to your suggestions and requests (submit to info@faithx.net). 

Here is our webinar schedule through May 2020:

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: Uncategorized · Tagged: Capital Campaigns, Carl Johnson, collaborative ministry, Community Connections, congregational vitality assessment, COVID, COVID-19, Episcopal Church Foundation, Gathering of Leaders, leadership transitions, public health, rural perspective, structural racism, systemic racism, Webinar, webinar series

Nov 12 2020

Adapting to the Covid New Normal: Why Online Worship is Not Enough

By Dr. Darren Slade,
FaithX Research Director

This discussion on why online worship is not enough is the second post in our new ongoing blog series, Adapting to the Covid New Normal, where our research director, Dr. Darren Slade, will provide a deeper research base for the posts we are publishing on congregations and Covid-19.

Dr. Slade will describe the research and Ken Howard will provide a pastoral perspective.


In a previous post entitled, “What We Learned from Our Experiment with Online Worship,” Rev. Ken Howard discussed finding creative ways to hold worship services online during the COVID-19 pandemic. As an experimental case study, Ken partnered with the Church of the Ascension in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which held an online service that reached 51 people on Zoom and 900+ on Facebook Live. What he originally learned now has some parallels with the latest research on congregational life during the Coronavirus crisis.

[Read more…]

Written by Darren M. Slade, PhD · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, Posts by Darren Slade, Uncategorized · Tagged: Christianity, church, Church History, Coronavirus, COVID19, Pandemics

Oct 01 2020

Adapting to the Covid New Normal: Beyond Livestream Worship

A Follow-Up on Christianity’s Response to Pandemics

By Dr. Darren Slade,
FaithX Research Director

This discussion on Christianity’s response to pandemics is the first post in our new ongoing blog series, Adapting to the Covid New Normal, where our research director, Dr. Darren Slade, will provide a deeper research base for the posts we are publishing on congregations and Covid-19.

Dr. Slade will describe the research and Ken Howard will provide a pastoral perspective.


In a previous post, FaithX founder Rev. Ken Howard discussed the providential timing of COVID-19, explaining that this is not the first time that the Christian church had to face a global pandemic. Following up on his original writing, this post will explore in more detail the history of Christianity’s response to pandemics and how the church actually benefited the most once it took the appropriate steps necessary to curb the spread of disease, something the church desperately needs to learn to do today.

[Read more…]

Written by Darren M. Slade, PhD · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, Posts by Darren Slade, Uncategorized · Tagged: Christianity, church, Church History, Coronavirus, COVID19, Pandemics

Mar 28 2019

Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report – A New MapDash Feature

By Mary Frances, Senior Associate Consultant

The Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report is a snapshot of data from a 15 minute DriveTime (or other DriveTime of your choice) around a given address.  It’s just one of the many features available to you via MapDash for Faith Communities.  Put in the address of a local congregation or town and quickly find out generational predominance, median age and income, unemployment rate, access to transportation, and much more.  At a glance, you can start to identify where you might need more information and what to do with the information you have. If you can get all this at a glance, wouldn’t you want to dig deeper?

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, Uncategorized · Tagged: drivetime analysis, MapDash for Faith Communities, Mary Frances, Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report

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