The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Data-Grounded Discernment for Capital Campaign Planning

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without a vision is a nightmare.”
Soichiro Honda, Japanese engineer and industrialist

This is not another “How To” webinar on capital fundraising. There are literally hundreds of programs out there that can bring to bear the time-tested expertise necessary to address “How” to mount a capital fund drive for “What” you tell them you want to construct or renovate or buy. The only problem is that unless you ground congregation’s “What” in a “Why” related to a clear and overarching congregational vision and a deep and thorough understanding of its mission to the world around it before you start, your fundraising efforts may turn out to be an exercise in tweaking the status quo: a missed opportunity for better engaging its members and people in the neighborhoods around them.

On Wednesday, May 26 from 1:00-2:00pm ET, The FaithX Project invites you to attend a webinar entitled “Data-Grounded Discernment for Capital Campaign Planning,” offered in collaboration with the Gathering of Leaders, the Episcopal Church Foundation, and Core Capital Campaigns. This webinar will provide participants with an understanding, a process, and tools to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of their congregations and the missional opportunities and challenges of their communities, and in doing so clarify their vision of what God is calling them to be and to do, and the role a capital campaign can play in in getting them there.

Click Here to Register for this Webinar
Click Here for a List of Upcoming Webinars

Using the Pandemic to Procrastinate in Ministry

Procrastination Can Be the Death of Ministry

This post about using the pandemic as an excuse to procrastinate is written by Mary Frances, Senior Associate Consultant at the FaithX Project.

At the end of the year, I hear a common refrain from my clients: That’ll have to wait until the new year.  It’s a variation on a theme that we are all too familiar with.  I’ll start my diet right after the holidays.  I’ll start my new exercise routine in January.  I’ll deal with that problem tomorrow.  Kids love to use it as a way to procrastinate.  I’ll do my homework after this show.  I’ll do the dishes after this game.  Later, tomorrow, after…waiting.  Over the course of the last year there is a new variation on this theme:  after the pandemic.  We will deal with outreach after the pandemic.  We will get to know our community more deeply…. after the pandemic.  We will talk about stewardship, formation, new worship formats, you name it, it can all be done after the pandemic. 

After the pandemic really was an appropriate response a year ago, when everything was a mad scramble to get online and make radical changes in the blink of an eye.  Funny thing about this pandemic though, it didn’t just go away; it’s still here….and we don’t know how much longer it will be around, how much longer it will impact our ministries, how much more change it will require of us.  It’s still here.  Sure, there are vaccines, but there are also variants.  Every time we think there is light at the end of the tunnel, someone comes along to tell us the tunnel is longer than we thought. This is no time to procrastinate.

So, how much longer can we say after the pandemic without admitting it’s just a form of procrastination and avoidance?  What if, instead of after the pandemic, we started to ask: What can we do now? What is God asking of us today?  How can we connect with our members, visitors and community more deeply than ever before?  What is ONE thing we can do now that we couldn’t do before?  What is ONE thing that just can’t wait until after the pandemic?

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Adapting to the Covid New Normal: Has Online Church Giving Gone Down?

By Dr. Darren Slade,
FaithX Research Director

This discussion on the difficulties about online church giving is the third post in our 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, “When You Can’t Pass the Offering Plate,” Rev. Ken Howard dispelled a number of myths about what it was going to be like for congregations to give and collect donations during the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, Ken suggested that online church giving would not decrease the amount of money donated simply because people are unable to attend in-person church services or that the impersonal nature of online giving will give people an opportunity to skimp on their tithes. In this blog post, we will go through Ken’s myths to see what the current research is saying about giving online to churches.

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Hanukkah Light

by Steve Matthews

What time is it is an especially adept question during the Hanukkah season?

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.

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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:

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