The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

FaithX Receives Grant Award from Trinity Wall Street for Small Church Vitality Improvement Program

By The Rev Ken Howard, Executive Director

We are excited to announce that The FaithX Project has been approved for a grant from Trinity Wall Street Philanthropies* to create a Vitality Improvement Program for Small Congregations.

Today’s congregations exist at a pivotal point in the history of the church, an existential crisis of accelerating change and deepening uncertainty driven by forces both inside and outside the church. We believe that congregational vitality is the defining issue for the church in this generation, if not this century, and that congregations – especially small congregations – and their judicatories are rapidly becoming unsustainable in their current forms. Only those with a clear vision, who ground their discernment in data about themselves and the communities they serve, and who are willing to take the risk of experimenting with new ways of being and doing church will survive and thrive in these challenging times. 

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Is your pastor at risk of dying from Coronavirus? See our research findings! National Survey on Clergy Covid Deaths

As the second wave of Covid-19 was rising in late 2020, we were hearing persistent rumors that more U.S. clergy were dying from Covid-19 than the general population. We at FaithX wanted to know if these rumors were true and if so, why? Online searches revealed no research on the subject. Nor could we find any readily available data on clergy Covid deaths from denominational offices.

So we partnered with researchers at the Global Center from Religious Research (GCRR) to do some research of our own: a slice-in-time survey of Covid-related clergy deaths in the U.S. from January 1 through June 30, 2021. Obviously, this would not be an exhaustive study, but we did hope it would kickstart discussion and “prime the pump” for future research on the subject. We surveyed 16 major Christian denominations in the United States and published the results in the peer-review academic journal, Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (SHERM Journal).

Our research revealed some interesting findings, including a strong reluctance by many denominational leaders to even participate in the study at all. Indeed, there were strong political polarizations that surfaced and resulted in some religious leaders (abusively) shaming and condemning us for even asking the question. The research also revealed that the Northeast had the highest recorded death rate compared to other geographical regions in the US, which is not surprising since that’s where the pandemic first started. If you would like to learn more, simply click the button below for the full SHERM article or continue reading this blog post for a short synopsis of the major findings.

Read the Full Article
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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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