Stealing from Startups: A Church Goes Lean (the presentation that launched FaithX)

By Ken Howard and Jon Howard

Lean before Lean Was Cool

Several of you have been asking more about the genesis of The FaithX Project: What led to this idea of Minimum Viable Belief and pushed me in the direction launching this new endeavor?

In late 2013, my son Jonathan, then CEO of a medical tourism startup, was remotely attending a Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco, when somebody tweeted a question, “Has anyone applied Lean principles to churches?” To which Jonathan answered, “I don’t know if he’s read the book, but this is what my dad has been doing at his church for the last 18 years.”

Eric Ries, author of The Lead Startup and founder of the Lean Startup Conference, re-tweeted my son’s tweet to his gazillion Twitter followers, and before you knew it, I was invited to speak at the 2014 Lean for Social Good summit in Washington, DC, , sponsored by LeanImpact.org. I delivered the following presentation, which won the conference’s “People’s Choice Award” and planted the seed that grew into the FaithX Project.

The Promised Paper

I this presentation I refer to a forthcoming paper on the same subject.
Click on the title below to read this paper:

What a Church Stole from Startups
And What Startups Could Steal from Churches
by Kenneth W. Howard and Jonathan K. Howard.