The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Redevelopment for the Rest of Us!

It wasn’t that long ago when the word “redevelopment” was associated with churches in need… maybe even in peril.  Some of these faith communities sought grants to repurpose buildings left vacuous by membership migration and/or declining interest in church overall.  Some just needed some revitalization and renewal regarding welcoming practices (guest parking, good signage, revamp the nursery for children, train friendly greeters, etc.).  Often there were mass mailings to local zip codes to inform the public about your church and your programming.  Occasionally, there might be some activity in which to invite the community. All of this is/was well-intentioned, but it was based on a false assumption: people are going to be drawn to us and come into our doors, if we do all the right things.

As you know, the culture has been shifting for a long time. In a 2020 Pew research study 65% of adults identified as Christian compared to 85% in 1990. This statistic points to the reality that, like it or not, all churches need to see themselves as perennially redeveloping churches.  Our buildings may be in great shape and our worship and programming sharp, but our spiritual infrastructure, our sense of values, mission, and vision may need a serious overhaul.  Very, very few people are going to come to us because we think they should (and certainly not enough to make up for the attrition of membership due to death and migration away from Christianity).

So what now?  What does redevelopment-for-the-rest-of-us look like in 2021? The answer is so simple… and so hard.  Take a deep breath. Here it comes. To be faithful to our mission, we must re-learn what it means to be a kind and attentive neighbor again.  We must relearn our neighborhoods.  We must know our neighbors and allow them to know us.  How can we know what it means to redevelop our churches for the sake of our neighbors if we don’t know who they are? What if the work of the Spirit and the opportunity we have been praying for, is happening outside the walls of the church, hidden in plain sight, and waiting for our “yes?”

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Why should I pay for MapDash when I can get the same data free? (Hint: You can’t.)

By Ken Howard

We’ve been getting this question a lot these days from our Episcopal clients: 

“Why should I pay for MapDash or Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Reports (NMIRs) when I can get the same data free off the Episcopal Church (TEC) website?”

The short answer is, “You can’t.” While all three are valuable tools for missional decision-making and there is certainly overlap between them, there are differences in the purpose and scope of each. The Know Your Neighborhood (KYN) report, the Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Reports (NMIR), and a subscription to a fully-equipped MapDash for Faith Communities platform each allow the user to ask and answer progressively broader and deeper questions. 

Here is a brief description of each of the above (click here for more detailed descriptions and comparisons):

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Datastory Releases Greatly Enhanced MapDash 2.2

This post on the release of MapDash 2.2 was written
by Ken Howard

Earlier this month, Datastory released its much anticipated and greatly enhanced MapDash 2.2. 

It is amazing how far we’ve come so fast.

It was only two years ago that Datastory and FaithX teamed up to begin shaping a faith-based version of Datastory’s powerful MapDash demographic/analytic platform. Then in July of last year, after several rounds of rapid prototyping and testing in judicatories in five states, Datastory launched MapDash for Faith Communities, and FaithX launched consultative strategic missional planning programs that leverage its unique capabilities for faith communities and the judicatories that support them.

Even then the capabilities of MapDash went far beyond any demographic tool available at the time, bringing real time interactive experience and powerful analytics available nowhere else. MapDash 2.2, honed by input and feedback from actual users, goes even further, with an updated layout, more than double the data, and comprehensive improvements to tools and widgets. 

One of those tools is the new Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (NMIR), an infographic report designed to give users an interactive snapshot of their neighborhoods. As described in an earlier post, FaithX employs the MapDash NMIR as the core of its Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Assessment, a 3-hour, online consultation designed for congregations seeking to better understand and engage the communities they serve.

Some of the new data features of MapDash 2.2 include:

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Neighborhood Missional Intelligence – Report or Assessment?

This Post on Neighborhood Missional Intelligence is the 2nd of 8 posts on MapDash Analytics

by Ken Howard

FaithX Strategic Missional Services now offers two resources to explore missional opportunities at the local community level. The first is a Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report. The second is a Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Assessment.

Think of the difference between the Report and the Assessment as the difference between taking a “selfie” and sitting for a portrait, except the subject is not you but your community and both are much more detailed than you might expect.

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As Pastors Get Older, Churches Start to Die: An Epilogue

by Darren Slade

Having received a larger than expected response to the blog post, “As Pastors Get Older, Churches Start to Die,” I have decided to address a few concerns that have come up. I am personally surprised at some of the negative reactions to what was written, which I thought was quite straightforward (and uncontroversial). What is apparent is that the blog post has struck a nerve with many people, most notably among older ministers and clergy. In one sense, I appreciate the sensitivity surrounding the topic. There appears to be a push in some areas of the church to oust older ministers and recruit younger, more “trendy” leaders. I can see this causing frustration and heartache for a lot of clergy, especially for those who sacrificed their entire youth and devoted their entire life to ministry. It begins to look like a pink slip that reads, “Thank you for your time, but your services are no longer needed. We found someone better.” Older pastors and older congregants start to feel discounted, shoved aside, and forgotten all for the sake of attracting “young blood.”

While this concern is both reasonable and expected, my bewilderment persists. A couple of responses received last week accused me of not valuing the wisdom of older pastors and even suggested that I must think professional pastors should go away completely. Nothing could be further from the truth, and (to be quite honest) I’m not exactly sure how someone could read those things into such a brief post. Another response demanded to know what I plan to do with older pastors, a strange request considering the blog post is meant to have you think about such questions. It’s not my responsibility to have a plan for your aging clergy. Others seem to view the blog as reductionistic, believing it suggests there is only one causative factor for the church’s death. This, too, is not the case. We must not confuse the reporting of one causative factor with the argument for only one causative factor. The post engages in the former, merely reporting about one problem facing the church and, in no way, argues that this is the only or even primary cause for the church’s decline. In fact, you can read an earlier post of mine here where I discuss the myriad of complex factors that lead to church growth and decline.

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