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Feb 11 2021

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.

[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

Jan 21 2021

Our love/hate relationship with the Church – Reflections on a poem by Carlo Carretto

Below is a poem by Carlo Carretto:

love_hate
Carlo Carretto


A Letter to the Church

How baffling you are, oh Church,

and yet how I love you!

How you have made me suffer,

and yet how much I owe you!

I would like to see you destroyed,

and yet I need your presence.

You have given me so much scandal

and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is.

I have seen nothing in the world
more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false,

and yet I have touched nothing
more pure, more generous, more beautiful.

How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face,

and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.

No, I cannot free myself from you,

because I am you,

though not completely.

And besides, where would I go?
Would I establish another?

I would not be able to establish it without the same faults,
for they are the same faults I carry in me.

And if I did establish another,

it would be my Church,

not the Church of Christ.

And I am old enough to know

that I am no better than anyone else.

– by Carlo Carretto, from The God Who Comes


In my book Paradoxy I used the phrase “a mistake made holy” to describe the paradox that is Church:

On the one hand,
there is no evidence in scripture that Jesus (or Paul, for that matter)
intended to start a new religion called Christianity.

Yet on the other hand,
it is clear that God’s Holy Spirit
has become inextricably bound up in the Church.

On the one hand,
it is clearly fallen.

Yet on the other hand,
it is clearly the body of Christ.

This poem by Carlo Carretto draws our attention
not only to the paradox that is Church,

but also to the profound paradox
of our painfully ambivalent relationship with it…

That it is impossible to truly and deeply love the Church
without sometimes hating it as well.

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, FaithX News, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: Carlo Carreto, church, love/hate relationship, paradoxy

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

Apr 26 2018

Ecclesiastical Autoimmune Syndrome – Part 4

E.A.S. in Post-Seminary Ministry and Governance

By Ken Howard


Today’s post is the fourth of a multipart series on Ecclesiastical Autoimmune Syndrome
Click here for last week’s post


In this series of blog posts, we are reviewing the signs and symptoms of Ecclesiastical Autoimmune Syndrome so that we can learn to spot it before it becomes terminal. So far, we’ve explored how E.A.S. often works in ministry discernment and in seminary. However, Ecclesiastical Autoimmune Syndrome is not limited to pre-ordination church systems and processes, but remains just as prevalent after ordination.

Post-Seminary Ministry

In the Episcopal Church, clergy ordination vows include a pledge to be loyal to one’s bishop. Unfortunately, a symptom of E.A.S. in Episcopal bishops is that many seem to almost subconsciously think of that a vow of loyalty is a promise never to express unwanted, yet truthful criticism.

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: church, Commission on Ministry, disciplinary canons, ecclesiastical autoimmune syndrome, ecclesiastical governance, ministry discernment, organizational culture, post-seminary ministry

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