congregational vitality assessment Archives

Apr 29 2021

Be the First in Your Neighborhood

Early Adopter Discount on Forthcoming CVA Judicatory Version

It’s hard to believe that it’s been only seven months since we launched the online version of the Congregational Vitality Assessment in collaboration with the Episcopal Church Foundation. Yet we’ve come a very long way in a very short time.

And this spring we will launch CVA 2.0 and along with it a new CVA Judicatory Version (CVA-JV).

CVA 2.0 will feature a totally redesigned GUI (graphical user interface), based on user input, for a much enhanced user experience.

CVA-JV was not even a gleam in our eyes when we launched CVA 1.0, but rather, its creation is a response to requests from several judicatories (i.e., dioceses, synods, districts) across the U.S., and its design is based on their input.

CVA-Judicatory Version will allow judicatories to directly coordinate the administration of the free CVA to their congregations and receive anonymized vitality and sustainability diagnostic summaries from those congregations. CVA-JV will have a customized judicatory-specific dashboard that will allow them to add locally relevant questions (which won’t affect the diagnostic scores) but will provide them important information about their congregations, such as race/ethnicity, types of ministries/programs, and more. In addition, the language of the CVA will be customized to the various denominations and faith traditions that might use the CVA, as well as a Spanish language version. We anticipate that many judicatories will use the CVA-JV to supplement the rear-view-mirror data they get from the parochial reporting mechanism with real-time vitality diagnostics that their congregations can use to improve their own vitality.

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Jan 21 2021

A Tale of Three Churches: Strategic Missional Planning in Imperiled Congregations

On the surface, they were three different congregations in two different parts of the country – one in a northern urban city, one in a mid-Atlantic suburb, and the other in a suburban southern resort area – but otherwise seemed very much the same. But all three were imperiled (e.g., in their judicatories’ version of hospice care), and their human and financial resources were dwindling rapidly.

Their average Sunday attendance was between 30 and 40, with Christmas and Easter attendance hovering around 60, in worship spaces with a capacity of 3-10 times that total. They were rapidly drawing down their endowments, none of which were above $25,000, and roughly two-thirds of their normal operating income was from rentals. Their giving per household was exceptionally high (a point of pride), but this is frequently the case with congregations that know at some level they are in danger of closing soon. They were still imperiled.

That’s when we were called in…

We took all of them through a process we call Neighborhood Missional Assessment, in which we explored the missional opportunities and challenges in the neighborhoods they serve, their vitality strengths and weaknesses, and whether and how they could leverage their strengths to better engage the opportunities and challenges, as well as address their weaknesses. We ran Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Reports to explore key demographic trends and projections that define neighborhood missional opportunities and challenges, and MapDash for Faith Communities to dive more deeply into the demographics and projections they deemed relevant. We used our free Congregational Vitality Assessment to explore their vitality in 10 areas of congregational life, as well as their likely sustainability (with those whose judicatories subscribed to MapDash, we explored their vitality and sustainability scores). And we did trend analysis and projection on their weekly attendance, membership, and income to determine when they each would flatline (all within 10 years).

Here is what we found and how each congregation responded to combat their being imperiled…

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Dec 03 2020

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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Nov 19 2020

Vitality Check

By Linda Buskirk for ECF Vital Practices

Occasionally, we like to publish posts from guest bloggers, especially when they say nice things about us. This week’s post is an article written by Linda Buskirk of Buskirk Solutions for Episcopal Church Foundation’s “Vital Practices for Congregations” blog. The free, online Congregational Vitality Assessment to which Linda refers was created by FaithX and brought online in a collaborative partnership by FaithX and ECF.

2020 has been a year of difficult “reality checks.” Yes, it’s dangerous out there. Yes, you should wear a mask. Yes, you need to figure out Zoom.

Now a new opportunity for a vitality check is available, designed to help focus congregational leadership and planning.

The Congregational Vitality Assessment (CVA), is now offered at no cost thanks to a partnership between the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF) and The FaithX Project. The CVA provides congregations with an assessment of Vitality (healthiness) and Sustainability (level of people, financial, and contextual resources necessary to survive, or even thrive). The vitality section of the CVA measures ten areas of congregational functioning, such as Vision and Mission, Leadership, Lay Empowerment, Worship, Formation, and Stewardship.

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Oct 15 2020

Upcoming Webinars from FaithX

And an invitation to submit suggestions

It’s more than a little ironic that we are announcing our late 2020/early 2021 webinars right at the eighth month of the Coronavirus pandemic, the first month of the regular flu season, and three weeks away from a national election that is shows every sign of being a referendum on the government’s response to the Covid crisis. Sprinkle that with a pandemic-induced recession and social upheaval over systemic racism, and we’ve got ourselves a “perfect storm.”

Still, your response to our 3rd Wednesday webinars has been strong, and you’ve been asking for more, and even sending us suggestions for webinar topics you’d like us to offer, so here we are. And here is our webinar schedule through March 2020:

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