The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Response Strong to FaithX Small Congregation Vitality Program

Funded by a grant from Trinity Wall Street Philanthropies

By The Rev Ken Howard, Executive Director

Last week The FaithX Project proudly announced its Vitality Improvement Program for Small Congregations, made possible by a generous grant from Trinity Wall Street Philanthropies (a program of Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church) to create a Vitality Improvement Program for Small Congregations (V.I.P.).

By the end of this posting, 22 Episcopal dioceses or their congregations had emailed us requesting application forms when we kick off the program in July.

Needless to say, we are gratified by the interest our announcement has generated.

Apparently, we hit some kind of nail on the proverbial head.

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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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New Paradigms: The First Year

“…here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.”   – Paul Tillich

Paradigm: a typical example of something or model

About a year and half ago, FaithX made this invitation to our blog readers:

“FaithX is forming a working group called New Paradigms. We envision it to be a multi-denominational group of people who are interested in exploring, naming, and experimenting into some new paradigms for living as Christians in the world today, for what the Church can become. We will gather online on a regular basis, publish articles and blogs, offer webinars, and perhaps, eventually, an online conference. If you are interested in joining us, please email us info@faithx.net.”

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7 Steps to Improved Vitality

Or what do you do after taking the Congregational Vitality Assessment

by the Rev. Ken Howard

So your leadership team has taken the Congregational Vitality Assessment. You’ve got your diagnostic scores and recommendations in hand, and you’re asking yourselves the question:

Now what?

The next step is to do a Missional Assessment: a seven step process to validate and help your congregation improve its vitality by leveraging its strengths to offset its weaknesses and more effectively engage the missional opportunities and challenges emerging in the neighborhoods you serve.

Here are the steps we recommend:

  1. Review CVA results and recommendations with congregational leadership and with the congregation. Identify your congregation’s 2-3 areas of greatest vitality strength and 2-3 areas of greatest vitality weakness.
  2. Conduct a demographic assessment of the missional opportunities and challenges in the community your congregation serves. Identify the 2-3 greatest missional opportunities and the 2-3 greatest missional challenges.
  3. Find consensus around greatest strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges. Select 1-2 of each.
  4. Identify the areas of congregational vitality strength that you can leverage to effectively engage missional opportunities and challenges in the community, and to effectively address areas of congregational vitality weakness.
  5. Identify strategies to engage identified community opportunities and challenges, and address identified areas of vitality.
  6. Determine which strategies you feel capable pursuing yourselves and which you might need help with.
  7. Implement strategies. Start small, experiment, and build on successes.

The steps may seem simple at first glance. And in a way, they are fairly straightforward. But if you are looking for a quick and easy fix for your congregation’s vitality issues, you’re going to be disappointed, because the process of vitality improvement is neither quick nor easy. 

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New Date for Congregational Vitality Webinar: January 27 (Wed) from 1:00-2:00pm

Dear Readers,

We have received a large number of requests from both current and perspective registrants to delay our Assessing & Addressing Congregational Vitality webinar for a week, in light of the events of last week and in deference to the upcoming inauguration. To that end, we are pushing the webinar back one week.

The new date and time is:
January 27 (Wed) from 1:00-2:00pm 

If for some reason you are unable to attend the new date, you have two options:

  1. Request a refund through EventBrite.
  2. Stay registered and receive the webinar recording.

Hope to see most of you on the 27th!

Blessings and thanks!
Ken+


The Rev. Ken Howard
Executive Director – FaithX
www.faithx.net

* FYI, In response to our poll of registrants, all but one said they could accommodate the date change, and that person said they would choose option 2.