The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

FACT 2020: How Congregations Have Changed in the Last 20 Years

by Darren Slade, PhD – FaithX Director of Research

The organization, Faith Communities Today, along with 21 other Christian faith traditions, just released the results of the largest national survey of congregational trends in the United States. Spanning two decades of research (from 2000‒2020), the “Twenty Years of Congregational Change” reports findings from interviewing 15,278 congregations among 80 separate denominations and religious groups.

What’s significant about this particular survey is that it tracks multiple levels of change within American congregational life during both the pre- and early COVID era, much of which was predicted by the FaithX Project and its groundbreaking “Religion Singularity” research.

Continue reading to learn about some of the major highlights and results of the survey.

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Hybrid vs. In-person… still?

By Steve Matthews, FaithX Senior Associate Consultant

What? Can you believe it has been almost two years since we first heard the words “COVID-19?”  So much has changed, so many lives lost, so many fatigued health-care workers, school teachers, parents… pastors and priests.  It has definitely been a loooong season calling us to adapt to new challenges.  My feelings can be summarized in the poem below. I read it for the first time a couple of years ago and recently resurrected it for a staff devotion:

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A Call for Guest Bloggers

Are you a clergy or lay leader in a congregation or judicatory (diocese, synod, etc.)?

Do you have…

An interesting story to tell about issues affecting your congregation’s vitality in the last year and the creative adaptations you have made or are making in response?

A compelling story to share about how you used data-grounded discernment to better understand your congregation and the community you serve?

A surprising story to reveal about finding hidden graces in the coronavirus pandemic that changed your congregation or your ministry for good?

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Total Christian Clergy Deaths Resulting from COVID-19


by Darren Slade, PhD – FaithX Director of Research

Over the past year, the FaithX Project, in partnership with researchers from the Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR), conducted a study to answer one very important question about clergy deaths:

How many Christian “clergy” members, from all denominations and traditions, died as a result of the COVID-19 virus?

While the study can only provide estimates and statistical probabilities, the research is finally complete and the preliminary numbers are in.

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Covid 19 and Episcopal 21: A Survey of the Lasting Effects of Covid on the Episcopal Church

Click Here to Take the Survey

​TryTank Experimental Lab, a joint project of Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, VA, and the General Theological Seminary in New York, in collaboration with York St. John University in York, England, launched a survey on June 4, 2021, to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Episcopal Church.

We at the FaithX Project are pleased to have been chosen to provide data analysis and opportunity assessment and recommendations for this project.

The survey is seeking to understand how clergy and churchgoers of the Episcopal Church in the United States have coped with the COVID-19 pandemic and to solicit their opinions about how this may affect the Church’s future. The survey can be found online at www.EpiscopalPulse.org.

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