The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

How will the Covid Endemic Impact Your Congregation?

by Mary Frances

About once a month I gather with leaders from a group of congregations to talk about changes they can make in order to do a better job of living into their mission, vision and values.  At our next meeting we are going to talk about how to assess the effectiveness of the changes they have made.  So often, we allow major decisions to hinge on a handful of stories without ever taking the time to thoroughly evaluate what we are doing.  Now that we are moving from the Covid pandemic to the Covid endemic, this might be the time to start a thoughtful and thorough evaluation of what you are doing to live out your mission, vision and values as well as why.  

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“I can’t breathe”: How you can impact systemic racism in the communities you serve

And how FaithX can help

By the Rev. Ken Howard

By now, most of you who follow our blog have had a chance to read the press release about the High Impact Award FaithX received for our work in mapping and mitigating systemic racism.

And while we are totally honored and excited to be recognized for the impact of our work, we would be even more excited to help more congregations and judicatories to make an impact on systemic racism in the neighborhoods they serve.

So this article is about how our approach to mapping and mitigating racism works and how we can help you employ that approach to confront systemic racism from your congregation or judicatory.

We begin by defining systemic racism

We have centered our work on a definition of systemic racism that is plain and simple:

Systemic racism is when a social system is structured in such a way that it disadvantages a particular race or ethnicity to the advantage of another

In other words:

You don’t have to be a racist to be complicit in systemic racism

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FaithX selected as Experiment Manager for Episcopal Pulse project

The FaithX Project is pleased to announce that we have been selected by ​TryTank Experimental Lab as Experiment Manager to develop the proof of concept for Episcopal Pulse, a project the purpose of which will be to put a proverbial “finger on the pulse” of the Episcopal Church on a regular basis through brief one- or two-question survey that respondents will be able to complete in under a minute (or maybe two if they want to give it extra thought).

The experiment, which will take place over several months, starting in July of this year and continuing into the first half of 2022, will have three major components:

  1. Selecting appropriate technology to host Episcopal Pulse polling.
  2. Recruiting an advisory committee to assist us identifying critical questions for our regular pulse polls.
  3. Implementation through pilot testing, then scaling Episcopal Pulse to full implementation.
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Όμικρο

By Steve Matthews 

25 years ago I spent two semesters learning Greek in seminary.   I never expected that my refresher course would come by way of a pandemic — first Delta and now Omicron. As Omicron begins to spread from state to state, we wait again in uncertainty.  Will the current vaccines work?  Is it more contagious?  Are its effects more severe?  We wait as we have before. “Omicron at Advent”… there’s a sermon there.

But it’s not exactly like it was before.  We have learned things.  We are creative, resourceful, and resilient.  We can lean into that.  We know we can go “hybrid” in our worship.  We know about wearing masks, and getting the “jab,” and practicing social distancing.  We also know that there are those people who need more support than others.  At FaithX one of the ways we identify people more impacted by Covid is by utilizing a data tool called the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI).  The SVI uses U.S. Census data to determine the social vulnerability of every county and tract. The CDC ranks each county and tract on 15 social factors, including poverty, lack of vehicle access, and crowded housing, and groups them into four related themes:

  • Socioeconomic
  • Housing Composition and Disability
  • Minority Status and Language
  • Housing and Transportation 

The closer a neighborhood is to the number “1” the more vulnerable that population is to environmental pollution and weather extremes, to poor health access, and to other social problems.  Think about it:  If you make little money, if you have a disability, if you are reliant on public transportation, if you do not speak English well, if you live in a densely populated apartment complex, you are more likely to fall through the cracks. 

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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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