The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Data-Grounded Outreach

by Mary Frances

When I was in my first call (feels like forever ago), someone asked me about my target audience.  The question seemed absurd to me at the time.  Wasn’t it obvious that we would take anyone who came through our doors?  Why would we focus on one particular part of the population to the exclusion of others?  Wasn’t everyone in need of the good news of the Gospel?  How little I knew back then!  Understanding your target audience is, indeed, key to reaching people.  It’s not surprising, for instance, that young people were not impressed by presidential candidate Joe Biden’s bus with the word “Malarkey” scrawled across the side.  Did they even know what malarkey meant?  And older people were less attracted to the technology emphasis repeated over and over again by once candidate Andrew Yang.  But Biden was looking to reach older people and Yang was looking to reach younger people, so their approaches were inherently different.  Who are you trying to reach and how will you know where to find them?

The best tool I have found for identifying your target population is the Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (NMIR) from FaithX.  It’s easy to read and inexpensive.  You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on a data subscription.  This 2-page report has over 40 data points and it comes in a pdf or dynamic html version, the latter of which offers clickable data behind the data.  It will also provide data for three different drive or walking times such as 5, 10 or 15 minutes, or for a custom distance or time, therefore tripling the amount of data you receive.

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MapDash: A Real Game Changer

By The Rev. Canon C. John Thompson-Quartey
Canon for Ministry Development & Congregational Vitality
Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta

MapDash for Faith Communities has been a real game changer for our diocese.  Using this tool on a judicatory level has proven to be a real Godsend, because we are now able to get a deeper understanding of the needs and opportunities in the environment in which our faith communities are located, so that we may better craft a suitable intervention to help each congregation respond to real needs in their communities.  No more do we have to default to anecdotes about why congregations are failing.  With a little help from FaithX, MapDash for Faith Communities is giving us real data with which we can interpret the needs and opportunities in our communities.  

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Why FaithX? It’s All About Relationships

by Bill Tenny-Brittian
Managing Editor – The Effective Church Group

The other day my firm was invited to create a proposal to lead a church consultation for a congregation in the southwest US. It was a healthy congregation, a trait we don’t see very often these days, and it was averaging over 300 in weekly worship. The leaders said the congregation was committed to launching a growth strategy that would take them to over 800 in weekly, in-person worship within five years. 

The congregation has a lot going for it. They have a solid mission and a crystal-clear vision. They aren’t conflict free, but there was no evidence of deeply-seated, unresolved issues that so often plague churches that are in decline or sitting on a plateau. Their leadership already understood the power of mission-alignment and they at least claimed to be ready to make the changes necessary to achieve their goal. 

Our job was to provide a strategy, tactics, and a working plan that would take them into their preferred future. Growth like that doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, for most churches, it never happens at all for all sorts of reasons.

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Data is not Destiny!

FaithX and MapDash in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland

by Mary Sulerud

Ever since my first training in using MapDash, the words spoken by the Rev. Ken Howard, FaithX founder, have echoed in my head every time I opened up my laptop and connected it to a projector to introduce the program to another congregation in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland.

“Data is not destiny,” he said.

I always start with those words; then I quickly add something he also shared that day…

“It really helps to begin with dreams
that have some relationship with reality on the ground.”

I graduated from an Episcopal Seminary in the 1980’s, amid several successive ambitious national evangelism campaigns by the Episcopal Church. The prevailing truism of the time was: Attract young families with children and your congregation will be sustained and you will thrive in ministry. Our congregations learned that lesson all too well.

The trouble was that while that may have been true in another era, it was already losing ground in many places by the time I graduated in 1988. In effect, we were sending people out to find the membership equivalent of the Holy Grail. But we rarely asked congregational leaders to look at the reality of their own neighborhoods and to discern if the demographic reality of our neighborhoods was in any way related to the characteristics of the people who sat in the pews on Sunday.

What is changing in the congregations of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland is that they are employing MapDash to explore neighbors and neighborhoods. And while MapDash is an important and useful tool in a wide variety of settings, I am increasingly finding that it is most helpful to congregational leaders who are undertaking strategic planning in their congregations.

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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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