The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

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.

[Read more…]

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.

[Read more…]

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?

[Read more…]

Tools for Data-Grounded Discernment During Leadership Transition

By Katie Romano Griffin,
Faith Board Member and Associate Minister at Cedar Lane Church

Over time, all religious communities evolve to be more homogeneous. Mine is no exception. Leadership transitions, while often a time of grief and uncomfortable change for a congregation, are one of the best times for a congregation to realign its mission and purpose with the needs of the larger community and transform from what my colleague Abh Janamanchi calls a Sacred Society (closed to larger community needs) to a Holy Community (a place of love and holy experience connected to the greater community). 

In the midst of the pandemic (which is its own kind of transition process), our congregation engaged FaithX to help us with exploring our own strengths and weaknesses, along with the missional opportunities and challenges in the community we serve. For the latter, they introduced us to a tool called a Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (or NMIR for short). As someone who has worked with congregations in transition on church growth, I can see how this tool could be useful on both sides of the transition process. 

[Read more…]

Something Old? Something New? What Kind of Congregation Benefits Most from Neighborhood Missional Assessment

This post on congregational benefits is
by Ken Howard

Earlier this year at a conference, I gave a presentation on the Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Assessment. When the time came for Q&A, one of the participants posed this question:

“I can see how neighborhood missional assessment would be good for new start congregations and congregations looking to relocate, but what are the congregational benefits for existing churches that have been around long enough to form a deeper understanding of their neighborhood?”

I get this question (or variations thereof) more often than one might think. 

My smarty-pants Anglican answer goes something like this:

“If you’re asking me if neighborhood missional assessment is most useful for new congregations or existing congregations, the answer is ‘Yes!’ But it’s also essential for existing congregations.”

[Read more…]