The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Innovate for Building and Growing Community

by Steve Matthews, FaithX Senior Consultant
Growing Community

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand.
The arrogance of success is to think
that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”

William Pollard
Online Small Groups

This post is part of a blog series on
“Keeping Congregations Connected in the Face of COVID-19”
Click here for the previous post

I like working with FaithX.  As consultants we are invited to bring our whole selves to the table. We bring our experience, our vocation, our vision, and we are invited everyday to innovate for the benefit of the faith communities and judicatories we accompany.  

One way we experience innovation comes in the way Mary Frances, Ken Howard, and I collaborate with one another, and we also experience the excitement of innovation as we bring robust data to bear on the community contexts of the people we serve. We work with our partner DataStory to offer dynamic, informative, eye-opening resources to help organizations chart a path toward bolder and more creative visions than they might have been otherwise imagined.  

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Keeping Congregations Connected: Strategies and Tools for COVID-Related Outreach

By the Rev. Ken Howard

Keeping Congregations Together in the Face of COVID19 is a blog series on strategies and tools for doing and being what God is calling your congregation to be and do in the current pandemic.
Click here for the previous post

How can our congregations do effective outreach while the COVID pandemic makes social distancing necessary?

How can our congregations contribute to controlling the Coronavirus?

These are two important questions to ask and answer during the current pandemic (and there are likely many more)…

First, ground yourself in hard data from reliable sources about Coronavirus and COVID19: What is it? What does it do? How does it spread? How can people both protect themselves from the virus and avoid spreading it to others? How do you know you might have it? What do you do if you think you do? What COVID-related resources are in your area?

Reliable, data-grounded sources and resources include:

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“Data-Grounded Discernment for Diocesan Planning & Decision-Making”

Datastory & FaithX present joint webinar on Jan 28

The Conference on Catholic Facility Management (CCFM) has invited Matt Felton, president of Datastory, and Ken Howard, executive director of FaithX, to deliver a webinar for its members on Tuesday, January 28, 2020 from 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM CST.

Webinar Description:
Drawing on examples from projects in several CCFM member dioceses and others, Matt and Ken will describe how dioceses and congregations are using MapDash for Faith Communities and related tools and processes to guide strategic missional planning and enhance operational decision-making. 

The session will also include an overview of the map-based Membership directory that Datastory created for the CCFM website. 

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Looking Back on 2019

by Ken Howard

2019 was a good year for FaithX. It had its ups and downs – a rollercoaster ride, for sure, at times – but all-in-all, both despite and because of it all, we came through 2019 much stronger, with a clearer vision of who we are and where we are going, and with many successes to energize us. 

We’ve come a long way since we launched in December of 2016. Back then it was just me as FaithX’s executive director/principal (and only) consultant, a 4-person volunteer board of directors, and one client, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and its two newest congregations. 

Over the next two years, we would establish our affiliation with Datastory, collaborate with them to prototype, develop, beta test, and launch the next-generation demographic analysis and missional planning platform, which would become known as MapDash for Faith Communities, added about a dozen clients, two associate consultants, a blog coordinator, a volunteer research director, and publish a ground-breaking research paper entitled “The Religion Singularity.” 

In 2019 we broadened our reach even further. We expanded our work not only into more Episcopal dioceses, congregations, and organizations, but more importantly, branching out into more than five additional “denominations” (i.e., including the non-denominational movement), and have begun discussions with interfaith and non-Christian faith traditions. We launched a new peer-reviewed journal about religion and ministry. We worked with Datastory to develop and launch the new Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report, and we designed the consultative Neighborhood Missional Assessment program to help congregations identify emerging missional opportunities and challenges in the neighborhoods they serve. 

And so I’d like to offer my appreciation to all of those who have joined FaithX on our experimental missional journey through the end of religion as we know it into the future of faith in whatever form God is calling it into being…

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Datastory Releases Greatly Enhanced MapDash 2.2

By Ken Howard

Earlier this month, Datastory released its much anticipated and greatly enhanced MapDash 2.2. 

It is amazing how far we’ve come so fast.

It was only two years ago that Datastory and FaithX teamed up to begin shaping a faith-based version of Datastory’s powerful MapDash demographic/analytic platform. Then in July of last year, after several rounds of rapid prototyping and testing in judicatories in five states, Datastory launched MapDash for Faith Communities, and FaithX launched consultative strategic missional planning programs that leverage its unique capabilities for faith communities and the judicatories that support them.

Even then the capabilities of MapDash went far beyond any demographic tool available at the time, bringing real time interactive experience and powerful analytics available nowhere else. MapDash 2.2, honed by input and feedback from actual users, goes even further, with an updated layout, more than double the data, and comprehensive improvements to tools and widgets. 

One of those tools is the new Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (NMIR), an infographic report designed to give users an interactive snapshot of their neighborhoods. As described in an earlier post, FaithX employs the MapDash NMIR as the core of its Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Assessment, a 3-hour, online consultation designed for congregations seeking to better understand and engage the communities they serve.

Some of the new data features of MapDash 2.2 include:

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The FaithX Project, Inc. is 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a religious and charitable purpose operated as a ministry by the Rev. Ken Howard under an extension of ministry from the Episcopal Bishop of Washington.