The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

VIP for Small Congregations Now Accepting Applications

By The Rev. Ken Howard
Executive Director, The FaithX Project

Are you interested in helping the small congregations in your diocese thrive like never before?

Do you want to discern how your small congregations can become sustainable for years to come?

Would your small congregations benefit from research-grounded, state-of-the-art vitality assessment tools and consulting worth tens of thousands of dollars for a small fraction of the typical cost?

The FaithX Project is pleased to announce that our Vitality Improvement Program for Small Congregations (VIP) is now accepting applications.* VIP is a 3-year program designed specifically to provide reduced-cost consultation and training to cohorts of small Episcopal congregations (approx. 30-70 ASA) and their dioceses that will allow congregations to assess and develop strategies to improve their vitality and sustainability with the assistance of their dioceses, who will apply for the program on behalf of themselves and 7-10 small congregations. Five dioceses will be accepted for admission to this year’s program.

Click here to access our Online Application Packet

This Application Packet includes all the materials necessary to apply for acceptance into the program, including: 

  • Overview
  • Timeline
  • Roles and Responsibilities
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
  • Definitions
  • Diocesan Application Form (please read the other documents before completing). 

This is a 3-step process: 

  1. Diocese submits a Diocesan Application Form to FaithX (by 8/30/22). 
  2. FaithX reviews applications, and selects and notifies the 5 dioceses selected to participate in the program (by 9/19/22).
  3. FaithX meets with diocesan leadership to begin the process of recruiting a project team and selecting 7-10 congregations with an ASA between 30-50 and are likely to benefit from the program (10/5/22 2:00-4:30pm ET on Zoom).

We would like to express our immense gratitude to Trinity Wall Street Philanthropies for awarding FaithX a leadership grant that made our VIP for Small Congregations project possible. Other financial and/or in-kind supporters include: Datastory, Episcopal Church Foundation, and the FaithX VIP Scholarship Fund.

If you have any questions, please contact us at info@faithx.net.

Click here to access our Online Application Packet

Exciting New Feature: Religiously Unaffiliated Estimates

FaithX is pleased to announce an exciting new feature that will allow users of Neighborhood Demographic Reports and MapDash for Faith Communities to access best estimates of the number of Religiously Unaffiliated people in the neighborhoods they hope to engage.

The ground-breaking new features, developed with our input by our affiliate, Datastory, are based on algorithms grounded in research by the Pew Research Center and census-based demographic projections from other reputable sources. By using this never-before-available data, faith community leaders will be able confidently predict which of their surrounding neighborhoods will provide the most fertile soil for their missional efforts.

[Read more…]

FaithX Shortlisted for 2022 Esri Map Book

FaithX was recently informed by Esri that a GIS map we produced, entitled Redlining and Race: Mapping Systemic Racism, which was presented in Esri’s 2021 User Conference Plenary Session [view video | view still photo], has been shortlisted for inclusion in their 2022 Esri Map Book (Volume 37). We will find out later this year whether we made the final cut.

Each year Esri selects several dozen maps submitted by users and showcases some of the work of some of those users in a formal publication known as the Map Book. The purpose of this publication is to show how the application of GIS is creating positive outcomes in organizations and across society.

The map in question was taken from one of our Mapping Systemic Racism webinars, in which we explored the manifestations and impacts of systemic racism in a congregation in Brooklyn, New York. [click here to view the webinar]. As a result of this webinar, FaithX and our affiliate Datastory were invited to develop a more expansive systemic racism mapping program for the entirety of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island using the powerful demographic–analytic platform MapDash for Faith Communities. 

FaithX can help your congregation or judicatory explore the impact of structural racism in the neighborhoods and communities they serve with a Data-Grounded Systemic Racism Assessment. For more information, contact info@faithx.net.

[Read more…]

FaithX, Datastory, and Long Island: Displacing Systemic Racism with Love and Understanding

By The Rev. Canon Claire Woodley
The Episcopal Diocese of Long Island

The Episcopal Diocese of Long Island has long been working towards addressing the many layers of racism on Long Island over decades and through several Episcopates.  The current Bishop of Long Island, the Rt. Rev. Lawrence Provenzano, has been seeking ways to increase dialogue and action, and to develop the tools to support it. 

Following a diocese-wide plea for congregations and individuals to engage the Sacred Ground series or the Healing from Systemic Racism program during Lent of 2021, Bishop Provenzano realized that the people of the diocese really needed drill down into the specifics of systemic racism here on Long Island, understanding that out of specificity comes creativity, and that if the Diocese could provide its people with easy access to the specific data for their setting, and that of those they love around the Diocese, understanding and creative common work can bloom. But the problem we ran into was that just giving people statistics didn’t cut it. We hear statistics all the time, in isolated bits and pieces that are difficult to put together, since those statistics often come without context or meaning.

It was at this point that we turned to FaithX and Datastory.

[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…]