The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Online Worship Beyond Covid: Who is Your Target Audience?

On March 1, 2020, few mainline congregations offered an online worship opportunity to their communities.  By the end of March 2020, the majority of mainline congregations had found a way to provide an online presence for those seeking to continue to worship during the Covid shutdown.  For the most part, we saw that online services were shorter, had less music, less time (if any) for communion, and some even had online coffee hour afterward.  Services remained posted online and available for days, weeks or months after the original airing and continue to be viewed.  Many leaders boasted of having people attend their online worship services from other states and even other countries.  It was an unusual time for our country and for the Church.  

The sense of crisis has passed and, from what we have learned, our attention to the online worship community has passed along with the crisis.  As you can see from the Episcopal Pulse survey above, the majority of congregations continue to offer streaming but only 3% offer an online worship service that is actually designed for an online community.  Instead, what we offer is the opportunity to observe other people worshiping, and that has really never been a draw for anyone except shut-ins who have had no other option.  

[Read more…]

EP Update: Hidden Opportunities in the Pandemic

EP 16 Findings and a Call for Volunteer Respondents

If you are a regular reader of the FaithX blog, you will know that we are working with TryTank Experimental Laboratory in a “proof-of-concept” experiment called Episcopal Pulse, the purpose of which is to keep a finger on the pulse of The Episcopal Church through weekly, rapid-response microsurveys.

Our most recent microsurvey (#16), completed last Friday, asked asked this question:

In what areas of congregational life
have you found hidden opportunities in the disruption caused by the pandemic?

Results:

Raw Findings (N=322):

  • Administration – None: 103 | Some: 163 | Many: 49 | Very Many: 7
  • Discipleship & Formation – None: 45 | Some: 172 | Many: 89 | Very Many: 16
  • Evangelism – None: 76 | Some: 162 | Many: 68 | Very Many: 16
  • Outreach: Social Justice – None: 95 | Some: 134 | Many: 65 | Very Many: 28
  • Outreach: Community Service & Partnerships – None: 66 | Some: 156 | Many: 74 | Very Many: 26
  • Property/Building Use – None: 142 | Some: 136 | Many: 35 | Very Many: 9
  • Worship & Spirituality – None: 22 | Some: 135 | Many: 125 | Very Many: 40
  • Other – None: 233 | Some: 55 | Many: 24 | Very Many: 10

Summary of Findings:

Most Episcopalians see few hidden opportunities in the disruption cause by in the pandemic. In all but one area, the majority of respondents (by at least a two-to-one margin) said they had found few, if any hidden opportunities in the disruption caused by the pandemic. The exception was Worship and Spirituality, for which a bare majority of respondents said they had found “many” or “very many” hidden opportunities in the pandemic disruption.

Insights (What does this tell us?)

Personally, I find these results disheartening but not surprising, except in their starkness. There are several ways we can interpret these findings.

Entrepreneurial Insight? Over the last decade or so, business and nonprofit sectors have come to the understand that any disruptions contain hidden opportunities, and the key to success in an uncertain and rapidly is to recognize and harvest those opportunities. Could it be that the vast majority of church leadership simply lacks the ability (or interest) to see past their investment in prevailing paradigms and perceive disruption-based opportunities (aka Paradigm blindness).

Adaptive Leadership? Could it be that too many church leaders (and their congregations) simply do not have the ability to see the opportunities presented by disruption but lack the adaptive capacity to to engage them?

Spirit of Innovation? Could it be that too many church leaders (and their congregations) lack sufficient outside-the-box thinking to innovate new ways of being and doing church?

Formation? Could it be that our ministry discernment and theological education processes are weeding out too many candidates that possess the above qualities.

For Reflection

Which of these results confirm your perceptions?

Which of these results surprise you?

What do these results reveal to you?

From time to time we need to replenish our respondent pool

Know an Episcopalian who might be interested in being an Episcopal Pulse volunteer respondent?Send them this registration link:
episcopalpulse.org/register-to-be-a-respondent

Finger on the Pulse of the Episcopal Church

As you may know, FaithX is running a first-of-its kind experiment on using regular micro-surveys to keep a finger on the pulse of the Episcopal Church. We now have results back from two of those surveys that are very interesting.

Micro-survey #1:

  • With which areas of congregational life are you struggling?
  • With which areas of congregational life are you finding success?

The results of this survey show that a significant majority of the congregations are struggling the most in the areas of evangelism and discipleship and are finding the most success in the area of worship. 

I have to admit that when I first saw the results of this micro-survey, a song came to mind almost immediately: “Dance Band on the Titanic” by Harry Chapin. “We’ve hit the iceberg, but our music is great!”

The fact that we most struggle with both parts of Jesus’ Great Commission is concerning but not a great surprise. After all, “Evangelism” feels like the “E-word” to most Episcopalians. 

[Read more…]

TryTank announces partnership with FaithX to develop Episcopal Pulse

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 19, 2021 

Lorenzo Lebrija | TryTank Experimental Laboratory 
703-461-1880 | lorenzo@trytank.org 

Ken Howard | The FaithX Project 
301-704-4390 or ken@faithx.net

TryTank announces partnership with FaithX to develop Episcopal Pulse: 
Keeping a finger on the pulse of the Episcopal Church with regular two-minute surveys 

Alexandria, VA | Germantown, MD: As part of an evolving collaborative partnership between TryTank Experimental Laboratory and The FaithX Project, TryTank today announced that it had selected FaithX as experiment manager for its Episcopal Pulse proof-of-concept experiment. 

The purpose of the Episcopal Pulse experiment is to develop an ongoing vehicle to keep a finger on the pulse of the Episcopal Church through regular two-minute surveys of a representative cross-section of the ordained and lay leaders and members at the denominational, diocesan, and congregational level. 

The role of FaithX in this experimental project will be to take Episcopal Pulse from concept to working prototype through a design–build–test process, with the assistance of an advisory panel and scalable test group, both of which FaithX will assemble with support from TryTank. 

[Read more…]