The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

  • COVID Resources
    • Free & Discounted Resources
    • COVID-19 Blog Series
  • About
    • About FaithX
      • Annual Report (2019)
    • The FaithX Team
    • Our Clients
    • Partner Organizations
  • Services
    • Strategic Missional Planning Services
    • Missional Solutions for Congregations
    • Missional Solutions for Judicatories
    • Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report
    • Covid Impact Planning Report
    • Neighborhood Missional Assessment
    • MapDash for Faith Communities
    • Testimonials
  • Resources
    • Congregational Vitality Assessment Tool (CVA)
      • CVA – FAQs
    • COVID Resources
    • Assessment Tools
    • Books
      • Paradoxy
      • Excommunicating the Faithful
    • Research
      • General Research
      • “Religion Singularity”
      • SHERM Journal
    • Sermons
    • Videos
  • Blog
    • Subscribe
    • COVID-19 Blog Series
    • FaithXperimental Spotlight
  • Events
    • Coming Events
    • Event Recordings
  • Donate

Mar 19 2020

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:

  • CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Perhaps the most authoritative source,  the CDC has pages for general, faith-based, community, and individual-oriented COVID information and recommendations. 
  • Your State and local government or local health department websites. My local government, for example, has a COVID19 Information page and a COVID Closures page.
  • Your Judicatory or denominational websites. My own Judicatory, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, for example, has an entire page dedicated COVID information and resources, including links to all local health departments within its bounds, and my denomination, the Episcopal Church, also has a very useful Concerning COVID19 information and resources page, including links to the COVID advisory pages of most of its dioceses. The Episcopal Church Foundation is also compiling a curated list of COVID resources.
  • MapDash for Faith Communities. Those judicatories and congregations who have or have access to this powerful demographic and analytic missional assessment and planning platform will soon be receiving updates to their dashboard, including localized data on incidences of COVID-19, hospital locations and capacity, locations of doctors, COVID-related Twitter feeds, and more. (Full disclosure: FaithX is an affiliate of Datastory, the GIS firm that developed MapDash with our assistance).
  • MapDash for COVID-19. A free version of MapDash focused specifically on COVID-related data.
  • COVID19 Tracking Dashboard. Johns Hopkins and ESRI partnered to develop this tool that provides regular infographic updates on the cumulative number of COVID infections, active cases, deaths, and recoveries by country, state, and some larger cities.
[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, Future of Faith, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: Beyond Online Worship, burden of care, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Coronavirus, COVID19, datastory, email tree, Esri, financial assistance, Johns Hopkins, Local Health Departments, MapDash for Faith Communities, neighborhood missional assessment, Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report, outreach opportunities, reliable sources, shut-ins, telephone tree

Sep 26 2019

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:

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: church demographics, datastory, datastory for faith communities, Demographics, Esri, GIS Technology, MapDash for Faith Communities, MapDash Version 2.2, Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Assessment, Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report, NMIR

Jul 03 2019

A Priest and A Data Geek Walk Into A Bar: Sneak Preview of Ken’s Esri User Conference Presentation

On Tuesday, July 9 at 11:15am, Ken Howard, our executive director and principal consultant, will deliver a presentation on data-grounded strategic missional planning at the Esri International User Conference in San Diego, CA.*

The presentation, “Grounding Discernment in Data: Strategic Missional Planning Using MapDash for Faith Communities” will describe how FaithX collaborated with Datastory to adapt interactive GIS technology to provide a platform and a process to help congregations and their judicatories learn the stories of their neighborhoods, identify missional opportunities and challenges emerging from those stories, and develop effective strategies for engaging them. Ken has been asked to deliver this 20-minute presentation as part of Esri’s Expo Spotlight Theater, which will also be spotlighting how other nonprofit organizations put GIS data to work in their respective areas of focus.

Since few of you will be attending the Esri User Conference and many of you have asked about the presentation, we thought it would be a good idea to give our faithful readers a sneak preview.  

Click here to view Grounding Discernment in Data

This presentation is in the form of a datastory:
an interactive presentation tool.
To view the presentation, simply scroll up through the “slides.”

*Esri is an international supplier of geographic information system software, web GIS, and geodatabase management applications.
The company is headquartered in Redlands, California.
The company was founded as Environmental Systems Research Institute
in 1969 as a land-use consulting firm.


Support FaithX

FaithX is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and Ken’s faith-based consulting practice at FaithX is done under an extension of ministry from the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.


Want to learn more about missional opportunities
in your congregation’s neighborhood?
Click here for a free Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report


Want to learn how your judicatory can identify
emerging missional opportunities within its boundaries?
Click hereto schedule a free demo of MapDash for Faith Communities by Datastory
and Strategic Missional Planning by FaithX

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: datastory, Esri, Esri International User Conference, faithx project, GIS, Grounding Discernment in Data, ken Howard, MapDash for Faith Communities, strategic missional planning

Apr 11 2019

Using Science to Find the Faithful: FaithX and MapDash Feature in WhereNext eMagazine

FaithX and MapDash for Faith Communities were featured in an article published this week in WHERENEXT, an online eMagazine of Esri, the international GIS company that provides much of the data that powers MapDash. The author’s team interviewed FaithX founder Ken Howard, and faith leaders representing several FaithX clients, including:

  • Kammy Young, Canon Missioner for Development, Episcopal Diocese of Central Gulf Coast
  • Scott Slater, Canon to the Ordinary, Episcopal Diocese of Maryland
  • Tom Brackett, Manager for Church Planting & Mission Development, Episcopal Church

Scroll down for an excerpt from and a link to the WhereNext article…

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: demographic change, Esri, faithx, Kammy Young, MapDash, Scott Slater, Tom Brackett, WHERENEXT

FaithX is Datastory Affiliate

Copyright © 2021 · Altitude Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in