The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

MVB: Seven Steps to an Enduring Vision

By Ken Howard

Write the vision; make it plain… so that a runner may read it.
Habakkuk 2:2

This is the second of two blog posts on Minimum Viable Belief (click here for previous post), the term I have used to describe the driving vision of a faith-based community or organization. Minimum Viable Belief – or MVB – is the seminal belief or value that is so deep, so shared, so core to the community that it is the source of all other beliefs, values, and actions of the organization. It is the core source of meaning and purpose to the community and its members. Simply put, it is the “Why of Whys.” MVB is a vision that is so clear and plain that it creates and sustains an enduring organizational culture that can guide a faith community throughout its life, even when the community encounters turbulent times.

So far so good! But how does a faith-based community or organization discover, articulate, and communicate its MVB?

There are seven steps involved in discerning your community’s MVB:

  1. Naming
  2. Calling
  3. Clarifying
  4. Seeing
  5. Dreaming
  6. Visioning
  7. Proclaiming

Allow me walk you through each of the seven steps, while providing real-life examples from my own former congregation, a mature startup in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. [Read more…]

The Religion Singularity Crisis: Avoid the Danger – Discover the Opportunity

chinese-crisis-danger-oppor-2

By Ken Howard

It has been said that the Chinese word for “crisis” is formed from two ideograms: one which signifies danger, the other opportunity.

Last summer, we published a research paper entitled, “The Religion SIngularity: The Demographic Crisis Destabilizing and Transforming Institutional Christianity” in the Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society. The article describes an emerging phenomenon, which we have called the Religion Singularity: the runaway growth-by-fragmentation in the numbers of denominations and worship centers at a rate exceeding the growth in the total population of Christians worldwide.

The danger in this crisis is existential. If the long-standing current trend does not change – and it seems unlikely we can fight it – then it will drive down the size of those institutions to unsustainable levels by the end of this century. We may see the end of denominations and worshipping communities as we have known them.

But how do we find the opportunity in this crisis? The answer lies in point of view and preparation. Once we accept that denominations and worship centers will die in their current form, then we can prepare to ride out the change, so that we might survive and thrive in the midst of the current uncertainty into whatever form the resurrected body of Christ might take on the other side. Faith-based communities and organizations will need to find a way to achieve sustainability in the truest sense of the term: choosing to adapt to their changing environment while remaining true to their vision and mission.  [Read more…]

Latest Research: Conservative Denominations Joining Mainline In Decline

America’s Changing Religious Identity 2016:
A Research Review
click on image to download document

By Ken Howard

The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) has just published their findings from the 2016 American Values Atlas in a study entitled America’s Changing Religious Identity.  Their findings add further confirmation those of our research, The Religion Singularity, published in the International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society in July, which projects that institutional Christianity will become unsustainable in its current forms before the end of this century.

Of particular significance is the finding that, despite decades insistence to the contrary by their proponents, theologically conservative denominations and congregations are not immune to the decline that has affected mainline liberal denominations after all, but rather are making up for lost time, matching or exceeding the current rate of shrinkage of their mainline brethren and sistren. In fact, it may even be worse for them than it looks, as millennials are abandoning conservative evangelical congregations at a rate faster than they are leaving other segments of institutional Christianity.

Also consistent with our findings in The Religion Singularity is the fact that “religiously unaffiliated” is one of the fastest growing and “religious” groups in America, growing at such a rate that they could become a significant majority of the U.S. population in less than 15 years (our projection based on PPRI statistics). Meanwhile, religiously unaffiliated is increasing as a portion of each new generation. More than a third (36%) of Americans 18-30 are religiously unaffiliated, compared to less than a tenth of those 80 or older.

Another finding of significance is how syncretized religious and political affiliation have become, with the two becoming so overlapped that political affiliation is fast becoming a predictor of religious affiliation and theological leanings.  For example, if a person politically identifies as Republican, there is a 73% chance they will be a white conservative Christian, where white Christians make up only 29% of Democrats (14% of Democrats under 30).

Findings like these, Pew Research’s America’s Changing Religious Landscape (2015), and our own research, The Religion Singularity (International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, 2017), are often greeted with a combination of fatalism (“We’re all gonna die”) and denial (“My church is growing, so this can’t be true”). But we see them as a vision-clearing wake-up call and a opportunity to rethink the way we do church so that, while we may see the end of institutional Christianity in this century, we can develop a Christ-following movement of faith-based communities from its remains.

Other findings include:

[Read more…]

The Religion Singularity: What Can You Do About It? How Can You Prepare?

This is the second post in five-part series.
Click here for Part 1.

The impact on denominations: Death by black hole – oblivion – fragmenting and shrinking at such a rate that they are unlikely to be sustainable by any means.

The impact on worship center – a choice:  Black hole or wormhole – fragmenting and shrinking at an even higher rate, they can do nothing and face the same oblivion as denominations, or they can transform themselves into experimental faith communities and take a wormhole ride into a different way of being.

The Religion Singularity and Its Impact

Religion Singularity Small
Source: “Status of Global Mission 2014,” Bulletin of Missionary Research (Jan, 2010): 1.

Impact – Declining Denominations & Worship Centers

 

Decline in Denoms and Worship Ctrs

What Can Denominations and Worship Centers Do To Prepare?

There is nothing denominations can do to save themselves. If they try to save their lives, they will not only lose their own lives, but in trying to generate the resources to save themselves they risk dooming to death their associated worship centers by robbing them of the resources and the freedom they need to transform themselves. The most generative act denominations can do is to prepare for their own deaths by shifting resources and creative autonomy to their worship centers, so that the best of their DNA will survive in their descendants.

Worship centers can transform themselves into experimental faith communities. Compared to denominations, worship centers, by their nature, may be more flexible in the face of the changes they both face. Because the bulk of their ministries and programs are carried out by unpaid volunteers within a flatter organizational structure, worship centers are by nature much less dependent on a large base of supporting members than are denominational structures, which tend to be more hierarchical with a much greater percentage of paid staff. Consequently, it will likely be easier for individual worship centers, even as they grow smaller, to become more flexible, adaptive, and creative in the face of these changes (though it is by no means certain how many of them will).

So here’s the question. What are the qualities worship centers must acquire to ride the Religion Singularity wormhole successfully?

Agility. To survive and thrive in an unpredictable environment, an organization must possess agility:   the power to move quickly and nimbly around obstacles and toward opportunities. But it also means the capability to make vital decisions swiftly and effectively, deftly discriminating between paths containing varying degrees of danger and opportunity.

Vision. All the agility in the world will literally get you nowhere if you don’t know where you are going, which in a chaotic environment is literally impossible. Yet even when you can’t know precisely the place you want to end up, you can still know what you want to be like when you get there, and you can evaluate the possible paths before you based on whether they move you closer to or farther from that vision. This is why a transcendent vision is essential for faith-based communities and organizations operating in an uncertain environment.

Lean. To put it bluntly, “fat and agile” is an oxymoron. More mass means more inertia. More inertia means less agility. Becoming lean means shedding excess mass by eliminating all forms of waste. Traditionalism, dogmatism, clericalism, and any other “-ism” in which a created form is worshipped nearly as much as the Creator, all enable waste. Bad stewardship of congregation members’ time, talents, and treasure also increases waste. Becoming lean means reducing inertia by jettisoning every unproductive organizational process and structure, and leverage all of the capabilities of congregation members to the fullest. And as with agility itself, being lean also requires a clear and transcendent vision, in order to distinguish between those aspects of organizational structure and process that support the vision – and so must be kept – and those that do not – and must be eliminated.

Contextual Attentiveness. In order to identify and steer clear of obstacles and move toward opportunities, faith-based communities and organizations must be actively and continuously monitoring their environments.

Common Cause Community. In order to minimize competition and maximize collaboration between themselves and other organizations, faith-based communities and organizations must be able to make common cause with organizations that have similar visions and are heading in similar directions. In set theory this is known as centered-set community, in which membership is determine by shared vision and goals. It is the opposite of boundaried-set community, in which membership is defined based on boundary characteristic: all the ways in which the organization is different from all other organizations. Faith-based communities and organizations in turbulent environments must share the attitude of Jesus that “whoever is not against us is for us.” (Mark 9:40, Luke 9:50)

Rapid Hypothesis Testing.  To thrive in such an environment, faith-based communities and organizations must be able to rapidly make and test strategic hypotheses, quickly discarding strategies that fail the test and continuing with strategies pass it, repeating this process as often as needed.

Actionable Metrics. To effectively test hypotheses, an organization must know how to develop evaluative measures that provides it with the necessary feedback to know how well its chosen strategies is working, and how to adjust course.

Which brings us full circle, back to Agility. To survive and thrive in escalating uncertainty and accelerating change, faith-based communities and organizations must be able to do all of these things quickly, adroitly, and as often as needed.

Coming Soon: From Qualities to Practices

Click here to read the full paper: “Singularity: The Death of Religion and the Resurrection of Faith” (on Academia.edu).