The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

FACT 2020: How Congregations Have Changed in the Last 20 Years

by Darren Slade, PhD – FaithX Director of Research

The organization, Faith Communities Today, along with 21 other Christian faith traditions, just released the results of the largest national survey of congregational trends in the United States. Spanning two decades of research (from 2000‒2020), the “Twenty Years of Congregational Change” reports findings from interviewing 15,278 congregations among 80 separate denominations and religious groups.

What’s significant about this particular survey is that it tracks multiple levels of change within American congregational life during both the pre- and early COVID era, much of which was predicted by the FaithX Project and its groundbreaking “Religion Singularity” research.

Continue reading to learn about some of the major highlights and results of the survey.

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Total Christian Clergy Deaths Resulting from COVID-19


by Darren Slade, PhD – FaithX Director of Research

Over the past year, the FaithX Project, in partnership with researchers from the Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR), conducted a study to answer one very important question about clergy deaths:

How many Christian “clergy” members, from all denominations and traditions, died as a result of the COVID-19 virus?

While the study can only provide estimates and statistical probabilities, the research is finally complete and the preliminary numbers are in.

[Read more…]

Coming Soon: CVA – Judicatory Version

Coming Late June/Early July
click here to request more information
about our early adopter discount

Hard to believe it’s only been nine months since we launched Congregational Vitality Assessment (CVA 1.0) in collaboration with the Episcopal Church Foundation.

We’ve come a very long way in a very short time!
And soon we will release CVA 2.0
and launch the new CVA Judicatory Version

CVA 2.0 (the congregational version) will feature a totally redesigned user interface, based on user input, for a much enhanced user experience, including a new Spanish-language version.

What’s in the CVA Judicatory Version?
We created the CVA-JV in response to requests and design input from several judicatories (dioceses, synods, districts) across the U.S. that wanted to incorporate into the systemwide congregational development processes. It will provide them with a judicatory-specific dashboard that will allow them to:

  • Directly coordinate the administration of the CVA to their congregations.
  • Receive anonymized diagnostic summary assessments of their congregations’ vitality and sustainability.
  • Monitor congregational vitality and sustainability on a year-to-year basis.
  • Add locally-relevant questions about congregations’ ministries, programs, and other important information.
  • Supplement the backward-looking parochial reporting data with real-time, forward-looking diagnostic data and recommendations that their congregations can use to improve their own vitality and sustainability. 

How can we access the CVA Judicatory Version?
The CVA-Judicatory Version will be made available on a subscription basis. Included in the subscription will be free annual updates reflecting new congregational vitality research and incorporating user feedback and suggestions. 

How much will it cost to subscribe?
Once released, the annual cost of a subscription to the CVA-JV will be $2,495, with a first year set-up fee of $2,500 (to cover customized programming).

Is there a discount for early adopters?
We are offering a $1,000 setup early adopter discount to judicatories that sign up for subscriptions before our late-June/early-July launch date.

Have any judicatories signed up yet?
We are happy to announce that the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma is our first early adopter. Currently, we are in discussions with several other Episcopal dioceses and ELCA synods. Watch our FaithX blog for updates.

click here to request more information
about our early adopter discount

Be the First in Your Neighborhood

by The Rev. Ken Howard

Early Adopter Discount on Forthcoming CVA Judicatory Version

It’s hard to believe that it’s been only seven months since we launched the online version of the Congregational Vitality Assessment in collaboration with the Episcopal Church Foundation. Yet we’ve come a very long way in a very short time.

And this spring we will launch CVA 2.0 and along with it a new CVA Judicatory Version (CVA-JV). 

CVA 2.0 will feature a totally redesigned GUI (graphical user interface), based on user input, for a much enhanced user experience.

CVA-JV was not even a gleam in our eyes when we launched CVA 1.0, but rather, its creation is a response to requests from several judicatories (i.e., dioceses, synods, districts) across the U.S., and its design is based on their input.

CVA-Judicatory Version will allow judicatories to directly coordinate the administration of the free CVA to their congregations and receive anonymized vitality and sustainability diagnostic summaries from those congregations. CVA-JV will have a customized judicatory-specific dashboard that will allow them to add locally relevant questions (which won’t affect the diagnostic scores) but will provide them important information about their congregations, such as race/ethnicity, types of ministries/programs, and more. In addition, the language of the CVA will be customized to the various denominations and faith traditions that might use the CVA, as well as a Spanish language version. We anticipate that many judicatories will use the CVA-JV to supplement the rear-view-mirror data they get from the parochial reporting mechanism with real-time vitality diagnostics that their congregations can use to improve their own vitality. 

[Read more…]

Looking Toward the Future: How Your Judicatory Can Help

by Mary Frances
Judicatory

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

In our last blog post I wrote about the amazing ways that judicatories have stepped up in the face of these unprecedented times.  Today I want to consider how your judicatory can help you as you look to the future of your ministry.

Here at FaithX we work with judicatories all around the country to help them identify growth and define areas in their geographic region and key demographics to target as well as community issues and partners.  Combining data with anecdotal information has perhaps never been more important.  We support this work in several ways:

MapDash for Faith Communities Subscription
MapDash is a powerful missional assessment and planning platform with interactive demographic map layers and analysis tools to identify the “real world” make-up of your communities.  If your judicatory has a MapDash subscription, ask them to help you identify key demographics for your community.  If they don’t have a subscription, there are helpful alternatives such as the ones below…or you could encourage your judicatory to get a MapDash for Faith Communities subscription to support all the ministries of your judicatory.

[Read more…]