The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Innovate for Building and Growing Community

by Steve Matthews, FaithX Senior Consultant
Growing Community

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand.
The arrogance of success is to think
that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”

William Pollard
Online Small Groups

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

I like working with FaithX.  As consultants we are invited to bring our whole selves to the table. We bring our experience, our vocation, our vision, and we are invited everyday to innovate for the benefit of the faith communities and judicatories we accompany.  

One way we experience innovation comes in the way Mary Frances, Ken Howard, and I collaborate with one another, and we also experience the excitement of innovation as we bring robust data to bear on the community contexts of the people we serve. We work with our partner DataStory to offer dynamic, informative, eye-opening resources to help organizations chart a path toward bolder and more creative visions than they might have been otherwise imagined.  

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Repeated by Popular Demand! Before You Go Back to the Building: Preparing for the Recovery from COVID-19 (a free webinar)

FREE WEBINAR
(Repeated by Popular Demand!)
Before You Go Back to the Building:
Preparing for the Recovery from COVID-19
May 19, 2020 | 3:30-4:30pm | On Zoom
click here to register

It’s fair to say that our ideas of how to be and do Church have been turned on their heads over the last several weeks, and many of us are just starting to think about what it might be like to return to some semblance of “normal.”  Some churches may have found new opportunities through online gatherings, but most of the people we have spoken with are anticipating being with their community in the church building again. Some judicatories have advised their congregations they can go back in early May, others at the end of May, while still others want to wait and see. The wisdom of any of these ideas remains to be seen, as does the question of whether the new normal will be anything at all like the old normal. As the old saying goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans,” but sooner or later we will be able to come out of isolation and have the opportunity to gather our communities in person again. 

So wouldn’t it would be a good idea to go back with a plan in mind: a plan based on a vision – a plan imbued with flexibility, a plan that is sensitive to a greatly-altered context, and a plan that is based on discernment grounded in data?

We want to help you with this. 

In this webinar we will provide you with tips on how to use demographic and analytic data to maintain context awareness as you develop your plan to make it through the transition into whatever our new normal will be. We will provide you access and orientation to a free tool (MapDash for COVID-19) that will ground your discernment in that kind of data. Data that can help you help your people and your neighborhoods survive and thrive in new ways in the aftermath and recovery from COVID-19.

click here to register for the webinar

[Read more…]

Before You Go Back to the Building: Preparing for the Recovery from COVID-19 (a free webinar)

FREE WEBINAR
Before You Go Back to the Building:
Preparing for the Recovery from COVID-19
April 28, 2020 | 4:00-5:00pm | On Zoom
click here to register

It’s fair to say that our ideas of how to be and do Church have been turned on their heads over the last several weeks, and many of us are just starting to think about what it might be like to return to some semblance of “normal.”  Some churches may have found new opportunities through online gatherings, but most of the people we have spoken with are anticipating being with their community in the church building again. Some judicatories have advised their congregations they can go back in early May, others at the end of May, while still others want to wait and see. The wisdom of any of these ideas remains to be seen, as does the question of whether the new normal will be anything at all like the old normal. As the old saying goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans,” but sooner or later we will be able to come out of isolation and have the opportunity to gather our communities in person again. 

So wouldn’t it would be a good idea to go back with a plan in mind: a plan based on a vision – a plan imbued with flexibility, a plan that is sensitive to a greatly-altered context, and a plan that is based on discernment grounded in data?

We want to help you with this. 

In this webinar we will provide you with tips on how to use demographic and analytic data to maintain context awareness as you develop your plan to make it through the transition into whatever our new normal will be. We will provide you access and orientation to a free tool (MapDash for COVID-19) that will ground your discernment in that kind of data. Data that can help you help your people and your neighborhoods survive and thrive in new ways in the aftermath and recovery from COVID-19.

click here to register for the webinar

[Read more…]

Connecting Congregations and Communities (A COVID Webinar)

By the Rev. Ken Howard

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020, The Rev. Ken Howard, Executive Director of The FaithX Project, delivered a webinar on the entitled Strategies and Tools for Keeping Congregations and Communities Connected During (and after) the COVID-19 Crisis. In the webinar, Ken discusses

  • How to use technology to keep congregations connected through worship, fellowship, formation, and other congregational functions.
  • How to use interactive demographics to identify and engage at-risk populations in our neighborhoods.
  • How to use interactive analytics to identify and engage vulnerable neighborhoods.

You will find webinar video below

[Read more…]

The FaithX Project, Inc. is 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a religious and charitable purpose operated as a ministry by the Rev. Ken Howard under an extension of ministry from the Episcopal Bishop of Washington.