The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

FaithX and ECF help Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma implement groundbreaking Congregational Vitality Tracking Platform

“I am delighted to begin using the CVA [and the CVA Judicatory Platform] in Oklahoma. While much of the Christian life (individually and in community) cannot be measured, there are many indicators of vitality that can be. More vitality in congregations means more lives that can be transformed by God’s grace.”     

– The Rt. Rev. Poulson Reed, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma

The Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma has been the site of many firsts for the FaithX Project and our partners. 

In late 2017, the Diocese was one of a group of five judicatories that agreed to assist FaithX in beta-testing MapDash for Faith Communities as part of our collaboration with our affiliate Datastory to develop a first-of-its-kind online, interactive, map-based demographic and analytic platform.

In late 2020, they became the first of several judicatories to ask FaithX and our partner the Episcopal Church Foundation if we would consider developing a congregational vitality tracking platform that would allow judicatories to administer our Congregational Vitality Assessment diagnostic survey directly to their congregations, add judicatory-specific informational questions, receive anonymized survey results, track vitality and sustainability year-to-year, target their parochial interventions, and supplement their parochial reporting data with forward-looking diagnostics and recommendations. We love a good challenge, so we took them up on it.

Over the first half of 2021, Diocesan Director of Faith Formation and Discipleship Kate Carney Bond, along with other Diocesan staff worked closely with FaithX and our CVA partner, the Episcopal Church Foundation develop the platform: first by providing input for our prototype, then by providing feedback over several design iterations, and finally by beta testing in the month prior to our August 4 launch. In doing so, they also became the first judicatory to subscribe to the platform and take advantage of our $1,000 early-adopter custom setup discount.

And now the Diocese of Oklahoma has become the first of what we hope will be many to fully implement the Congregational Vitality Assessment Judicatory Platform. And the above quote from the Bishop of Oklahoma gives you a sense of how valuable they are finding this groundbreaking tool.

We will keep our readers apprised as additional judicatories come on board.

Meanwhile, visit CVAtool.org or email cva@CVAtool.org for more info about the CVA 2.0 diagnostic tool or CVA Judicatory Platform.

Or click here to register for our free webinar

A Tale of Three Churches: Strategic Missional Planning in Imperiled Congregations

By The Rev. Ken Howard

On the surface, they were three different congregations in two different parts of the country – one in a northern urban city, one in a mid-Atlantic suburb, and the other in a suburban southern resort area – but otherwise seemed very much the same. But all three were imperiled (e.g., in their judicatories’ version of hospice care), and their human and financial resources were dwindling rapidly.

Their average Sunday attendance was between 30 and 40, with Christmas and Easter attendance hovering around 60, in worship spaces with a capacity of 3-10 times that total. They were rapidly drawing down their endowments, none of which were above $25,000, and roughly two-thirds of their normal operating income was from rentals. Their giving per household was exceptionally high (a point of pride), but this is frequently the case with congregations that know at some level they are in danger of closing soon. They were still imperiled.

That’s when we were called in…

We took all of them through a process we call Neighborhood Missional Assessment, in which we explored the missional opportunities and challenges in the neighborhoods they serve, their vitality strengths and weaknesses, and whether and how they could leverage their strengths to better engage the opportunities and challenges, as well as address their weaknesses. We ran Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Reports to explore key demographic trends and projections that define neighborhood missional opportunities and challenges, and MapDash for Faith Communities to dive more deeply into the demographics and projections they deemed relevant. We used our free Congregational Vitality Assessment to explore their vitality in 10 areas of congregational life, as well as their likely sustainability (with those whose judicatories subscribed to MapDash, we explored their vitality and sustainability scores). And we did trend analysis and projection on their weekly attendance, membership, and income to determine when they each would flatline (all within 10 years).

Here is what we found and how each congregation responded to combat their being imperiled…

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The Truth Needs a Good Story

By the Rev. Ken Howard

Falsehood flies and Truth comes limping after
– Jonathan Swift (1710)

Jonathan Swift’s comment seems just as relevant now as it was when he wrote it in 1710. Both lies and truths tell a story.

Why is it that a lie and a false story travel so much faster than truth? Why do people seem to latch onto lies so much more easily?

I think it’s because lies always have better stories. Lies are stories: false stories but stories all the same. Their stories are often better because they are free to create them from scratch. Human beings are pattern seekers and meaning creators. We want there to be a reason for things. We don’t like chaos, unpredictability, or lack of control. And we much prefer it when the reason comes wrapped in a simple story that ties everything together and puts a bow on it. 

People who spread lies are free to create them from scratch, free to write a convincing narrative, free to write emotionally satisfying script at plays to their own biases about good guys and bad guys, and to give the listener the satisfaction of being one of the good guys. As H. L. Menken once said, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.”

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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.

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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:

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