The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

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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A Tale of Two Faith Communities (Vitality-Based Discernment in Action)

by Ken Howard

In our early days of consulting with congregations and dioceses around issues of congregational vitality and sustainability, I had the opportunity to consult with two imperiled congregations: an inner city congregation and a suburban congregation (represented in the above maps on the left and right, respectively). In both cases, our work was pro-bono. In both cases, we were brought in at the request of the bishops and for obvious reasons, will not be identifying the congregations, their dioceses, or their bishops. 

With the exception of their locations – different cities in different dioceses, one in the inner city, one in the near suburbs – both congregations were in very nearly the same condition:

  • Depleted membership: under 50 and falling. 
  • Bare bones attendance: under 25 and falling.
  • Aging out: Few if any children (mostly aging Boomers),
  • Unable to afford a full-time pastor.
  • Majority of revenue from rental income.
  • Majority of operating expenses from a rapidly-decreasing endowment (both said that if they really stretched it they could eke out another 10 years before they went under).
  • Spiking increase in Giving per Household (both congregations were proud of this, but it’s usually a last ditch attempt to stave off the seeming inevitability of closure).

Discussions with imperiled congregations are always fraught with emotion: denial, fear, anger, sorrow, guilt, resentment, and more. This is probably a big reason why, in most cases, congregations and their judicatory leaders avoid talking with each other about it (though both have seen the proverbial “writing on the wall”) until it’s too late to turn things around. And even then, there is a lot of “crap” to cut through, because most imperiled congregations have had a long time (sometimes decades) to come up with great (often blame-ridden) reasons about why the judicator should invest lots of resources to keep them afloat, most of which begin, “If only judicatory would [insert “Hail Mary” solution here].”

One of the great advantages of doing data-grounded Neighborhood Missional Assessment with an interactive, demographic analytical tool like MapDash for Faith Communities is that it cuts through the crap and rapidly facilitates transparent discussions about the vitality and sustainability of the congregation, and mutual discernment and planning around what, if any, strategies might revitalize the congregation.

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