The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

“I can’t breathe”: How you can impact systemic racism in the communities you serve

And how FaithX can help

By the Rev. Ken Howard

By now, most of you who follow our blog have had a chance to read the press release about the High Impact Award FaithX received for our work in mapping and mitigating systemic racism.

And while we are totally honored and excited to be recognized for the impact of our work, we would be even more excited to help more congregations and judicatories to make an impact on systemic racism in the neighborhoods they serve.

So this article is about how our approach to mapping and mitigating racism works and how we can help you employ that approach to confront systemic racism from your congregation or judicatory.

We begin by defining systemic racism

We have centered our work on a definition of systemic racism that is plain and simple:

Systemic racism is when a social system is structured in such a way that it disadvantages a particular race or ethnicity to the advantage of another

In other words:

You don’t have to be a racist to be complicit in systemic racism

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MapDash: A Real Game Changer

By The Rev. Canon C. John Thompson-Quartey
Canon for Ministry Development & Congregational Vitality
Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta

MapDash for Faith Communities has been a real game changer for our diocese.  Using this tool on a judicatory level has proven to be a real Godsend, because we are now able to get a deeper understanding of the needs and opportunities in the environment in which our faith communities are located, so that we may better craft a suitable intervention to help each congregation respond to real needs in their communities.  No more do we have to default to anecdotes about why congregations are failing.  With a little help from FaithX, MapDash for Faith Communities is giving us real data with which we can interpret the needs and opportunities in our communities.  

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Something new in 2022!

Congregational access to missional intelligence reports now available in MapDash

By The Rev. Ken Howard

Attention judicatory leaders!

Have pandemic budget cuts forced your denominational headquarters to discontinue access to local demographic reports by your judicatory and the congregations you serve?

Have you been waiting to commit to MapDashTM for Faith Communities until your congregations could directly access neighborhood demographic reports? 

The wait is over! 

The FaithX Project is excited to announce that, starting January 1, 2022, subscriptions to MapDash for Faith Communities, our affiliate Datastory’s highly-regarded demographic/analytic platform, will include an option for your congregational leaders to access interactive infographic Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Reports directly from their own laptop, tablet, or desktop computer.

Existing and new MapDash subscribers can now add this new experience for direct congregational access.

The fee for this add-on starts at $1,495 for up to 50 congregations. Additional congregations can be added for $500 per 50 congregations. For more than 200 congregations, contact us at info@faithx.net.

Click Here if You are Ready to Order

OR
For more information about how you can get this new MapDash add-on for your judicatory and its congregations or for guidance on your best option, contact FaithX at info@faithx.net.

FaithX Shortlisted for 2022 Esri Map Book

FaithX was recently informed by Esri that a GIS map we produced, entitled Redlining and Race: Mapping Systemic Racism, which was presented in Esri’s 2021 User Conference Plenary Session [view video | view still photo], has been shortlisted for inclusion in their 2022 Esri Map Book (Volume 37). We will find out later this year whether we made the final cut.

Each year Esri selects several dozen maps submitted by users and showcases some of the work of some of those users in a formal publication known as the Map Book. The purpose of this publication is to show how the application of GIS is creating positive outcomes in organizations and across society.

The map in question was taken from one of our Mapping Systemic Racism webinars, in which we explored the manifestations and impacts of systemic racism in a congregation in Brooklyn, New York. [click here to view the webinar]. As a result of this webinar, FaithX and our affiliate Datastory were invited to develop a more expansive systemic racism mapping program for the entirety of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island using the powerful demographic–analytic platform MapDash for Faith Communities. 

FaithX can help your congregation or judicatory explore the impact of structural racism in the neighborhoods and communities they serve with a Data-Grounded Systemic Racism Assessment. For more information, contact info@faithx.net.

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Data is not Destiny!

FaithX and MapDash in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland

by Mary Sulerud

Ever since my first training in using MapDash, the words spoken by the Rev. Ken Howard, FaithX founder, have echoed in my head every time I opened up my laptop and connected it to a projector to introduce the program to another congregation in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland.

“Data is not destiny,” he said.

I always start with those words; then I quickly add something he also shared that day…

“It really helps to begin with dreams
that have some relationship with reality on the ground.”

I graduated from an Episcopal Seminary in the 1980’s, amid several successive ambitious national evangelism campaigns by the Episcopal Church. The prevailing truism of the time was: Attract young families with children and your congregation will be sustained and you will thrive in ministry. Our congregations learned that lesson all too well.

The trouble was that while that may have been true in another era, it was already losing ground in many places by the time I graduated in 1988. In effect, we were sending people out to find the membership equivalent of the Holy Grail. But we rarely asked congregational leaders to look at the reality of their own neighborhoods and to discern if the demographic reality of our neighborhoods was in any way related to the characteristics of the people who sat in the pews on Sunday.

What is changing in the congregations of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland is that they are employing MapDash to explore neighbors and neighborhoods. And while MapDash is an important and useful tool in a wide variety of settings, I am increasingly finding that it is most helpful to congregational leaders who are undertaking strategic planning in their congregations.

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