The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

CVI Analytic Indicators as Check Engine Light

Part 5  in a series on MapDash analytics

By Ken Howard

After the last blog post in our series on MapDash Analytics, some of you asked, “What is the most appropriate way for me to consider what the indicators of the Congregational Vitality Index (CVI) are trying to tell me?”

I find that the best analogy to the Green-Yellow-Red ratings of the indicators that make Congregational Vitality Index (as well as the factors that make up those indicators) is that they are “warning lights,” like the “check engine” light on your car’s dashboard:

  • If it’s green, keep on driving – but keep up your scheduled maintenance
  • If it’s yellow, attention required – make an appointment to have it checked
  • If it’s red, urgent attention required – stop the car right now and have it towed to the dealer.
[Read more…]

Directional Indicators and Discernment Starters: Congregational Vitality and Sustainability Trend Indexes

By Ken Howard

(This is the fourth of eight articles on MapDash for Faith Communities Analytics)

Two of the most asked questions about analytics provided by MapDash for Faith Communities are about the Congregational Vitality Index (CVI) and the Congregational Sustainability Index (CSI). Both are powerful analytic tools if used wisely. The purpose of this article is to help MapDash users properly understand these tools, so they can interpret them appropriately and apply them effectively.

What They Are and What They Aren’t

CVI and CSI are not assessments. Assessments are direct, graded, criterion-referenced measurements that provide objective answers at a point in time. They make judgements based on facts that either inform or imply what the decision maker should do about it. Example (sailing): Is your boat currently leaking? If yes, fix the leak. If no, good to go.

CVI and CSI are indexes. Indexes are a collection of indicators that sample and describe the relative overall direction of factors that are correlated with a particular concern and may be predictive of it, but do not measure the concern directly. They describe a trend and let the user discern what the trend means and what to do about it by filtering insights through the organizations vision, mission, commitments, resources, etc. Example (sailing): If you continue to sail in the direction you have been, are you heading shoreward or toward the open sea? If you mean to sail across the ocean blue, go on with your bad self. If not, better tack toward the shore.

[Read more…]

Broadening Our Reach – Increasing our Offerings

It’s been 12 months since Ken Howard and Matt Felton, respective founders of FaithX and Datastory, appeared at the exposition hall at the Austin Convention Center in Texas to launch Datastory’s new MapDash for Faith CommunitiesTM strategic missional planning platform along with FaithX’s Strategic Missional Consulting initiative. 

Much has happened in the last year with both FaithX’s missional consulting services and Datastory’s platform. And we’d like to bring you up to date on all the progress we have made in such a relatively short time.

[Read more…]

A Priest and A Data Geek Walk Into A Bar: Sneak Preview of Ken’s Esri User Conference Presentation

On Tuesday, July 9 at 11:15am, Ken Howard, our executive director and principal consultant, will deliver a presentation on data-grounded strategic missional planning at the Esri International User Conference in San Diego, CA.*

The presentation, “Grounding Discernment in Data: Strategic Missional Planning Using MapDash for Faith Communities” will describe how FaithX collaborated with Datastory to adapt interactive GIS technology to provide a platform and a process to help congregations and their judicatories learn the stories of their neighborhoods, identify missional opportunities and challenges emerging from those stories, and develop effective strategies for engaging them. Ken has been asked to deliver this 20-minute presentation as part of Esri’s Expo Spotlight Theater, which will also be spotlighting how other nonprofit organizations put GIS data to work in their respective areas of focus.

Since few of you will be attending the Esri User Conference and many of you have asked about the presentation, we thought it would be a good idea to give our faithful readers a sneak preview.  

Click here to view Grounding Discernment in Data

This presentation is in the form of a datastory:
an interactive presentation tool.
To view the presentation, simply scroll up through the “slides.”

*Esri is an international supplier of geographic information system software, web GIS, and geodatabase management applications.
The company is headquartered in Redlands, California.
The company was founded as Environmental Systems Research Institute
in 1969 as a land-use consulting firm.

Support FaithX

FaithX is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and Ken’s faith-based consulting practice at FaithX is done under an extension of ministry from the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

Want to learn more about missional opportunities
in your congregation’s neighborhood?
Click here for a free Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report

Want to learn how your judicatory can identify
emerging missional opportunities within its boundaries?
Click hereto schedule a free demo of MapDash for Faith Communities by Datastory
and Strategic Missional Planning by FaithX

MissionWebs and DriveTimes: Defining the boundaries of our neighborhood

by Ken Howard

If “Love your neighbor” remains a core command for followers of Jesus, both as individuals and as congregations, then “Who are the people of our neighborhood?” (cue Mr. Rogers’ theme song) remains our core question. 

But before we can ask “who?,” we first have to ask “where?”… Where are the practical boundaries of our neighborhood? 

After all, we don’t have the wherewithal to show infinite love to everyone everywhere. Unlike God, both as individuals and as congregations, our love has limits. Limited time, limited attention, limited space, limited resources. So we have to prioritize how and where and to what end we will spend those resources to reap the most good for the most people. In other words, we have to establish reasonable boundaries for “our” neighborhood to which we will open our hearts and our doors. 

Back in the old days, when denominational affiliation was more important to people than it is now, hierarchies established our boundaries for us. These were both our “fishing ponds” (the area from which our people would come) and our “cure of souls” (the area for which we were responsible to serve). 

For many reasons, those kinds of boundaries don’t work any more. So how do we define the area in which we will cast our nets and for which we will take responsibility?

MapDash for Faith Communities offers two ways to ask these questions: one is called “MissionWebs,” the other DriveTime Boundaries.

[Read more…]

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