Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report Archives

Apr 08 2021

Liberating Structures for Ministry

by Mary Frances

A few months ago, I stumbled on a Facebook invitation for something called Liberating Structures for meetings. It turns out this is a collaborative of folks who think that meetings shouldn’t be boring, they shouldn’t be predictable, and most of all they shouldn’t be required if they aren’t really necessary. I suppose that the last year of more Zoom meetings than usual helped to pique my interest and so I dove into a couple of weeks of webinars (yes, more Zoom meetings) and started to learn about this interesting group of ideas and tools.

The more these ideas percolate in me and the more I get to try on these new ideas, the more I think we need something like Liberating Structures for ministry. We could start with “are all these meetings really necessary?,” but then we could get down to the meaty stuff like “why are we doing this?” and “is this really important anymore?” or “are we just doing this because we have always done it?” And my favorite, “is our leadership organized to hinder or help support ministry?”

[Read more…]

Feb 04 2021

Creating Deeper Community Connections

Dear Readers,

After many requests, we have decided to postpone our webinar – Creating Deeper Community Connections – from February 17 to February 24 at 1:00pm ET to allow prospective participants to devote their entire attention to the celebration of Ash Wednesday on the 17th.

To register for the webinar, click here.

If you already registered and are okay with the new date, don’t worry: your registration will be automatically transferred to the new date.

If you are already registered and the date doesn’t work for you, simply go to the Eventbrite webinar registration page, request a refund, and we will happily comply.

Meanwhile, we hope to see you on the 24th.

Have a great Ash Wednesday!

by Mary Frances

Click this link to register
for our webinar on this topic on February 17, 2021 at 1:00pm
sponsored by FaithX, ECF, and the Gathering of Leaders

When I was in my last parish call, I was fortunate to receive a detailed demographic report from one of the big companies offering such things. I spent hours pouring over the pages and pages of information. Median age, median income, race, education, and more. The whole thing was at least 20 pages long and eventually I realized that it just wasn’t going to do me any good. First, I didn’t really understand what to do with this information. Second, I didn’t know where some of these population groups were. I understood there was a growing Latino population in town, but I didn’t know where they were. I knew that the number of people experiencing homelessness was growing, but aside from the few who came to the door of the church, was there a place these folks gathered? Sought shelter? I just didn’t know and, perhaps more importantly, I didn’t know how to find out.
Today we have clarity on two of the issues I raised above. We now have demographic reports that are clear, concise, and point to community strengths, weaknesses, and risk factors. The Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report from FaithX provides over 40 relevant data points – in just two pages! And when we dig deeper into those data points we can determine how and where a community is growing or not, where there is affordable housing or not, and predominant population groups based on age, race, and gender. We can also determine at a glance if there are concerns about medical coverage, the growing cost of daycare or how many people in your neighborhood are falling into poverty. These numbers are vital to going beyond anecdotal evidence to understand the joys and concerns of the community in which we are planted.

[Read more…]

Jan 21 2021

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

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…

[Read more…]

Jan 14 2021

Thinking Strategically about Your Next Leader

By Mary Frances, FaithX Senior Consultant

This is post #2 of a 3-part series on Thinking Strategically about Missional Planning and a Church’s Next Leader

Click here to read the last post

I remember when I was interviewing for my first call. Someone asked me how long I thought I would stay, should I receive the call. My answer was pretty standard, “Typically a first call is in the three-to-seven-year range,” I said. One of the committee members was crestfallen. She said, “I thought you would be here to marry my children!” That was 20 years ago and none of her children are married yet.

We tend to have lots of notions, romantic and other, about who our next leaders should be and what we expect of them. But what if, instead of some a set of unclarified, unspoken expectations, we entered into a call process with a clear idea of where we were headed and who we needed to take us there?

Last year I consulted with a congregation doing just that kind of work. They were about to enter the call process; completing all the forms the judicatory sent to them. Yet they wanted to be sure about what they put on those forms and how it would serve them in the future. It turned out this congregation had lots of empty nesters and their child, youth and family ministries were dwindling. And, so as we talked, they sounded like most churches in their situation. “We want more families with kids,” they said. And, I thought, “Doesn’t everyone?”

[Read more…]

Sep 03 2020

Combating Clergy Burnout in a Pandemic

Mary Frances
FaithX Senior Missional Consultant

It’s become a regular refrain lately from my coaching clients: This just isn’t what I signed up for. I don’t recognize ministry anymore. I don’t know how to do ministry anymore. Maybe it’s just no longer my call.

The spring flush of the Covid-19 crisis has turned into the late Summer dog days of ministry. Let’s face it, back in March when we all locked down, no one believed for a minute that we would still be here. According to recent research from the Barna Group,

What Clergy Are Reporting

47%
struggling with ministry to children and youth

44%
struggling with a hybrid model of ministry

46%
facing challenges to maintaining growth and momentum

35%
fear they are nearing personal burnout

90%
concerned that outreach efforts will be disrupted by the pandemic

100%
concerned that fall worship will be disrupted by the pandemic
and that there is nothing they can do about it.

Barna Group (August 2020)

Certainly, this is a time of uncertainty and change. Going back to the way things used to be isn’t really an option. If you are among the 40% of churches open for worship, you know that it doesn’t look or feel the same as it did back in February. The longer this goes on, the harder it is to imagine what the future will hold for congregations, for denominations, for faithful people. It is precisely in this kind of uncertainty that we need to grow our resilience muscles.

I never thought much about resilience in my life until I was preparing for ministry. When I received the results of my required psychological exams, there was a whole section on my high level of resilience. I had sought support during my divorce. I went to counseling when faced with life’s challenges. I had a mentality of picking yourself up by your bootstraps. But, in the years since I received that report, I have, of course, faced other adversities. And in the back of my mind, this little voice reminds me that I have a high level of resilience. And another voice says, “it sure doesn’t feel like it today.”

[Read more…]