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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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?”  

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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.”

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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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