The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Church in a New Reality: Now What?

by Mary Frances

This post is part of our Keeping Congregations Connected series and includes information on our upcoming webinar: Reopening Church in a New Reality: Re-Visioning in a Changing Context.

We used to say “The more things change, the more things remain the same,” but in 2020, that old saying has been turned on its head.  Today the one thing that remains the same is change. We live in a new reality. Each day we turn on the news or look at our social media feeds to find our way of life challenged as never before.  In the midst of so much change, how do we move forward? How do we think about thriving as the church rather than just surviving?

In the weeks after Covid-19 hit, churches across the country pivoted from in-person worship to online worship in the blink of an eye. I’m not sure the church has ever seen such a rapid change without major resistance! There were no committees, no focus groups, no church council discussions. It just happened. And it was good. Churches adapted to their new reality.

Then we began to address what other essentials needed to change.  Online giving took priority, new ways of doing pastoral care, phone trees were initiated, and members were contacted one by one.  “Are you okay?,” we asked.  “Do you need anything?”  “Can I pray for you?”  All was well.  Congregations were now safely ensconced on Zoom or Facebook Live.  Whew!

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Innovate for Building and Growing Community

by Steve Matthews, FaithX Senior Consultant
Growing Community

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand.
The arrogance of success is to think
that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”

William Pollard
Online Small Groups

This post is part of a blog series on
“Keeping Congregations Connected in the Face of COVID-19”
Click here for the previous post

I like working with FaithX.  As consultants we are invited to bring our whole selves to the table. We bring our experience, our vocation, our vision, and we are invited everyday to innovate for the benefit of the faith communities and judicatories we accompany.  

One way we experience innovation comes in the way Mary Frances, Ken Howard, and I collaborate with one another, and we also experience the excitement of innovation as we bring robust data to bear on the community contexts of the people we serve. We work with our partner DataStory to offer dynamic, informative, eye-opening resources to help organizations chart a path toward bolder and more creative visions than they might have been otherwise imagined.  

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A Time for Outreach (Part 2)

By Steve Matthews
Outreach Time

Keeping Congregations Connected is a series on strategies and tools for helping congregations survive and thrive in the face of the COVID crisis.
Click here for the previous post.

Last week, Mary Frances, Senior Associate Consultant with FaithX, wrote a blog encouraging churches to continue to think about outreach time. It can feel scary and maybe even premature to think about reaching out to our neighbors and inviting them into our faith communities again; but as Mary pointed out, the limitations of COVID-19 are challenging us to find new avenues of faithfulness – even with regard to outreach in a time of quarantine and social distancing.

FaithX can help. As experienced church planters and church redevelopers, we have learned to think strategically and creatively. We also see great value in “trying things on” to see what practices and experiments might work. 

One tool of great value to faith communities right now is a free COVID-19 resource available through our affiliate, Datastory (click here for the link as well as other COVID19- resources). With this tool you can identify populations in your neighborhood at greatest risk. What connections and possibilities might emerge for outreach time if your church hosted an online session using this free resource and invited your church leaders as well as leaders from other neighborhood faith communities and nonprofits? This creates the possibility for collaborative ministry as well as building important relationships in the neighborhood.

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After the In-Reach, Time for Outreach…

By Mary Frances
Time for Outreach

Keeping Congregations Connected is a series on strategies and tools for helping congregations survive and thrive in the face of the COVID crisis.
Click here for the previous post.

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that just about everything you learned about how to do church has been turned upside down in the last several weeks. You have led your congregations through change that may have taken decades previously, you have turned on a dime to offer virtual worship, online bible study, and calling teams for pastoral care. 

And to all of that I say, well done!

And now that you have all of that (AND Easter) under your belt, is it now time for outreach?  How do we make sure that the people outside of our communities can access what we are doing online?  How do we continue to invite, connect, and serve? I realize that this may seem a bit extreme to some, yet I think about the disciples, in the upper room after the resurrection, scared for their lives.  And what did they do? With the blessing and breath of Jesus upon them, they went out into a very scary world and told about what they had seen and experienced. It’s our turn to tell about what we have seen and experienced.  Perhaps we can’t go out physically, but we can still connect and invite. The time for outreach is now.

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