The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

EP Update: Hidden Opportunities in the Pandemic

EP 16 Findings and a Call for Volunteer Respondents

If you are a regular reader of the FaithX blog, you will know that we are working with TryTank Experimental Laboratory in a “proof-of-concept” experiment called Episcopal Pulse, the purpose of which is to keep a finger on the pulse of The Episcopal Church through weekly, rapid-response microsurveys.

Our most recent microsurvey (#16), completed last Friday, asked asked this question:

In what areas of congregational life
have you found hidden opportunities in the disruption caused by the pandemic?

Results:

Raw Findings (N=322):

  • Administration – None: 103 | Some: 163 | Many: 49 | Very Many: 7
  • Discipleship & Formation – None: 45 | Some: 172 | Many: 89 | Very Many: 16
  • Evangelism – None: 76 | Some: 162 | Many: 68 | Very Many: 16
  • Outreach: Social Justice – None: 95 | Some: 134 | Many: 65 | Very Many: 28
  • Outreach: Community Service & Partnerships – None: 66 | Some: 156 | Many: 74 | Very Many: 26
  • Property/Building Use – None: 142 | Some: 136 | Many: 35 | Very Many: 9
  • Worship & Spirituality – None: 22 | Some: 135 | Many: 125 | Very Many: 40
  • Other – None: 233 | Some: 55 | Many: 24 | Very Many: 10

Summary of Findings:

Most Episcopalians see few hidden opportunities in the disruption cause by in the pandemic. In all but one area, the majority of respondents (by at least a two-to-one margin) said they had found few, if any hidden opportunities in the disruption caused by the pandemic. The exception was Worship and Spirituality, for which a bare majority of respondents said they had found “many” or “very many” hidden opportunities in the pandemic disruption.

Insights (What does this tell us?)

Personally, I find these results disheartening but not surprising, except in their starkness. There are several ways we can interpret these findings.

Entrepreneurial Insight? Over the last decade or so, business and nonprofit sectors have come to the understand that any disruptions contain hidden opportunities, and the key to success in an uncertain and rapidly is to recognize and harvest those opportunities. Could it be that the vast majority of church leadership simply lacks the ability (or interest) to see past their investment in prevailing paradigms and perceive disruption-based opportunities (aka Paradigm blindness).

Adaptive Leadership? Could it be that too many church leaders (and their congregations) simply do not have the ability to see the opportunities presented by disruption but lack the adaptive capacity to to engage them?

Spirit of Innovation? Could it be that too many church leaders (and their congregations) lack sufficient outside-the-box thinking to innovate new ways of being and doing church?

Formation? Could it be that our ministry discernment and theological education processes are weeding out too many candidates that possess the above qualities.

For Reflection

Which of these results confirm your perceptions?

Which of these results surprise you?

What do these results reveal to you?

From time to time we need to replenish our respondent pool

Know an Episcopalian who might be interested in being an Episcopal Pulse volunteer respondent?Send them this registration link:
episcopalpulse.org/register-to-be-a-respondent

Using the Pandemic to Procrastinate in Ministry

Procrastination Can Be the Death of Ministry

This post about using the pandemic as an excuse to procrastinate is written by Mary Frances, Senior Associate Consultant at the FaithX Project.

At the end of the year, I hear a common refrain from my clients: That’ll have to wait until the new year.  It’s a variation on a theme that we are all too familiar with.  I’ll start my diet right after the holidays.  I’ll start my new exercise routine in January.  I’ll deal with that problem tomorrow.  Kids love to use it as a way to procrastinate.  I’ll do my homework after this show.  I’ll do the dishes after this game.  Later, tomorrow, after…waiting.  Over the course of the last year there is a new variation on this theme:  after the pandemic.  We will deal with outreach after the pandemic.  We will get to know our community more deeply…. after the pandemic.  We will talk about stewardship, formation, new worship formats, you name it, it can all be done after the pandemic. 

After the pandemic really was an appropriate response a year ago, when everything was a mad scramble to get online and make radical changes in the blink of an eye.  Funny thing about this pandemic though, it didn’t just go away; it’s still here….and we don’t know how much longer it will be around, how much longer it will impact our ministries, how much more change it will require of us.  It’s still here.  Sure, there are vaccines, but there are also variants.  Every time we think there is light at the end of the tunnel, someone comes along to tell us the tunnel is longer than we thought. This is no time to procrastinate.

So, how much longer can we say after the pandemic without admitting it’s just a form of procrastination and avoidance?  What if, instead of after the pandemic, we started to ask: What can we do now? What is God asking of us today?  How can we connect with our members, visitors and community more deeply than ever before?  What is ONE thing we can do now that we couldn’t do before?  What is ONE thing that just can’t wait until after the pandemic?

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A Year of Lent

Year of Lent

This post on a Year of Lent is written by Steve Matthews, Senior Consultant for the FaithX Project.

This time last year, churches and judicatories were beginning to come to the realization that their Lenten practices and Easter celebrations were most likely going to be impacted by the pandemic.  Many imagined the worst would be over by Pentecost.  We hunkered down, got creative, moved online, and looked forward to a more normal way of being in the summer.  

Not only did the pandemic intensify and continue, we have also experienced trauma, anger, and injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder (among many others murdered as an effect of systemic racism).  We lived through a volatile election season that culminated in the raid on the Capitol on January 6th and an impeachment hearing.  It has been a horrendous year for us as a country… and this doesn’t even take into account the local challenges or those we have borne in our personal lives.

And now we enter Lent.  A time when we traditionally take on a practice to help us cultivate a penitent heart and a deeper relationship with Christ – most often this is an act of abstinence from some vice or pleasure.  I don’t know about you, but it feels like most of 2020 and 2021 have been a penitent walk in the desert, relying increasingly on God’s love and faithfulness through troubled times. It feels like the entire last year has been a forced celebration of lent.

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New Year, Same Challenges. Follow the Light!

by Mary C. Frances

We couldn’t have imagined we’d still be here last March. No, we couldn’t have imagined then that we would still be here now but here we are physically distanced, doing drive-through worship, showing up on Zoom, Facebook Live, and YouTube.  And, somehow, some way…by the grace of God, it’s working, it’s all working.  And it needs to keep working for quite some time.

Recently I had the opportunity to spend some time talking with a public health expert.  Someone who lives in the world of exposures and workplace safety.  Someone who has no skin in the game except to keep people safe.  He said hunker down.  The worst is yet to come.  We have another 9-12 months ahead of us before we can feel safe gathering in groups indoors.  A year?!  Another year?  We definitely didn’t see that coming last March!  

But maybe that news could be freeing.  Rather than looking ahead for each corner we need to turn in order to go back to the way things were before, what if we let go of that and just focus on what’s ahead, focus on the new year?  What if we dove into the next year with creativity, energy, grace, and adaptability without worrying about being in our buildings?  Could this be our best year of ministry yet?

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Hanukkah Light

by Steve Matthews

What time is it is an especially adept question during the Hanukkah season?

It seems there is a timelessness to life right now, and probably not in a good way. Our “normal” patterns and ways of marking time are disrupted.  Many people are unemployed, which affects the way they order their time.  Others, like health care workers, clergy, and teachers (just to name a few) are working harder than ever – working in person and online and in all kinds of synchronous and asynchronous combinations.  Thanksgiving patterns were different this year, and we can expect Christmas to offer challenges to our concept of “normal” time too.  

Fortunately, there are practices that enable us to experience “time” in ways that are grounding and nurturing.  On December 21 we will enter winter, and the changing of the seasons occurs regardless of who wins elections or what virus is afflicting us.  Can we sense the changing day length?  If we can’t appreciate the growing darkness, can we at least notice it and honor the rhythms of the earth that continue regardless of our human condition?  Many of our religious cycles (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost) occur every year, and while the way they are expressed may change with the current pandemic or other world events, their invitations to a deeper spiritual life expressed inwardly and in our actions is not muted.  These observances invite us to reflect and to celebrate God’s timeless and expansive love for us in ways that can embrace us in this current reality and even help us transcend the limited view of time our culture proffers.

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