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May 07 2020

Keeping Congregations Connected: Creating Neighborhood Community in the Context of COVID-19

by Mary Frances, FaithX Senior Consultant
Creating Neighborhood Community


The post is part of our “Keeping Congregations Connected in the Face of COVID-19” blog series.

Click here for the previous post.


What opportunities for connection, joy, support, love, collaboration, and ministry in your neighborhood are just waiting to be noticed, named, and nurtured?  

This strange time we are living in seems to be a time of dichotomy.  Social distance but stay connected. Protect yourself for the sake of others.  Find unity in the diaspora. Celebrate life while we sadly count the deaths.  Yet the church was created for a time such as this.  Today the most pressing question in the church is how do we stay connected while we are all at least 6 feet apart?  How do we go about creating neighborhood community from behind our computer screens?

I think we find the answer in shifting from our well-worn model of large group gatherings to something smaller and closer to home: house churches, neighborhood groups, small groups, or fractals.  Call them what you will, but small groups of people gathering around the gospel are the very foundation of the church.  We find examples of them in the New Testament and more recently in the growing Christian church in China as well as the house church movement all around the world.  In 1950 the Christian church in China was close to 4 million people.  Today the church in China boasts over 67 million people.  And yet the church is still often underground, persecuted and unable to meet in groups of more than 10 people.  Ten people.  That number sounds so familiar.  It’s the number many states are using when they talk about lifting restrictions and allowing small groups to gather again with social distancing.  More dichotomies…gather at a distance!   

[Read more…]

Written by Mary Frances · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, FaithX News, Future of Faith · Tagged: COVID, COVID-19, COVID19, fractals, house churches, neighborhood groups, opportunities for connection, paradigm shift, paradigms, small groups, social distancing

May 06 2020

New Paradigms: Figuring Out What Comes Next

by Mary Frances, FaithX Senior Consultant
What Comes Next


Here and there in the world
and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation,
usually hidden, but sometimes manifest,
and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.”

Paul Tillich

Paradigm: a typical example of something or model

The Oxford Dictionary


These are certainly some strange times we are living in. I admit that on some days I wake up and think to myself, “I can’t believe we are living through this.”  And it gets worse by the day. Six weeks ago the clergy who I coach were busy trying to figure out how to do online worship.  Today those same people are trying to figure out how to lead an online funeral or how to console the weary and grieving in their community from afar. These are awful times, indeed. Yet in the dark there is light, in the storm there is quiet and in crisis, opportunity. So, what comes next?

For decades the Church has been in decline and while there have been many who claimed to know how to reverse that trend, change has come hard for the Church.  Since the Church is at its core a gathering of human beings and human beings are inherently resistant to change, righting the ship has been more than difficult. We haven’t known how to connect with our communities, we haven’t known how to innovate and bring people along with us, and we have often been more interested in the days gone by than the days yet to come. 

Cue the Covid-19 pandemic.

[Read more…]

Written by Mary Frances · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, FaithX News, Future of Faith · Tagged: COVID, COVID-19, COVID19, new church paradigm, New Creation, new paradigms, online bible study, online giving, online meetings, online worship, paradigm shift, paradigms

Apr 29 2020

Password-Protected Worship: A Missed Opportunity?

by the Rev. Ken Howard
Password-Protected


This blog post is part of 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


Zoombombing

“Zoombombing” is when an uninvited person joins a Zoom meeting, usually for the purpose of gaining a few cheap laughs at the expense of the participants. 

Because Zoombombers sometimes use racial slurs, profanity, pornography, and other offensive imagery, faith communities have begun to password protect their online worship services in order to prevent univited Zoombomers from entering. 

I would like to suggest that password-protected online worship services are a huge missed opportunity for evangelism.

Here’s why…

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, FaithXperimental Spotlight, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: burden of care, church growth, church revitalization, Coronavirus, COVID, COVID-19, COVID19, evangelism, faith communities, lock-down, online worship, paradigms, Zoom, Zoombombing

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