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Aug 27 2020

Adapting to the Covid New Normal: A Research-Based Blog Series

Introduction by Ken Howard

In some ways, it seems like we’ve spent an eternity of waiting since Covid-19 forced our congregations to close. Yet in other ways, it seems like too many things to change in too little time. Regardless of denomination or religion, it seems like a tsunami swept away all our normal ways of congregational life in a second, leaving us all to re-think, re-engineer, and rapidly iterate almost everything. It almost seems like God is making use of these “Covid Times” through which we are navigating to re-shape us as congregations, cutting off all our talking about all the ways our faith communities needed to change if they were to survive (let alone thrive), and telling us to get on with it.

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog · Tagged: adaptation, blog series, community outreach, Coronavirus, covid times, COVID-19, COVID19, Darren Slade, experimentation, ken Howard, leadership development, online fellowship, pastoral care, pastoral perspective, research, research analysis, spiritual formation, stewardship, worship

Oct 31 2019

The Great Religion Singularity: Brian McLaren’s Reflections on Howard’s Research

This post on Brian McLaren’s reflections is written
by Darren M. Slade, PhD


If things continue unchanged and unchallenged, then the death of institutional Christianity is precisely what will happen. And believers won’t have to imagine it. They will be forced to live through it. 

– Brian McLaren, Author/Speaker/Activist

Editor’s Note: This article is a review of Brian McLaren’s “Conditions for the Great Religion Singularity,” which in turn is a review of Ken Howard’s research paper, “The Religion Singularity: A Demographic Crisis Destabilizing and Transforming Institutional Christianity.” We almost titled this blog post, “The Church’s Frightmare,” given the coincidence (if you believe in such things) that it would post on Halloween and the fact that the death of institutional Christianity can be a scary thing for we who are its adherents to consider. Indeed, after reading the original article, one clergy colleague quipped, “I’m so glad I’m retiring this year: this is just depressing and scary.”


You’ve heard of the “Great Schism.”

You’ve heard of the “Great Awakening.”

You’ve heard of the “Great Emergence.”

The Institutional Christianity now has entered a new era of
dramatic destabilization and deinstitutionalization…

THE GREAT RELIGION SINGULARITY

Can you imagine the death of Christianity? Can you imagine a world without the Christian Church? For many anthropologists, the death of Christianity is merely an eventuality like it has been for most human religions throughout time.1

[Read more…]

Written by Darren M. Slade, PhD · Categorized: FaithX Blog, Posts by Darren Slade · Tagged: Brian McLaren, Conditions for the Great Religion Singularity, death of Christianity, deinstitutionalization, destabilization, great awakening, great emergence, great schism, ken Howard, research, The Great Religion Singularity

Dec 06 2018

FaithX Research – Vital Congregations Report 2018 just released

FaithX follows research relevant to those experimenting with new ways of organizing and being faith communities. When we find relevant research, we curate it here on the FaithXperimental blog and provide a link to download the full publication. We also post it on the Research section of the FaithX website.

The latest research of interest is the Vital Congregations Report – 2018, authored by Linda Bobbitt and published by the Congregational Vitality Project of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Here is the research abstract:

What does a congregation mean when they describe themselves as spiritually vital? How does a congregation become vital? What is the relationship between vitality and sustainability? Does the answer depend on the faith tradition? This study asked leaders from 10 different faith traditions to answer these questions. We found remarkable similarities across all traditions while also discovering the unique perspectives of each. Their answers illustrate distinct understandings about the way people interact with God and different perspectives of God’s promise of hope for the world.

Click here to download the Congregational Vitality Report and explore these answers.

[Read more…]

Written by Mary Beth Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, Posts by Ken Howard, Research · Tagged: Congregational Vitality, Congregational Vitality Project, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, FaithXperimental Blog, Orthodox Christian Church, research, Synagogue Vitality, United Church of Christ Vitality, Vital Congregations Report

Nov 24 2017

Give or Take: A Practical Real-World Experiment – and You’re Invited

by Ken Howard

I’m planning a real-world experiment in the social impact of giving and taking, and I’d like to invite your participation.

30 years ago, I designed a structured group experience to test a two-part hypothesis:

Part A: There are three kinds of people in world (I’m not the first to make this observation):

  1. Givers: People who give without thought of getting.
  2. Takers: People who take without thought of giving.
  3. Exchangers: People who are willing to give, but only if they get equal value in return.

Part B: It is better to give, than to take…or exchange. Not just better for the soul, but actually more productive.

The structured experience was called Stock Exchange. It involved dividing a large group of people into teams, giving them a task to complete, and inviting them to attempt to complete the task successfully in three successive rounds with different instructions on how the teams were to behave toward each other.

The task was simple: gather a specified number of four different colors of poker chips, knowing that the facilitator had distributed to the groups exactly the number of poker chips for all groups to succeed (though not in the amounts each group needed).

The instructions for the three rounds were also very simple:

Round 1 – Taking: Groups were instructed to look out only for themselves. They could ask for, beg for, or steal the chips they needed from the other groups, but could not give or exchange chips. (Do unto others before they do unto you.)

Round 2 – Exchanging: Groups were now allowed to make quid-pro-quo exchanges with other groups. They could only give as many chips as they got. (Do unto others exactly what they do unto you.)

Round 3 – Giving: Groups were instructed to look out not for themselves but for every other group. They were to gather up all the chips of each color of which they had an excess and distribute them to groups with shortages of those color chips. (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.)

Over 100’s of uses, the results of the three rounds have always seemed to follow this pattern:

Round 1: Taking – Everybody Loses: Resource inequalities develop rapidly. Because groups hoard their resources, every group ends up with a glut of one or two chip colors, but a dearth of all the others.

Round 2: Exchanging – Most Everybody Loses: Occasionally a group will succeed in the task but mostly none do, since quid-pro-quo exchanges cannot succeed in addressing resource inequalities.

Round 3: Giving – Everybody Wins: Because every group has every other group looking out for them, hoarding stops, resource inequalities are addressed, and all succeed.

But now I’d like to get a more scientific read on my hypothesis…and I’d like your help.

It’ll be easy as 1-2-3. All you have to do is:

  1. Click here to download Stock Exchange.
  2. Try it in your organization.
  3. Send me the result using the form below.

When I publish the results, you and your organization will be listed in the acknowledgement!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

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Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, FaithX News, Posts by Ken Howard, Research · Tagged: exchanging, experimentation, giving, research, taking

Dec 12 2015

14 Facts About Church Starts

fact

By Ken Howard

In yesterday’s post, I identified seven common myths about church plants and church planting and did a little myth busting.

Today I’m going to go the other direction. I want to share with you 14 Facts about church planting.

While I made an editorial decision not to clutter up the narrative with data and sources, please rest assured that all of the statements of fact in this series based on solid research from a variety of sources. I will provide the sources on request.

FACT #1 – Church plants tend to show more vitality than other churches. Church plants tend to have above average levels of vitality: higher percentages of attenders valuing the outreach emphasis of the church, higher percentages of attenders inviting others to church, and higher levels of belonging and commitment to the vision and directions of the church.

FACT #2 – Church plants tend to be more effective at outreach. Church plants have a greater percentage of newcomers than churches engaged in street evangelism, churches conducting “seeker” services for the unchurched, churches conducting mission activities at schools, and churches offering social services such as training or support programs.

FACT #3 – Church plants tend to be more effective in reaching newcomers to church life.  Church plants reach a significantly higher percentage of newcomers to church life (i.e., the unchurched) than churches generally.

FACT #4 – Church plants tend to more effective reach younger people. Attendees at church plants tend to be significantly younger than churches generally.

FACT #5 – Church plants are more likely to reach more non-Whites and non-Anglos. Church plants have a higher percentage of non-white and non-English speakers than most established churches. (Obviously, historically black churches, multi-cultural churches, and language-specific churches are exceptions.)

FACT #6 – Church plants are more likely to grow. Churches grow faster in their first five years than any other time in their lifecycle. Over time the difference tends to decrease, as the church plant grows more established, though it can be maintained to some degree if the aging church plant intentionally works to maintain the qualities it had in its youth. Of course, this means that established churches can work to maintain those same qualities.

FACT #7 –Church plants may be the only strategy with the growth capacity to reverse the decline in TEC membership. It almost goes without saying that The Episcopal Church has declined drastically since WWII: a nearly 40% drop in membership, which resulted in the closure of more than 400 established churches. Meanwhile, of the 99 new churches planted in the same period, 69 survive (a 70% success ratio – better than business startups.), with an average Sunday attendance (ASA) of 95. Even more impressive, the ASA of top 10% of the churches planted in that period is 359. TEC’s most recent study of church growth show that more than 50% of church plants were growing vs. less than 20% of those established for more than 100 years.

FACT #8 – Church plants are good for their dioceses. Church plants tend to serve as their dioceses’ R&D departments. They are much more willing to experiment than established churches. They tend to do what the business startup entrepreneurs call Rapid Prototyping (or RP). Think Big – Start Small – Learn Fast (Repeat PRN). Sure much of what we try doesn’t work and what does may have to be tweaked a lot before it works really well. Most importantly, we are less resistant than established church to let things that don’t work die. In fact, my congregation calls it Rapid Iteration Prototyping (or RIP) to remind ourselves that it’s a good idea to let bad ideas die. It’s not that established couldn’t do this kind of experimental thinking – I wish that more of them did – perhaps they just feel they have too much too lose.

FACT #9 – Church plants are good for the established churches around them. It works like this: new church attracts attention. People check it out because it’s new. No church is “one size fits all,” so not everybody finds the new church to be the best fit for them. They may want high church, low church, broad church, want a large church in which they can disappear into the pews. Or the may just not have the energy needed to set up church in a school auditorium every Sunday. Whatever the reason, if there is a good relationship between the church plant and the established churches around it, one of them will benefit. There is almost always a net positive flow (as much as 2:1) from church plants to the established churches surrounding them.

FACT #10 – Church plants are good for the established churches that plant them. Established churches currently involved in the planting of other congregations experience a significantly higher growth rate (more than 10%) than churches generally. Apparently, having children is good for you.

FACT #11 – Church plants tend to be more nimble and adaptable to change. Why? They have to be. They are running lean. They don’t have the luxury of continuing to do something that is no longer working.

Fact #12 – Church plants tend to be more vision guided, mission focused, and purpose driven. Leaders of church startups can not afford to be complacent. The must constantly as themselves why are we here, what are we trying to achieve, and what are the best ways to get there?

Fact #13 – Church plants tend to be more context sensitive and context responsive. As above, they have to be aware of and responsive to their contexts simply to survive. And the same thing that enables them survive also enables them thrive.

Fact #14 – Church plants are more risky but also more rewarding. It’s true. Church plants are inherently more risky than established churches, but only in the short-term. About 30% fail in their first 10 years. But the ones that survive their first 10 years are healthier than established churches in almost every respect. Meanwhile, the long-term rate at which we are closing established churches is much higher. Church planting is an investment in the future of our church. And as any investor will tell you, you can’t eliminate risk without also eliminating reward.

Conclusions

There were actually more than 14 facts about church plants that I could have shared with you. But I’ve got to get back to my day job (leading a mature church startup).

Clearly, church planting is not only a good for the plant itself, but also the established congregations who support it, the dioceses that engage in it, and TEC . I leave it to you to do the cost benefit analysis to decide whether the amount of funding resolution D005 proposes is worth it.

Some of you may think I am a one-trick-pony: that I’m a “church planting or bust” kind of guy. But I’m not against established churches at all. I care about established churches as much as anyone. Many of them are vital and healthy. Many of them grow. But many of them aren’t and many of them don’t. I’m not saying that established churches are bad or can’t be healthy or can’t grow. I’m only saying that if more of them acted like church plants, they’d be a lot healthier and we’d have a lot more growth in our church.

And a Parting Question

I end with this question: If church planting is as effective as it seems, why is it that church planting continues to attract either criticism or passive indifference from our denomination (and others)? Have we lost our passion for the Gospel? Have we lost our dream of the kingdom of God? Have we lost our courage to follow God’s dream?

Note: This article is based on research gathered by a number of people: Kirk Hadaway, Frank Logue, Susan Snook, myself, and others.

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, FaithX News, FaithX Services, Future of Faith, Ministry Development and Redevelopment, Posts by Ken Howard, Research · Tagged: church plants, church starts, research

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