The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

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.

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Coming Soon: Online Congregational Vitality Assessment

By the Rev. Ken Howard

In 2017, FaithX released a prototype of the Congregational Vitality Assessment: a first-of-its-kind research-based diagnostic inventory for measuring congregational vitality and sustainability. In late 2018, FaithX and the Episcopal Church Foundation entered into a collaboration to bring the CVA online in digital format, where it could be made available for free to a wider audience. That collaboration is about to reach fruition. The CVA has now emerged from beta-testing with a tentative launch date of mid-to-late September.

The Congregational Vitality Assessment is designed to provide a congregation with an assessment of its Vitality (how healthy it is) and its Sustainability (whether it has the people, financial, and contextual resources necessary to survive). The vitality section carries the bulk of the assessment, measuring ten areas of congregational functioning, such as Vision and Mission, Leadership, Lay Empowerment, Worship, Formation, Stewardship, and more. The assessment can be completed by a single congregational leader, a congregational leadership group, or the entire congregation.

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Acting Outside the Box: Stewardship – Part 2

We are trying out a new occasional blog series in which people doing ministry can talk about outside the box wild ideas for ministry that they have tried and what they learned from them (whether or not the ideas work). We are calling this new series Acting Outside The Box, because just thinking about what’s outside the box is waaaay too passive. Ken Howard kicks off this series with some counter-intuitively productive stewardship strategies he’s run into (stumbled into, really) over the years.

The Power of Paradox
(part 2 in a series)

In last week’s post I talked about the awkwardness of stewardship season and how the use of religiously-loaded language sometimes backfires. I told the story of a formerly unchurched member family taking out a second mortgage to fulfill their pledge after the husband lost his job in the recession because they took the language of “pledge” so seriously.

Speaking of recessions, two of the largest increases in pledging (or should I say “Estimated Giving”) in two different churches I served took place during two rather large recessions.

What accounts for the difference? 

On both occasions, realizing that if we were in their shoes, we would have a lot of hesitation in making financial commitments in uncertain times, we decided that we would talk about the reasons for their potential hesitancy.  

We figured, “in for a penny, in for a pound,” as it were. And so we put all of our cards on the table. 

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Acting Outside The Box: Stewardship – Part 1

We are trying out a new occasional blog series in which people doing ministry can talk about outside the box wild ideas for ministry that they have tried and what they learned from them (whether or not the ideas work). We are calling this new series Acting Outside The Box, because just thinking about what’s outside the box is waaaay too passive. Ken Howard kicks off this series with some counter-intuitive stewardship strategies he’s run into (stumbled into, really) over the years.

Changing Language Changes Behavior

For the first decade of my ordained ministry, I always hated stewardship season. I never felt like I was being entirely transparent with my congregation. I always seemed to be starting out the season preaching about stewardship as a spiritual practice, when what we really wanted them to do was to give us money to support the work of the church. But by the end of the season, I was increasingly talking about how much more money we needed to meet our budget (while still cloaking the need in spiritual terms). 

Using words like “pledging” and “tithing” seemed less and less helpful as more and more newcomers to the church had smaller and smaller religious vocabularies. They sounded more remote and archaic, like the way the rite of Holy Matrimony used to require the bride and groom to “plight their troth”). I was always telling people that a “pledge” was really only a “best estimate” of what they desired – and more importantly, what they could afford – to give.

It all came to a head for me one year when I got a distressing call early in our pledge drive from the wife of a young couple with two small children. They were starting their fourth year in the congregation, experiencing the third pledge drive, the second in which they were making a pledge. I heard a hint of tearfulness in her voice as she said, “Father Ken, I’m calling to say we are so, so sorry that we will not be able to pledge as much this year as last. My husband lost his job this year and we had to take out a second mortgage to fulfill the pledge we already made.”

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CVI Analytic Indicators as Check Engine Light

Part 5  in a series on MapDash analytics

By Ken Howard

After the last blog post in our series on MapDash Analytics, some of you asked, “What is the most appropriate way for me to consider what the indicators of the Congregational Vitality Index (CVI) are trying to tell me?”

I find that the best analogy to the Green-Yellow-Red ratings of the indicators that make Congregational Vitality Index (as well as the factors that make up those indicators) is that they are “warning lights,” like the “check engine” light on your car’s dashboard:

  • If it’s green, keep on driving – but keep up your scheduled maintenance
  • If it’s yellow, attention required – make an appointment to have it checked
  • If it’s red, urgent attention required – stop the car right now and have it towed to the dealer.
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