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Jun 03 2021

Does the Future Have a Church? And in What Form?

By the Rev. Ken Howard

“Does the Church have a future?” is the wrong question.
The real question is, “Does the future have a Church?”
– Attributed variously

I think I agree… I would only add, “And if it does, in what form will that Church be?” 

It was a little over three years ago in 2017 that I published my research paper, “The Religion Singularity: A Demographic Crisis Destabilizing and Transforming Institutional Christianity,” in the Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society. But I still prefer my working title, “Singularity: The Death of Religion and the Resurrection of Faith.”

If the term “Singularity” sounds kind of astrophysics-y or SciFi-ish to you, good! It’s supposed to. Because institutional Christianity is entering a kind of wormhole that will deliver us into a context so different, it might as well be an entirely new universe. And what we do now to prepare our congregations and judicatories will determine whether they will survive and thrive or be consigned to oblivion.

The crux of the Religion Singularity is this: Christianity has become better at division than multiplication – we are producing new churches and denominations at an exponentially faster rate than we are producing new Christians. My 2017 projections indicated that by the end of the century there would be only 17,000 Christians per denomination and 67 Christians per worship center. And that’s PER not IN, which means that when you factor out the “Nones,” the average membership of those institutions could be less than half that, which means that all of our ecclesiatical institutions – from congregations to judicatories to denominations – will have become unsustainable in their current forms. 

And that’s B.C.: Before Covid accelerated those trends and crushed all of our familiar paradigms about what Church was supposed to be. This year, for the first time in the history of the U.S., fewer than half the population now “attends Church” (in either physical or virtual form).

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: demographic change, demographic crisis, Demographics, Denominations, ekklesia, experimentation, future of the church, minimum viable belief, Rapid Iteration Prototyping (R.I.P.), Religion Singularity, the religion singularity, Vision

Jan 02 2020

Looking Back on 2019

by Ken Howard

2019 was a good year for FaithX. It had its ups and downs – a rollercoaster ride, for sure, at times – but all-in-all, both despite and because of it all, we came through 2019 much stronger, with a clearer vision of who we are and where we are going, and with many successes to energize us. 

We’ve come a long way since we launched in December of 2016. Back then it was just me as FaithX’s executive director/principal (and only) consultant, a 4-person volunteer board of directors, and one client, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and its two newest congregations. 

Over the next two years, we would establish our affiliation with Datastory, collaborate with them to prototype, develop, beta test, and launch the next-generation demographic analysis and missional planning platform, which would become known as MapDash for Faith Communities, added about a dozen clients, two associate consultants, a blog coordinator, a volunteer research director, and publish a ground-breaking research paper entitled “The Religion Singularity.” 

In 2019 we broadened our reach even further. We expanded our work not only into more Episcopal dioceses, congregations, and organizations, but more importantly, branching out into more than five additional “denominations” (i.e., including the non-denominational movement), and have begun discussions with interfaith and non-Christian faith traditions. We launched a new peer-reviewed journal about religion and ministry. We worked with Datastory to develop and launch the new Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report, and we designed the consultative Neighborhood Missional Assessment program to help congregations identify emerging missional opportunities and challenges in the neighborhoods they serve. 

And so I’d like to offer my appreciation to all of those who have joined FaithX on our experimental missional journey through the end of religion as we know it into the future of faith in whatever form God is calling it into being…

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: Congregational Sustainability Index, Congregational Vitality Index, Darren Slade, datastory, Datastory Consulting, Diocese of Georgia, Episcopal Diocese of Central Gulf Coast, Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma, Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Evangelical Presbyterian Church, faithx, FaithXperimental Blog, MapDash for Faith Communities, Mary Frances, Matt Felton, missional opportunity index, Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Assessment, Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report, Steve Matthews, the Episcopal Church, the religion singularity, The Roman Catholic Church, Tom Brackett, Year In Review

May 24 2018

FaithX Launches Peer-Reviewed Journal: Call for Board Members and Papers

After more than a year of planning, FaithX is launching a new peer-reviewed journal entitled Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (SHERM) under the leadership of its research director, Darren M. Slade, who will serve as SHERM’s General Editor. The first order of business is a call for Board Members and Papers (more information on this below). But first a little bit of background on SHERM and its purpose.

 

What is SHERM?
SHERM is a biannual, not-for-profit, peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes the latest social scientific, historiographic, and ecclesiastic research on religious institutions and their practices. SHERM is dedicated to the critical and scholarly inquiry of historical and contemporary religious phenomena, both from within particular religious traditions and across cultural boundaries, so as to inform the broader socio-historical analysis of religion and its related fields of study.

 

What is SHERM’s Purpose?
Inspired by Ken’s recently published research paper, The Religion Singularity, the purpose of SHERM is to provide a scholarly medium for specialists to publish advanced studies on religious trends, theologies, rituals, philosophies, and cultural influences in the hopes of generating enthusiasm for the academic and vocational study of religion while fostering collegiality among religious specialists. Its mission is to provide academics, professionals, and nonspecialists with critical reflections and evidence-based insights into religion and ministry.

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog, FaithX News, Uncategorized · Tagged: academic journal, call for board members, call for papers, Darren M. Slade, journal, ken Howard, religious studies, SHERM, the religion singularity

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