The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Our Free CVA Webinar, the Glitch of all Glitches, and an Unforeseen Opportunity

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade… right?

The lemons…

Life dropped a huge pile of lemons on us today as we were starting our long-awaited Congregational Vitality Assessment webinar.

The lemons started falling as soon as we “opened the door” to attendees. Suddenly, we began to see a flood of emails and texts from people who couldn’t get in. 

The Glitch…

Apparently, the glitch to end all glitches had happened. As far as we could tell, the handoff from Eventbrite and Zoom wasn’t working right. Some people got in with no problems. Others got in quickly once we sent them the webinar link directly. And some couldn’t get in even with the direct link.

In any event, after 10-15 minutes of panic-y workaround, we were able to get around 50 people in the door, including some (but not all) of the people on the waiting list. As the doctor said in Young Frankenstein, “Could be worse… Could be raining.” Providentially, since we were all on Zoom, even if it had been raining, it wouldn’t have made it a total washout.

The Lemonade…

We already had planned to send all attendees the webinar video, presentation StoryMap, and resource link, so that helped.

The lemonade boils down to this: 

We were able to reopen the webinar so that everyone on the waitlist will be able to get the video and other resources.

AND… 

Reopening the webinar also means that any of you who hadn’t signed up for the webinar can now register after the fact, and get all the stuff the regular attendees are getting. 

How about that for turning lemons into lemonade?

Click here to register for webinar video, presentation “deck,” and resources

Mapping Systemic Racism in Rural America (Bagley, MN)

by the Rev. Ken Howard

“FaithX delivered a powerful, revealing presentation on “Mapping Systemic Racism in Rural America.” FaithX’s maps revealed gaps in opportunity in our region among Native and Nonnative people: economic, educational, access to health care, and more. We attended the webinar with a member of the tribal council of a nearby reservation. We are sharing FaithX’s work with the tribal council, and in our local community. Systemic change begins by raising consciousness. FaithX does a powerful job of accomplishing that goal. Lives can be changed if we tell the truth. Thanks, FaithX for helping us tell the truth.” 

The Rev. Dr. Mark R. Olson, Faith Lutheran Church, Bagley MN

Early this year, the FaithX Project delivered the third in a series of webinars on Mapping Systemic Racism. The first focused on urban Southside Chicago and the second on semi-suburban Queen’s County on Long Island. In our third webinar, Mapping Systemic Racism in Rural America, we turned to the rural area surrounding Bagley, MN, including the Native American reservations of White Earth, Red Lake, and Leech Lake.

Attending the webinar as our special guests were the pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Bagley and several lay leaders and members from his congregation, both Native and Nonnative. Prior to the webinar, we worked with this group to explore both the presence and the impact of Systemic Racism in their setting. Even though the local participants from their lived experience and the FaithX staff from our ongoing work on the issue thought we knew a bit about Systemic Racism, all of us were stunned by visual clarity of both its obvious pervasive presence and its deep and extensive impact.

There was, of course, the clear, continuing, and pernicious segregation of race and ethnicity. We usually think of “redlining” as an urban and suburban phenomenon. But as one of the Native participants put it, the reservation was both literally and figuratively “the most brutal form of redlining that any racial or ethnic group in our country has experienced, and that our government and our culture has perpetrated.”

[Read more…]

FaithX and ECF help Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma implement groundbreaking Congregational Vitality Tracking Platform

“I am delighted to begin using the CVA [and the CVA Judicatory Platform] in Oklahoma. While much of the Christian life (individually and in community) cannot be measured, there are many indicators of vitality that can be. More vitality in congregations means more lives that can be transformed by God’s grace.”     

– The Rt. Rev. Poulson Reed, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma

The Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma has been the site of many firsts for the FaithX Project and our partners. 

In late 2017, the Diocese was one of a group of five judicatories that agreed to assist FaithX in beta-testing MapDash for Faith Communities as part of our collaboration with our affiliate Datastory to develop a first-of-its-kind online, interactive, map-based demographic and analytic platform.

In late 2020, they became the first of several judicatories to ask FaithX and our partner the Episcopal Church Foundation if we would consider developing a congregational vitality tracking platform that would allow judicatories to administer our Congregational Vitality Assessment diagnostic survey directly to their congregations, add judicatory-specific informational questions, receive anonymized survey results, track vitality and sustainability year-to-year, target their parochial interventions, and supplement their parochial reporting data with forward-looking diagnostics and recommendations. We love a good challenge, so we took them up on it.

Over the first half of 2021, Diocesan Director of Faith Formation and Discipleship Kate Carney Bond, along with other Diocesan staff worked closely with FaithX and our CVA partner, the Episcopal Church Foundation develop the platform: first by providing input for our prototype, then by providing feedback over several design iterations, and finally by beta testing in the month prior to our August 4 launch. In doing so, they also became the first judicatory to subscribe to the platform and take advantage of our $1,000 early-adopter custom setup discount.

And now the Diocese of Oklahoma has become the first of what we hope will be many to fully implement the Congregational Vitality Assessment Judicatory Platform. And the above quote from the Bishop of Oklahoma gives you a sense of how valuable they are finding this groundbreaking tool.

We will keep our readers apprised as additional judicatories come on board.

Meanwhile, visit CVAtool.org or email cva@CVAtool.org for more info about the CVA 2.0 diagnostic tool or CVA Judicatory Platform.

Or click here to register for our free webinar

Groundbreaking Free Congregational Vitality Assessment Tool Launches Version 2.0

Germantown, MD | New York, NY – The FaithX Project in partnership with the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF) is pleased to announce the launch of version 2.0 of the Congregational Vitality Assessment Tool (CVA), available at no cost for immediate use.

After 10 years of research and implementation of a paper-based CVA tool, the digital version was built in early 2020. The Congregational Vitality Assessment tool 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. 

[Read more…]

Data-Grounded Discernment for Capital Campaign Planning

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without a vision is a nightmare.”
Soichiro Honda, Japanese engineer and industrialist

This is not another “How To” webinar on capital fundraising. There are literally hundreds of programs out there that can bring to bear the time-tested expertise necessary to address “How” to mount a capital fund drive for “What” you tell them you want to construct or renovate or buy. The only problem is that unless you ground congregation’s “What” in a “Why” related to a clear and overarching congregational vision and a deep and thorough understanding of its mission to the world around it before you start, your fundraising efforts may turn out to be an exercise in tweaking the status quo: a missed opportunity for better engaging its members and people in the neighborhoods around them.

On Wednesday, May 26 from 1:00-2:00pm ET, The FaithX Project invites you to attend a webinar entitled “Data-Grounded Discernment for Capital Campaign Planning,” offered in collaboration with the Gathering of Leaders, the Episcopal Church Foundation, and Core Capital Campaigns. This webinar will provide participants with an understanding, a process, and tools to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of their congregations and the missional opportunities and challenges of their communities, and in doing so clarify their vision of what God is calling them to be and to do, and the role a capital campaign can play in in getting them there.

Click Here to Register for this Webinar
Click Here for a List of Upcoming Webinars