Ken Howard

Founder & President FaithX.net - Resources, Services, Online Network

  • Germantown MD

Creating Christian Community Beyond Us & Them

Contact

Media

Social

Biography

Pastor | Speaker | Church Futurist

In the early 1990s, Ken left a successful strategic leadership, change management, and organizational rightsizing consulting practice to become an ordained pastor. His vision: to help faith communities learn how to survive and thrive in times of escalating uncertainty and exponential change.

Over the next 20 years at a church he started near Washington, DC, Ken developed the concept of Minimum Viable Belief and the practices of Vision-Guided Experimentation, and over the past 5 years has helped scores of faith-based communities and organizations prepare to meet their undiscovered future by becoming more lean, creative, and experimental.

Industry Expertise

Education/Learning
Non-Profit/Charitable
Religious Institutions

Areas of Expertise

Creating Christian Community Beyond Us & Them
Non-Proselytizing Evangelism
Conflict Transformation in Spiritual Communities
Schism-Proof Your Church Through Conflict Transformation
Re-Paradigming Church Systems

Accomplishments

Author - "FaithX: Experimental Faith Communities for an Undiscovered Future" (forthcoming 2016)

2016-07-04

Christianity is dis-integrating into new denominations and faith communities faster than new followers can be found to fill them, rendering them unsustainable before the end of the century.

FaithX offers practitioner-tested principles and practices to help faith communities survive and thrive in this increasingly chaotic environment by becoming increasingly lean, creative, and experimental, and their leaders more extrapreneurial.

Author - "Paradoxy: Creating Christian Community Beyond Us & Them"

Christianity is at a crossroads. Paradigms that have defined Christian unity for centuries past are collapsing in ruins. The conservative-liberal conflict that has defined Christian disunity for the past century is coming to a dead-end. Paradoxy proposes promising principles for a new way being Church that is true to the heart of Christianity: a radical new middle way, that transcends our tragic divisions, transforms our conflicts into diverse Christian community.

1st Successful New Church Start in 40 Years

1995-09-01

Lead the first successful new church start in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington in 40 years. Developed a schism-resistant approach to church planting and church growth, and a non-proselytizing approach to evangelism.

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Education

Cambridge University

Visiting Scholar

Ancient & Celtic Christianity

Virginia Commonwealth University

M.Ed.

Adult Education & Human Resources Development

1989

Yale University

Symposium with Miroslav Volf

Emergent Theology

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Affiliations

  • The Washington Episcopal Clergy Organization
  • St. Nicholas Episcopal Church

Testimonials

Professor of Management

http://www.aiuniv.edu/

American Intercontinental University

Here is a direct method for churches and congregations to begin their discussions about inclusion, defining their evangelical style, calling new clergy, elevating the laity, and bringing out the gifts of the excluded in their communities

Editor, Author, Speaker

http://www.explorefaith.org/resources/books/emergence_bibliography.php

ExploreFaith.org

Howard offers both a sharp-eyed analysis of how the Church has arrived at its present permutation followed by a very accessible and kindly-inclined diagnosis of what Her condition presently is. More importantly, perhaps, Howard gives us one of the clearest and most concise commentaries presently available about where the Church may reasonably be seen as going in this time of paradigmatic shift.

Church Planter & Pastor

http://www.popaz.org/

Prince of Peace Church

Ken Howard is an engaging man. The “new middle way” he proposes is equally engaging. He shows a way to go beyond winners and losers to a place where everyone can engage Jesus in community with one another, in worship of God, and service to the community. Ken’s hopeful, open way of relating to one another will open doors to the gospel for a culture and society that has grown skeptical of encounters and looks for engagement that is formed by whole-hearted acceptance.

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Event Appearances

Boarderlines: Exploring the Fertile Boundaries Between Faith and Business

Lean Startup Conference  San Francisco, CA

2015-11-18

Minimum Viable Belief: Experimentation in Faith-Based Organizations

Lean Startup Conference  San Francisco, CA

2014-12-09

Stealing from Startups: A Church Goes Lean

Lean for Social Good - Washington DC Summit  Washington, DC

2014-03-26

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Sample Talks

Paradoxy Working Conference (2-3 days)

Biblically-grounded, highly-interactive, hands-on working conference provides participants with principles, language, & skills needed to lead congregations in exploring & employing an incarnational way of Christian community that transcends us/them divisions. Understanding & experiencing conflict as holy ground enables leaders to help congregations deal with tough questions without splintering, celebrate & engage diversity, & become better evangelists through non-proselytizing evangelism.

Style

Availability

  • Keynote
  • Moderator
  • Panelist
  • Workshop Leader
  • Host/MC
  • Author Appearance
  • Corporate Training

Fees

$1500 to $2000*Will consider certain engagements for no fee