Ken Howard

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

  • Germantown MD

Creating Christian Community Beyond Us & Them

Contact

Media

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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

Religious Institutions
Education/Learning
Non-Profit/Charitable

Areas of Expertise

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

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

Virginia Theological Seminary

M.Div.

Theology & Church History

1993

Honors in Church History

Cambridge University

Visiting Scholar

Ancient & Celtic Christianity

Virginia Commonwealth University

M.Ed.

Adult Education & Human Resources Development

1989

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Affiliations

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

Testimonials

Evangelical Blogger

http://thechristianwatershed.com/2010/10/05/paradoxy-blog-tour-reviewing-chapter-6/

The Christian Watershed

Howard's thesis is simple – all churches need to live in the love of Christ as the center of their community. Everything else is peripheral. Anticipating that both conservatives and liberals would find difficulty in such a way of thinking, he implores Liberals to see that such a shift in thinking is a progressive paradigm while explaining to Conservatives that what they see as “God’s Truth” that needs to be defended doesn’t in fact need to be defended. That is, if they fear putting Christ as the center of their church community because it would abdicate progressive ideas or conservative apologetics, neither side should be afraid; Christ is progressive and capable of defending His doctrines without our help.

Pastor

http://www.standrewsblantyre.com/index.php/about-us/our-minister/peters-blog/933-the-middle-way

St Andrew's Parish Church, Blantyre, Scotland

Ken Howard speaks powerfully to our current intractable positions where folks from either sides of the debate fling verbal (and sometimes worse) hand-grenades from side to side.

Blogger

http://difog.wordpress.com/

Dancing in Fields of Grace

Ken Howard's "Paradoxy" . . . gives me hope that we can have meaningful dialogue -- and find friendship -- with those who differ from us.

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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