CVA FAQs

• Vitality: Is the congregation thriving, surviving, or declining?
• Sustainability: Does the congregation have the people, financial, and contextual resources necessary to survive and thrive?

The CVA measures how effectively a congregation is carrying out 11 vital areas of congregational functioning:

1. Vision, Mission, & Discernment
2. Lay Engagement & Empowerment
3. Context Awareness & Inclusion
4. Change Readiness
5. Dealing with Differences/Conflict
6. Worship
7. Spiritual Life
8. Formation, Education, & Training
9. Outreach
10. Leadership & Organization
11. Stewardship

The CVA measures two important aspects of congregational functioning:

1. Internal Sustainability: Whether the congregation has sufficient internal resources (people, financial, and other) to survive, thrive, and carry out its mission.
2. External Sustainability: Whether the neighborhoods the congregations serves have sufficient resources (people, financial, and other) to sustain a typical congregation.

To get the most benefit for your congregation from the CVA, follow these suggested best practices:

Designate an Assessment Initiator

It will be important to designate a single individual to be the CVA initiator. This person will:

1. Register the congregation on the CVAtools.org site.
2. Receive the confirmation email – note that it has two different links, each of which has a specific function:
   • One that the initiator will use to start the survey (by taking it first) and later to review, download, and share the results.
   • The other to share those with the selected survey group, so that they can access and complete the survey.
3. Sample Composition and Size

For congregations with over 50 active members we recommend a representative sample of no more than 25 people (i.e., NOT the entire congregation). In most cases a sample of 15 people is perfectly adequate as long as it is a representative subset of the makeup of the congregation.

For Congregations with fewer than 50 active members. Obviously, it is never a good idea to give something to half the congregation and leave the other half out. In such a case, congregation wide implementation is recommended, but leadership may need to interpret the results in light of the biases this might produce.

What do we mean by a representative sample. By a representative sample we mean representative of both the leadership structure of church and its demographic make up. In other words, a group that captures the full diversity of your congregation, including but not limited to:

• Age (young, old, and in-between)
• Gender and Sexuality (straight and LGBTQ)
• Ordination Status (ordained & lay)
• Race-Ethnicity-Language-Country of Origin
• Congregational Ministry (worship, formation, outreach, etc.)
• Socio-Economic Diversity
• Any other criteria that makes sense for your congregation

To determine what your representative sample should look like:

• Start with a core group composed of vestry, committee chairs, and committee members.
• Study the makeup of your congregation.
• Determine which groups are under-represented in the sample group (or the congregation).
• Invite someone representative of all the above groups.

There are several reasons we recommend this:

• Regression toward the mean (also called reversion to the mean or reversion to mediocrity). The more random variables introduced the greater the likelihood of everything coming out average.
• Imbalanced Results. Results are weighted in favor of people who are natural test-takers and tends to leave out people who don’t like to take them.
• Samples tend to be non-representative, with results biased toward certain groups (e.g. more Boomers and GenX-ers than Millennials and GenZ-ers, more insiders than newcomers, fewer financially challenged people, etc.).

Invite, Don’t Advertise

Once you have determined what a representative group should look like, select individuals that represent the various groups you have identified, and personally/individually invite them. Explain how the results can benefit the congregation. Ask them more than once if necessary. Start with the congregation’s governing board, supplement them with ministry chairs, then fill in the holes with congregation members. Explain to each person why their input is important.

Remind, Remind, Remind

Inform the participants that they will have until 14 days after the CVA was initiated (provide the exact date) to complete the assessment, and that on the 15th day you will receive the results.

Remind the those who will be taking the CVA at several points during the 14-day assessment period:

• 7 days before the deadline.
• 4 days before the deadline.
• 1 day before the deadline.
• On the day of the deadline

Share the Results

Share the CVA results with the congregation in concentric circles, working outward:

• Church governing board.
• Ministry chairs and members.
• Congregation Wide.

Pro-Tip:

Put the results in a spreadsheet and create a barchart, then:

• Highlight the top 3 vitality areas of strength. The congregation can leverage these strengths to engage missional opportunities.
• Highlight the 3 areas most in need of improvement. The congregation may wish to supplement these by collaborating with other congregations with strengths in those areas.
• Draw an arrow from the Internal Sustainability score to the External Sustainability score. This provides the congregation with an indication of the direction in which it might be headed sustainability-wise.

Discern how God is speaking to you through the data

Yes, data can play an important role in congregational discernment, by helping you look into your blind spots and overcome your unconscious biases.

Pro-Tip:

For best discernment results, request a Neighborhood Insights Report (from FaithX), then:

1. Explore the NIR, looking for significant missional opportunities and challenges (which can be turned into opportunities).
2. Compare the dominant population segments to your congregational membership (we can help with this).
3. Sit at the confluence of these two data streams and seek God’s voice in the data (we can help with this, as well).

Need help in interpreting and reflecting on any of the above?

Contact FaithX at [email protected]

20-30 minutes max. If you take longer than that, you are thinking too long and hard about the answers. Do not overthink – respond quickly and move on.

If you don't know or are not confident about a certain answer, elect your best impression. It is valuable to know what a respondent's perception is. In the end we are measuring many things, including the perceptions from several viewpoints.

Prescriptive professional analysis tools for congregational life have been around in many forms for a while, and offer congregations concrete ways to view their mission, ministry, and corporate life together. However, no other vitality assessment tool to date is as thoroughly grounded in research and data, and most come with high price tags that are cost prohibitive for many communities of faith to use.

FaithX and ECF view congregational vitality to be the paramount issue for faith communities today. Yet those congregations that most need help addressing their vitality issues often can least afford it. Free access to the CVA is one way we are trying to address that need. There are no strings attached. Of course, since both FaithX and ECF offer consultative services, we hope you will keep us in mind if you them. FaithX will offer a 10% discount on services to any congregation that has taken the CVA.

Questions: The CVA asks the user to answer 5-10 question in each of 13 areas of congregational life: 11 focused on vitality and 2 on sustainability.

Click here for full question set

Single Church Version: When the individual or team has completed the CVA, the answers are scored, and the individual or team leader then receives summary scores of each of the ten vitality areas and two sustainability areas, along with suggestions of ways to improve in each of the areas.

Judicatory Version: Detailed spreadsheet reports are available for download. These reports show vitality scores from all congregations and organizations within the Judicatory, answer distribution for each question by congregation, and a report of complete responses.

Click on the images below for a more detailed look.

Report Screenshots

CVA diagnostic ratings are based on a criterion-referenced (not on a curve) 1-4 scale:

• 3-4: High
• 2-3: Moderate
• 1-2: Low

All CVA questions are grounded in research, and research suggests that using an endowment to underwrite operating expenses (including ongoing outreach) negatively affects individual and congregational stewardship over the long term. Endowments aren’t forever. That means that congregations that grow dependent on them are much more likely drive off the proverbial cliff when the money runs out.

There are several things a congregation can do after taking the CVA. These include:

1. Review CVA results and recommendations with congregational leadership and with the congregation. Identify your congregation’s 2-3 areas of greatest vitality strength and 2-3 areas of greatest vitality weakness.
2. Conduct a demographic assessment of the missional opportunities and challenges in the community your congregation serves. Identify the 2-3 greatest missional opportunities and the 2-3 greatest missional challenges.
3. Find consensus around greatest strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges. Select 1-2 of each.
4. Identify the areas of congregational vitality strength that you can leverage to effectively engage missional opportunities and challenges in the community, and to effectively address areas of congregational vitality weakness.
5. Identify strategies to engage identified community opportunities and challenges, and address identified areas of vitality.
6. Determine which strategies you feel capable pursuing yourselves and which you might need help with.
7. Implement strategies. Start small, experiment, build on successes.

The above process is what we call a Missional Assessment. You can do it yourselves or you can engage FaithX to lead you through it (we meet with your congregational leader in four sessions over a 6-8 week period to guide you through the process).

Contact us at [email protected] for more information.

Click here to review the research sources.

The CVA is updated at the end of any year in which vitality-related research is newly released or user feedback results in changes. For example, user feedback as so far led to:

• CVA Version 2.0: redesigned user interface, added section on “External Sustainability,” back-end improvements to support research and benchmarking, bug fixes.
• CVA Judicatory Dashboard: developed at request of multiple users, a subscription-based customized dashboard that allows, dioceses, synods, districts, and other judicatory bodies to administer the CVA to their congregations, add supplemental (non-rated) questions of their own, and have access to summarized results from all of their congregations.
• CVA Version 2.1 (release date: Sept. 2021): Spanish-language option, vitality improvement resources linked to scores/recommendations, new denomination-specific options.

Step 1 – Research: The CVA was based on 20 years of research from a variety of sources (click here) and will be refined as new research emerges.

Step 2 – Iterative Prototyping: CVA 1.0 (excel-based version) was the result of 10 years of iterative prototyping, using data and feedback gathered from hundreds of congregations representing a cross-section of race, ethnicity, and denomination.

Step 3 – Beta-Testing: CVA 1.1 (first online version) gathered data and feedback from hundreds of congregations across a similar cross section.

Step 4 – Soft Launch: CVA 2.0 (second online version) included a number of enhancements based on feedback from users of CVA 1.1, including a redesigned user interface and ethnically-sensitive language and terminology.

Step 5 – Ongoing Updates and Enhancements: based on user feedback and emerging research.

Absolutely. People of color were involved throughout the design, prototyping, and beta testing of the CVA. In addition, the FaithX Board of Directors, of which nearly half are people of color, continue to provide feedback for ongoing improvements in the CVA.

A CVA Spanish version of the CVA will be included in version 2.1, to be released before the end of 2021, if not sooner. We had hoped to have it in 2.0 and were almost there but ran out of time to do the final QC checks.

Click here for a video on how the CVA Judicatory Platform Administrative Area works

To get the most benefit for your judicatory and its congregations, follow these suggested best practices.

Designate a CVA-Judicatory Platform Judicatory-Level Coordinator

It will be important to designate a judicatory staff person to coordinate with congregations in initiating, administering, and interpreting the CVA. This person will:

1. Provide the names of all congregations in the judicatory to FaithX.
2. Receive training in the use of the CVA Judicatory Platform.
3. Read the CVA Best Practices guidelines, both for your own information and to share with congregation taking the CVA
4. Register congregations to take the CVA.
5. For each congregation registered, identify a person at the congregation who will serve as the Initiator, who will:
   1. Take the CVA first. This starts the 14-day survey administration period.
   2. Share a test administration link with the survey sample (a representative sample of congregation leaders and members).
   3. Receive and share the results, with guidance from the judicatory coordinator.

CVA-Judicatory Platform Roll Out

DO:

• Decide in advance how you will market the CVA to your congregations.
• Communicate to congregation leaders that the CVA is intended to help congregations discern their vitality and sustainability areas strengths and areas needing improvement.
• Stress that it is not intended to be used as a tool for closing congregations (this is the reason we do not give an overall score). Emphasize that there are no entirely strong congregations and no entirely weak congregations. All have both.
• Communicate to congregation leaders that the judicatory will use the result to identify vitality and sustainability trends that they can use to develop judicatory wide learning opportunities and intervention strategies.
• Communicate to congregation leaders that congregational vitality and sustainability are systemic issues and when congregations report that they do not believe they are independently sustainable, judicatory leadership will determine the level of need for a congregation in the community, and if necessary, work to find margin elsewhere to support mission.
• Administer it first to congregations who are likely to understand the need for it and benefit from it (and put what they learn to use), then build on your successes

DO NOT:

• Roll out the CVA to all the congregations in the judicatory at once.
• Roll out the CVA to imperiled congregations in the first pass.

Invite, Don’t Advertise

Once you have determined the order in which the congregations will be exposed to the CVA personally/individually invite congregational leadership to participate. Explain how the results can benefit the congregation. Ask them more than once if you have to.

Remind, Remind, Remind

When implementing the CVA in a congregation, ask the congregational coordinator to Inform participants that they will have until 14 days after the CVA was initiated (provide the exact date) to complete the assessment, and that on the 15th day they will receive the results. Similarly, ask the congregational CVA coordinator to remind the those who will be taking the CVA at several points during the 14-day assessment period:

• 7 days before the deadline.
• 4 days before the deadline.
• 1 day before the deadline.
• On the day of the deadline.

Share the Results

Work with the CVA coordinator and congregational leadership to share the CVA results with the congregation in concentric circles, working outward:

• Church governing board.
• Ministry chairs and members.
• Congregation Wide.

Pro-Tip:

Put the results in a spreadsheet and create a barchart, then:

• Highlight the top 3 vitality areas of strength. The congregation can leverage these strengths to engage missional opportunities.
• Highlight the 3 areas most needing improvement. The congregation choose to supplement these areas by collaborating with other congregations
• Draw an arrow from the Internal Sustainability score to the External Sustainability score. This gives the congregation an indication of the direction in which they may be headed sustainability-wise.

Discern how God is speaking to you through the data

Yes, data can play an important role in congregational discernment, by helping you look into your blind spots and overcome your unconscious biases.

Pro-Tip:

For best discernment results, request a Neighborhood Insights Report from FaithX (or if you have MapDash for Faith Communities, produce one for the congregation) then help them:

1. Explore the NIR, looking for significant missional opportunities and challenges (which can be turned into opportunities).
2. Compare the dominant population segments to your congregational membership (FaithX can help with this).
3. Sit at the confluence of these two data streams and seek God’s voice in the data (FaithX can help with this, as well).

Need help in interpreting and reflecting on any of the above or want to learn about MapDash?

Contact FaithX at [email protected]

The CVA Judicatory Platform allows for 10 unscored judicatory-specific questions to be added to the CVA for congregations to answer.

Available question formats include:

• 1-5
• Agree/Disagree
• Multiple Choice
• Short Answer*
  

Questions are submitted using a spreadsheet we provide, which include several pre-vetted questions from which you can choose. Or you may create your own.

*We recommend limiting the number of short answer questions because they lengthen the time it takes both for the participant to complete the survey and for the CVA Judicatory Coordinator to tabulate it.