Tool
How to Hold a Speedfaithing Event
Learn how to organize speedfaithing sessions, a short and sweet way for individuals to share their values and connection to religious traditions with others.
What is speedfaithing, you ask?
Speedfaithing is a short and sweet way to learn about each other’s religious and philosophical values in a supported space. Folks will be able to learn positive aspects of each other’s worldview and ask questions about it. To organize a speedfaithing event, invite people with different religious, spiritual, and secular perspectives to spend some time talking about their faith.
How does it work?
The first ingredient to a successful speedfaithing event is one or more people who are open to sharing about their religious or philosophical tradition. While we can always read books and articles about different religious or ethical perspectives, speedfaithing takes it a step further. If we learn from someone as they share their personal religious, spiritual, or secular perspectives, we are able to build positive relationships with diverse groups of people while learning.
These times can vary per your needs, but a speedfaithing session typically lasts 10 to 30 minutes per speaker, depending on the number of people invited. The presenter will share about their values—sacred or secular—for about 5-15 minutes and then take questions from the audience for another 5-15 minutes.
Tricks of the Trade
- Speak for yourself using “I” statements. This helps to respect everyone’s unique experience of their tradition and to steer clear of generalizations that might run the risk of being harmful.
- Keep it simple. Assume that everyone in the room knows nearly nothing about your background. When you’re speaking, use simple, clear, and direct language. If you do need to use technical language, define it.
- Consider using images or a short video. When appropriate, use images or video to complement your presentation (key word here is “complement”).
- If you can, prepare a (useful) one-page handout. Good handouts do things like summarize a lot of the major points that you talked about, share “Top 5 ways to engage my religious community” or point people in the right direction if they want to learn more after the event.
- Talk it through. The best thing you can do is talk your speedfaithing session through with someone else. Ask them if there’s anything that doesn’t make sense or needs clarification. Tell them what you want people to get from the session and see if it lines up with what they’re hearing.
Setting Speakers up for Success
Before the event, talk with each speaker
- The presentation should begin with basic information. Think “first paragraph of a Wikipedia page” kind of information.
- Make a point to highlight a shared value. In other words, what from your background can you see present in many other traditions (think love, service, mercy, etc.)? Inspiring stories, people, and texts from your background are particularly solid sources to draw from for this.
- Finally, address anything you perceive as misconceptions. What are the things you’ve heard said of your background that make you squirm because they don’t actually match up with your experience? Use this as an opportunity to clear up those misconceptions.
Make it Personal
Anyone can look up facts and figures about a religion’s history and belief systems. However, practices and perspectives vary widely within traditions, and hearing from individuals about their own experiences is very important when seeking to understand diversity within and between religions. Holding a speedfaithing event allows individuals to share the complexity of their experiences. Speedfaithing can help us discover positive and personal stories within religious and philosophical traditions, ultimately allowing us to engage our differences with more positivity, openness, and curiosity.