Asbury Seminary Receives Lilly Endowment Grant- to “Sustain Pastoral Excellence ”

WILMORE, Ky. – Asbury Theological Seminary has been selected to receive a grant of $2 million from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc. to participate in a national program called “Sustaining Pastoral Excellence.” The program is an effort of the Endowment to focus attention and energy on maintaining the high caliber of many of the country’s pastoral leaders.

Begun last year, the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence program has established projects to enable ministers of many Christian traditions to create environments for ongoing biblical study, theological reflection and spiritual renewal, as well as for developing sustained friendships and mutual support opportunities. The three-to-five year awards announced today range from $616,094 to $2 million.

The newest 16 projects added to the program join the first “cohort” of 47 grants made last year. Grant awards for all 63 projects that are now part of the program total $84 million.

“We are thrilled to receive this grant from the Lilly and deeply appreciate their support,” said Asbury Seminary President Dr. Maxie D. Dunnam. “This grant will enable us to enhance our efforts in training leaders currently in Seminary as well as enable us to launch some new initiatives that will serve alumni and friends around the country.”

Said Craig Dykstra, Endowment vice president for religion: “The Endowment’s current religion grantmaking revolves around two major and interlocking considerations: identifying, nurturing and educating a talented new generation of pastors and, second, recognizing and supporting the excellent pastors we have. Not surprisingly, we know that healthy, engaged, thoughtful, dedicated ministers go hand in hand with healthy, vibrant and effective congregations.

“Frankly, even though as pastors’ lives are busy and ‘people-oriented,’ many feel a sense of isolation,” he explained. “Over time, this results in diminished opportunities to engage in some of the crucial activities that led them to ministry in the first place – intellectual and spiritual searching and discovery, pursuit of scholarship and writing, fellowship with colleagues, strong relationships with loved ones and with God. Most of these Sustaining Pastoral Excellence programs address the need to reconnect and to engage in an ongoing way in the kinds of experiences and practices that keep ministry alive and strong.”

Over the past few years, the Endowment has put several programs in place to encourage current pastors in their work. One route has been to establish clergy renewal programs that enable pastors and their families to take some time away from the daily pressures of pastoral life, replenish their energies and deepen the spiritual reservoirs of their ministries. The sixth season of the Clergy Renewal Program for Indiana Congregations was announced last summer, and the 117 recipients of the fourth National Clergy Renewal Program will be announced next week.

“Our experience has shown us that, besides individual sabbatical programs, opportunities for pastors to get together in peer groups for mutual support, spiritual renewal and ongoing development of their pastoral skills are equally important. So we invited ‘any nonprofit organization committed to supporting pastoral work and prepared to create and enhance a high-quality pastoral leadership program’ to submit a proposal,” Dykstra said.

“Judging from the response, we seem to have tapped into a wellspring of interest. More than 700 institutions put time and thought into proposals for this competitive program. In the beginning, we considered awarding only 25 grants, but the enthusiastic and well-thought-out proposals warranted some changes of our original intentions. Not only were we able to expand the number of grants we intended to make last year, we are also able to make these additional awards this year,” he said.

Represented among the grantees from many Christian faith traditions are theological schools, regional and national judicatories from large and small denominations, church-related colleges and universities, ecumenical organizations, retreat centers, and congregations, among others.

Most programs serve racially mixed groups of pastors, but four programs are aimed explicitly at African Africans, three at Hispanics and two at pastors from the Asian Rim who serve on the West Coast.

Most offer opportunities for pastors at any stage of their career, though several focus particularly on new pastors.

Peer group learning – that is, small groups of pastors who meet regularly for several years for ongoing renewal and mutual support – forms the basis for most projects. Most programs include a mentoring or coaching component. Most projects involve some sort of sustained study or training, but they employ a variety of educational settings and methods.

“We will be most interested in following these projects over the next few years,” Dykstra said. “They offer the promise of meaningful renewal for many pastors in this country. These newest grants add even more depth and richness to the program.”

For a complete list of the 2003 award recipients and a brief summary of their projects, log on to the program’s website at www.pastoralexcellence.org.

• CONTACT: email: psalm@asburyseminary.edu

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