Sixteen universities active in the training of Baptist ministers in the United States are among 84 recipients of the latest round of $82 million in grants from the Lilly Endowment.
Lilly, based in Indianapolis, announced the second round of grants in its Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative Nov. 29. The grants range from $500,000 to $1 million, with the vast majority of the grants being $1 million per school.
Lilly’s current three-phase initiative is designed to help theological schools strengthen and sustain their capacities to prepare and support pastoral leaders for Christian congregations. Each recipient school has proposed different ways of using the funds. For example, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, where Baptist theologian Molly Marshall is president, will use its $1 million grant to establish a Leadership Center for Social Justice that will prepare pastoral leaders to involve their congregations strategically in constructive actions that move their communities toward holistic justice.
Lilly’s current three-phase initiative is designed to help theological schools strengthen and sustain their capacities to prepare and support pastoral leaders for Christian congregations.
Lilly announced separate grants to the Association of Theological Schools and the In Trust Center for Theological Schools to coordinate the Pathways initiative during the next five years.
The current initiative was launched in January 2021. In the first phase, 234 of the 263 schools accredited by ATS received planning grants of up to $50,000 to help them explore challenges and opportunities they wished to pursue.
The newly announced grants represent the second phase of that work, which will be followed by a competitive third and final phase to fund large-scale, collaborative projects in which theological schools work together to strengthen their capacities to prepare and support pastors and lay ministers and that offer sustainable models or strategies that could be adopted by other schools. These grants will be announced in July 2022.
For the last two decades, in particular, the Lilly Endowment has been a major source of funding for congregations and schools innovating in preparing clergy for ministry. The early focus was on creating pastoral residencies inside churches that offer post-seminary practical experience.
Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, a congregation affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, was among those first grant recipients and over the past two decades has sent out 35 young ministers from its Pathways to Ministry program. Later, similar grants were made to denominational bodies — including the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship — to spark similar programs. As a result of Lilly’s influence, pastoral residencies are now a well-known option for highly motivated seminary graduates to gain on-the-job experience.
Now, Lilly’s religion division has turned its focus to the seminaries and universities that train clergy but with the same ultimate goal of fostering longevity in healthy pastoral ministries.
Chris Coble
“Theological schools have long played a pivotal role in preparing pastoral leaders for churches,” said Christopher Coble, the Endowment’s vice president for religion. “Today, these schools find themselves in a period of rapid and profound change. Through the Pathways initiative, theological schools will take deliberate steps to address the challenges they have identified in ways that make the most sense to them. We believe their efforts are critical to ensuring that Christian congregations continue to have a steady stream of pastoral leaders who are well-prepared to lead the churches of tomorrow.”
Among the latest grant recipients are these schools that are either Baptist in identity or active in training Baptist ministers through a Baptist House of Studies or similar intentional programs or by number of students:
- Baylor University
- Campbell University
- Duke University
- Eastern University
- Emory University
- Fuller Theological Seminary
- Hartford Seminary
- Interdenominational Theological Center
- Mercer University
- Northern Baptist Theological Seminary
- Palm Beach Atlantic University
- Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
- Union Presbyterian Seminary
- United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities
- Virginia Union University
- Wake Forest University
Lilly Endowment is a private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly Sr. and his sons, Eli and J.K. Jr. through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Co. Although the gifts of stock remain a financial bedrock of the Endowment, it is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location.
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