ATLANTA (ABP) — The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will create a leadership “ecosystem” during the next three years with a $1 million grant from the Lilly Endowment.
The ecosystem, as the grant describes it, will focus on two initiatives. One will be aimed at youth and college students, while the other will bring theological educators and pastors together in dialogue.
The program is aimed at helping young people discover their vocational calling. “Our focus all along has been to discover, develop and nurture leaders,” said Terry Hamrick, CBF’s coordinator of leadership development, in a press release. “This grant is strategic in that we will be able to call young people out, improve their theological education experience and create positive ministry experiences in the local church.”
CBF will implement the new program with existing staff and partners, adding more than $300,000 of its funds to the grant. Plans call for the program to begin to take shape this fall.
“Lilly Endowment is very pleased that many institutions and leaders affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship — pastors and congregations, leaders of seminaries and colleges and many young people preparing to become pastors — have been working together so closely to create an environment in which churches can flourish,” said Craig Dykstra, the endowment’s senior vice president for religion.
Called “Enhancing the Capacity of Missional Congregations to Serve as Agents of Vocational Discovery,” the youth and college initiative includes four strategies. The initiative will create a youth-ministry network, establish a collegiate network and fund congregation-based internships for college students. It also will convene a summit for college and graduate students involved in summer ministry, such as CBF’s Student.Go volunteers, Passport camp staff, interns for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and others.
The initiative to bring churches and theological educators together is called “Serving as a Catalyst for a New Community of Theological Schools and Congregations.” Plans call for instituting a pastors and scholars studio that would bring together 20 professors and 20 pastors to improve the process of forming leaders.
The initiative also will create a supervised ministry network of faculty and staff from theological schools and pastors of churches hosting seminary students in internship-type ministry positions. In addition, it will establish a network for Baptist students in doctoral programs.
“We’re trying to help supervised ministry go from being an ‘Oh, no, I’ve got to have this to graduate’ to helping students utilize the experience to better set their vocational direction,” Hamrick said. “The new networks will be places for us to begin a conversation with colleges and universities to have a relationship. That is such an important time for vocational decisions.”
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