Project Directory

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a multidenominational evangelical theological school, requests a five-year grant to support its Thriving in Ministry in New England program. The theological school will create cohort groups of working pastors from across New England, including Gordon Conwell alumni, and gather them regularly to form relationships with mentors and peers and improve their overall spiritual, relational, emotional, physical and vocational health. Each cohort will be led by two pastoral mentors and address a particular career stage in ministry or specific congregational setting. Cohorts will meet for a two-year period, and activities will include retreats, gatherings at Gordon Conwell, monthly group meetings and semiannual learning development opportunities. Sustainability for this project will come from a combination of support raised from congregations and new donors – as well as from support generated from a new center devoted to coaching pastors and congregations.

The South Georgia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church seeks a three-year grant for partial support of its Start Right to Stay Strong program, a mentoring and leadership development initiative for pastors who are in their first year of full-time pastoral leadership. Each pastor will be assigned two experienced pastors who will serve as personal coaches for a year and who will provide the young pastor with encouragement and guidance. In addition, these new pastors will form relationships with their peers through regular retreats and regional days to build friendships with peer colleagues and to stay connected with colleagues and leadership resources after they complete the program. Each new pastor also will identify five lay leaders from his or her congregation and will be coached about how to lead these lay leaders into deeper engagement and growth within the congregation. The program’s costs will be shared by the conference’s three ministry offices, and the conference will solicit gifts from individual congregations.

California Lutheran University received a five-year grant to create the Thriving Leadership Formation Program.  Working in partnership with Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and 11 synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the program will help pastors and church leaders strengthen specific practical leadership skills not learned in seminary while encouraging them to deepen their engagement with their congregations and communities.  This effort will emphasize collaborative learning in cohorts (in person and online) that cultivate mutual support, practices, and accountability, and provide pastors and church leaders with mentoring, spiritual direction and coaching.  To sustain this program, California Lutheran and its partner organizations will monetize mentoring and leadership development resources developed through the program and solicit financial support from its network of synods and congregations.

Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society (Lott Carey) seeks a four-year grant for partial support to launch its Pilgrimages of Striving and Thriving project.  This effort will facilitate opportunities for women pastors and pastors who are younger than the age of 40 to experience ministries that flourish through a series of pilgrimages.  These will include: intellectual pilgrimages that invite pastors to read about and learn from thriving church and civic leaders, and international pilgrimages that explore the ministries of pioneer African-American Baptist pastors who migrated to Nova Scotia and the Caribbean Islands in the 18^th century to avoid re-enslavement.  Lott Carey also will develop digital podcasts to make content available more broadly.  To sustain this project, Lott Carey will seek congregational and philanthropic support, develop partnership resources and invite participants to pay for their travel.

Wake Forest University, through its School of Divinity, a multi-denominational school rooted historically in the Baptist theological tradition, seeks a five-year grant for the Shared Wisdom for Thriving in Ministry program, an effort to bring together and build supportive relationships among inter-generational cohorts of pastors who serve congregations in multiple contexts. The Wake Forest School of Divinity will work in partnership with the Center for Congregational Health in the Wake Forest Medical Center FaithHealth Division and identify 72 clergy who serve in different ministry contexts (including solo pastors, heads of staff, associate pastors, intentional interim pastors, church planters and bi-vocational pastors). These pastors will be formed into three peer cohort groups. The program will connect each pastor with a pastor-mentor and a clergy-coach, and the pastor peer cohorts will participate in a series of leadership development opportunities led by Center for Congregational Health and divinity school faculty. To sustain this work, the divinity school will fold elements of the program into its doctor of ministry degree and certificate programs, and the Center for Congregational Health will incorporate the work into its ongoing clergy continuing education programs.

Located in Harlem, New York City, City Seminary of New York seeks in its five-year grant to support its Thriving in Ministry Initiative project. This is an effort to cultivate an expansive community of pastoral practice across often disconnected ministries and church traditions in the metropolitan area. Through collaborative inquiry and praxis reflection groups, spiritual direction retreats, portraiture, and annual gatherings, City Seminary hopes to connect pastors in similar and different seasons of ministry to a community of support and encouragement. The project proposes to nurture clergy faith and spirituality, invite clergy to listen to their congregational members, explore the importance of their family and intergenerational interactions, and make space for them to reflect on their congregation’s mission and purpose in a complex and ever-changing urban setting. City Seminary will incorporate project activities into its ongoing graduate and non-degree programs and its operating budget. The overarching vision is to make Thriving in Ministry part of the fabric of our seminary life now and into the future.