The Dakotas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church seeks a five-year grant to support its Higher Ground program. This effort seeks to support rural church pastors by helping them develop and strengthen healthy leadership practices that promote the well-being of congregations and church systems. By focusing on a pastor’s holistic health (spiritual, physical, emotional, financial, social), the conference’s clergy will be better equipped to lead healthier congregations. The conference will walk alongside clergy at key junctures in their careers to help them reassess their calling and leadership gifts, re-engage with their sense of vocation and passion for pastoral leadership, and renew and refocus their ministries. Clergy will begin the year of renewal and refocus at a six-day retreat and will continue meeting with counselors and coaches through the rest of the year in the program. Pastors will participate in individual and group coaching as they put together personal and professional development plans. To sustain this effort, the conference will cultivate individual donors with a vision to support pastors, incorporate elements into its operating budget and reallocate earnings from its endowment.
North Park Theological Seminary’s Thriving in Ministry grant is focusing on three main areas: Thriving Prophetically, Thriving Spiritually, and Thriving Vocationally. Our goal is to develop and implement programs and initiatives that will support our pastors in these key areas of their ministry. We intend to do this by: Developing peer-mentoring programs; Providing opportunities for pastors to explore the connection between their pastoral calling and social issues facing the church and world today, and; Creating continuing education opportunities for trained spiritual directors who are either themselves pastors or are providing spiritual direction to pastors, helping them enhance their interior life. To fulfill this goal we are committed to working with our pastors to determine how best we can serve them in reaching this goal and ensuring that the efforts we invest in through this grant will have a long lasting impact on the ability of our pastors to thrive in ministry.
Virginia Union University seeks to launch a new effort to help pastors address major personal and professional challenges. Based in its Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology (STVU), the project will provide pastors with holistic self-care, mentorship and collegial relationships, and congregational and community support. STVU will develop peer support groups for pastors, set aside sacred spaces for pastors to engage in reflection and retreats, and build support at the congregational and community levels for pastors to seek out and receive help when necessary.
Benedictine Women of Madison, an ecumenical religious community, received a five-year grant to support its Ecumenical Center for Clergy Spiritual Renewal program. This endeavor seeks to offer pastors in the early- and mid-stages of their careers the opportunity to experience spiritual renewal through immersions in Christian contemplative practices and the forming of supportive relationships with clergy peers. The pastors will participate in two immersions to experience the rhythms, people and sacred space of Holy Wisdom Monastery. Between immersions, pastors will stay connected to one another through video conference calls and a variety of leadership resources and activities sponsored by the Center. The Benedictine Women will sustain this program through partnerships with congregations and external organizations, grants, earnings from its endowment and modest participant fees.
Project Name:
The PRIME Program: Pastoral Initative for Ministerial Excellence
Description:
Hampton University’s Pastoral Renewal Initiative for Ministerial Excellence (PRIME) Program is designed to help pastors build and sustain collegial relationships with experienced clergy who can serve as mentors, guiding them through key leadership stages, challenges and seasons in congregational ministry. The PRIME Program is a three-year Christian pastoral education and clergy development program designed to strengthen and expand the current Church Development and Leadership Academy (CDLA) developed to function continuously as the professional development arm of the highly regarded Hampton University Ministers’ Conference, now in its 105th year of continuous service and support to Christian leadership promoting congregational growth and church vitality. The program takes a benchmark-based developmental approach to pastoral education and well-being by offering a set of restorative retreats for pastors constructed on years of experience clustered along a pastoral leadership arc: exploratory (0-3 years), early (4-10), and middle (11-20 years). Each pastoral stage and ministerial career benchmark require a specific skill-set needed to lead churches and congregations efficiently and effectively. . Specifically, selected pastors will be invited to serve as PRIME mentors, exemplars and instructors to help clergy men and women from across the United States grow, transition, thrive and flourish through shared knowledge in sacred space. The pastoral mentors will serve as role models and guide the 40 participants we call PRIME Fellows, through a series of four restorative retreats will address common ground challenges pastors face and share in their work, while developing supportive relationships. The culminating component of the PRIME Program will require each PRIME Fellow to develop and implement an innovative Flourishing in Ministry project in their congregations with a modest mini-grant or sub-award. To sustain the program, Hampton’s office of development will actively seek funding from donors, and the university will leverage its resources and infrastructure to support the pastors.
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.