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Lott Carey Receives Lilly Endowment Grant to “Sustain Pastoral Excellence”

Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention has been selected to receive a grant of $1,995,266 from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc. to participate in a national program called “Sustaining Pastoral Excellence.” The program is a new effort of the Endowment to focus attention and energy on maintaining the high caliber of many of the country’s pastoral leaders.


Overall, 47 grants were awarded for a total of $57.9 million to religiously affiliated organizations across the country. The three – to five-year awards range form $252,355 to $2 million.

Lott Carey’s Pastoral Excellence Program will help pastors broaden their visions for ministry and build networks of colleagues with similar interests. Through a series of inter-national missions assignments in Jamaica, Guyana, and Zimbabwe and ongoing peer mentoring with colleagues, participating pastors will expand and enlarge their visions of pastoral work and be energized for more effective service in their congregations. According to Lott Carey’s chief executive officer, Dr. David Emmanuel Goatley, “Lott Carey’s Pastoral Excellence Program will nurture 120 pastors to build and sustain excellence over a three-year period that will benefit participants, churches, and ultimately, the kingdom of God.”

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

“Frankly, as busy and as ‘people-oriented’ as pastors’ lives are, 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 programs address the need to reconnect and to engage in an ongoing way in the kinds of experiences and practices that keep ministry alive.”

Over the past few years, the Endowment has put several programs in place to encourage current pastors in their work. It has established the Clergy Renewal Program for Indiana Congregations (beginning its fifth season) and the National Clergy Renewal Program (2002 marks its third season). The Endowment also has supported small pilot programs of peer learning groups on a limited basis.

“It became obvious, however, that many more pastors would be candidates for such programs and would benefit greatly from participating in them. So we invited ‘any nonprofit organization committed to supporting pastoral work and prepared to create or enhance a high-quality pastoral leadership program’ to submit a proposal in this program,” 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,” he noted.

Represented among the grants from nearly every major Christian faith tradition are theological schools, regional and national judicatories from large and small denominations, church-related colleges and universities, ecumenical organizations, retreat centers, and a congregation, among others.

Most groups serve racially mixed groups of pastors, but two programs are aimed explicitly at African Americans, two at Hispanics and one at Korean pastors 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 – form the basis for most of the programs.

“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.”