One of the Greatest Gifts to American Christianity is . . .

. . . the Religion Division of the Lilly Endowment in Indianapolis, IN

Photo by Steven Van Elk on Unsplash

One of the Greatest Gifts to American Christianity is . . .

. . . the Religion Division of the Lilly Endowment in Indianapolis, IN.

I say this not because I’m trying to get more attention from Lilly. They know who I am because I've had some type of relationship with them for 25 years.

As I enter my 75th year of life, I am now concluding my grant writing efforts for various denominational organizations. There is no hope of me responding positively to grant writing opportunities anymore.

With one exception you will see later in this series of posts.

A year ago, I informed the denomination, for whom I have written the most grants to Lilly, that I was finished writing grants. It’s really hard work—intense and stressful. It distracts me from other things I want to write.

Less than 24 hours after I informed the denomination of this, a leader from the denomination called and asked me to write a grant for them.

“No!”

This was my firm one-word answer. However, I softened my response and offered to coach the person I worked with on writing the most recent grant for this division of the denomination. I did, and they received the grant.

Indianapolis Center for Congregations

My first direct encounter with Lilly was around the turn of the century. I worked on a couple of projects for the Center in Indianapolis which Lilly founded.

The most significant project was my year-long Spiritual Strategic Journey process. This initiative helps congregations cultivate a renewed sense of direction and forward progress in response to an evolving understanding of God’s empowering vision.

We conducted a cluster process involving 11 congregations. I made four trips to Indianapolis between 2001 and 2002. After my first visit, during which we assessed the readiness of these congregations, I suggested four of the 11 were not ready.

I felt we ought to offer them something different to help them prepare for a new direction. Otherwise, they might feel a sense of failure at the end of the year.

We altered the process to accommodate these four. We did not tell them about our concern for their readiness so as not to discourage them.

At the end of the process, the leadership of the Center acknowledged I was right. It was these four congregations that struggled to benefit from the process and found it frustrating.

A positive aspect was that it demonstrated my readiness exercises were effective in predicting the potential success of congregations. This assisted me in subsequent efforts to empower congregations.

The 11 congregations genuinely engaged in this process. They believed in what it was intended to help them accomplish and were positively passionate in their participation. So much so that . . .

. . . I visited all 11 congregations on-site from Sunday, September 9^th through Friday, September 14th, in 2001.

Tuesday of that week was the 9/11 attack on the United States.

None of the congregations canceled their meetings with me. They said my visits were too important to cancel.

In some instances, they held a prayer gathering at their church regarding 9/11 the same day we met to discuss the future of their congregation.

Sustaining Pastoral Excellence (SPE)

The first grant I wrote and received from Lilly was with the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Initiative. At that time, I served as the associate executive director of a regional Baptist denomination of 4,000 affiliated congregations.

I had never written a grant before. I did my best. We did not get the grant in the first round. I needed to learn more about writing grant proposals for Lilly.

Later Lilly contacted me and offered to help me revise my proposal. We ultimately received the grant. We were fortunate to receive the entire grant amount during the first year of a multiyear process.

The executive director of our denominational organization was a long-term friend. He told me if I came to work with him, he knew we would have fun.

The day he held a $1,667,000 check from the Lilly Endowment in his hand, he said, “I’m having fun today, George!”

I will explain how our SPE project worked in my next post.

Next: What the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Grant Did for 88 Pastors