Lilly Endowment Awards Planning Grant to NPTS

The planning grant is designed to fund costs and enable the seminary to prepare an implementation grant proposal of up to $2 million as part of the endowment's program called "The Making Connections Initiative." This program is designed to help seminaries make connections with denominations, denominational offices, universities and colleges, congregations and pastors.

The seminary will utilize the planning grant to explore how to make connections with young people from Covenant churches, connections between the seminary and University Ministries of North Park University, and between the seminary and selected congregations and pastors. It is a different grant program than the one awarded last fall to the Evangelical Covenant Church that will fund formation of the seminary's Center for Spiritual Direction.

Three opportunities will be explored this summer, notes Stephen R. Graham, Dean of Faculty and Academic Life at North Park Theological Seminary, including:

• Explore additional ways of collaboration with the Office of University Ministries. University Ministries involves undergraduates in worship, small groups, spiritual formation and a variety of ministries within the community and the city. The seminary's resources in theological studies and spiritual formation and the leadership potential of seminary students makes this a collaboration that could be particularly fruitful, Graham says, both for seminary students and for undergraduates who should consider theological study and ministry.
• Through its Center for Youth Ministry Studies, the seminary will offer a summer program called "Youth Nexus." This pilot project will bring high school juniors and their youth pastors to campus for a week-long summer institute to engage both groups in theological reflection, worship, service projects and community building recreational activities.
• Funding will also allow the seminary to explore ways of expanding the Pastor in Residence program to connect more fully with pastors in the Evangelical Covenant Church and other denominations. This will be accomplished by bringing pastors to the campus for study leaves of from a few days to two weeks in length. The planning grant will allow exploration of ways to involve visiting pastors more effectively in the seminary's educational process. The seminary will also explore with pastors the possibility of sending selected faculty to present the resources of the seminary to new congregations, and to learn from them how best the seminary can serve them and their developing ministries.

Graham says all three opportunities will be explored this summer and an implementation grant proposal will be prepared for submission to the Lilly Endowment by mid-September.

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