New initiative seeks to encourage individuals to explore Christian practices
Lilly Endowment launches Exploring Christian Practices Initiaitive
INDIANAPOLIS — Lilly Endowment is inviting faith-based organizations to enhance and multiply the opportunities they offer individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds to learn about and engage in Christian practices that can help them explore spiritual questions and interests, cultivate experiences of awe and wonder, build community and grow in faith.
Through the Exploring Christian Practices Initiative, the Endowment is making available grants of up to $2.5 million each to be used for up to a five-year period. The initiative, which is competitive, will support faith-based organizations in developing or strengthening efforts to retrieve, adapt and refine Christian practices and to deploy them in ways that nourish the faith of individuals whom they seek to serve.
Learn more about the new grant opportunity here.
“Throughout history, Christian communities have created and adapted a wide array of spiritual practices and devotional rituals to help individuals reflect on their lives and deepen their relationships with God,” said Christopher L. Coble, the Endowment’s vice president for religion. “Through this initiative, the Endowment is inviting Christian communities to enhance their efforts to reach out and share those practices with people who long to deepen their spiritual lives. These include individuals who are curious about Christianity as well as those who are regular churchgoers.”
The Endowment is interested in supporting organizations that reflect a broad spectrum of Christian traditions and in helping them examine new ways and expand the opportunities and settings through which their communities can help individuals draw on practices to nurture Christian faith.
In developing their proposals, eligible organizations are encouraged to listen closely to individuals who are curious about faith and seeking opportunities to explore spiritual questions; identify specific Christian practices that are most appropriate and helpful today for nourishing faith; and explore the ways they reach individuals and help them learn about and engage in these practices to address their spiritual interests and grow in faith.
Eligible organizations are encouraged to consider a variety of Christian practices that are grounded in their theological traditions and have been instrumental in nurturing their communities’ faith. Examples of common Christian practices include daily prayer and meditation, offering hospitality, spiritual discernment exercises, retreats, pilgrimages, mission trips, sharing accounts of faith through testimony, communal singing, keeping sabbath, offering forgiveness and disciplined study of and reflection on scripture and theological traditions. Organizations also are encouraged to consider the wide range of settings where individuals engage in Christian practices. They include congregations and worship centers, camps, retreat centers, monasteries, homes, workplaces, religious shrines, community gardens, parks, and religious celebrations and events, among others.
The Exploring Christian Practices Initiative builds on the Endowment’s efforts to help Christian communities across the United States nurture the Christian faith and life of individuals and families and enhance the vitality of congregational life.
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About Lilly Endowment
Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based private foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly, Sr. and his sons Eli and J.K. Jr. through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. Although the gifts of stock remain a financial bedrock of the Endowment, it is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion. Although the Endowment maintains a special commitment to its founders’ hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana, it also funds programs throughout the United States, especially in the field of religion. A principal aim of the Endowment’s religion grantmaking is to deepen and enrich the lives of Christians in the United States, primarily by seeking out and supporting efforts that enhance the vitality of congregations and strengthen the pastoral and lay leadership of Christian communities. The Endowment also seeks to foster public understanding about religion and lift up in fair, accurate and balanced ways the roles that people of all faiths and diverse religious communities play in the United State and around the globe.
Contact:
Judith Cebula
Lilly Endowment Inc.
cebulaj@lei.org
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