Someone Changing the Church That You've Never Heard Of

Each week, I spend a half hour enjoying Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, a PBS show that offers news and features on issues of religion.  That program has long been supported by grants from the Lilly Endowment, based in my hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana.

In Indiana, gifts from the Endowment are noticeable in many places, particularly at colleges around the state, many of which, like my alma mater Wabash College, have a Lilly Library.  Less known, though, is that one of the main focuses of the Lilly Endowment is on strengthening religion, religious education, and religious institutions.  Each year, the Endowment gives away millions of dollars in grants to support these efforts to various groups.

A couple of weeks ago, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly ran a story about Craig Dykstra, who has served as the head of the Endowment's religion division for 15 years and will return to teaching full-time.  You can watch the story or read a transcript of it here.

From the story, you may not get a full understanding of the impact that Dykstra has had on the church, through his direction of Endowment grants.  (My instinct is that Dykstra would have been uncomfortable with a laundry list of programs supported or, more importantly, begun by the religion division during his tenure at the Lilly Endowment.)

However, I believe that the Lilly Endowment is on the front lines of trying to address some of the key challenges facing American churches now and in the near future.  In particular, they searched for inventive ways to address some of the decline of churches in the United States.  Their solution, which has been supported well beyond $1 billion, has been to invest in pastors who will lead congregations (and beyond) in facing these challenges.

In particular, they have invested heavily in programs to sustain and transform seminary education; they have created fellowships for beginning clergy to work as full-time associates under the direction of skilled senior ministers after they graduate seminary (so that they are better able to face the challenges they will likely face when they become the sole ministers of small congregations -- which is where most recent seminary graduates find their first calling); and they have worked to develop ways to sustain healthy pastoral leadership -- or, if you prefer, to fight against clergy burnout -- through programs that encourage pastoral sabbaticals, create clergy support groups around educational opportunities, and train ministers to be better stewards of their own time, health, and financial resources.  (I'm sure the work extends beyond these programs, but these are some that I have interacted with in the last ten years.)

The full fruit of these efforts will only begin to appear in the next ten to twenty years, but I know that they will dramatically change the church.  It may not forestall the membership and attendance decline, but it certainly will improve the leadership of congregations -- and likely regions, presbyteries, conferences, and maybe even entire denominations.  And I know that the Lilly Endowment will continue to be on the front lines trying to invest in the future of Christian congregations when Dykstra's successor begins his tenure.

These are people that you'll probably never meet; they may even be names you'll never remember.  But they carry a big financial stick -- WISELY -- and they are shaping the future of the church.  So this is an opportunity to tip our hats and say thank you to someone who has done such service on our behalf, and wish Dr. Dykstra well as he returns to the classroom, where he will continue shaping the future of the church through his students.