Life after the Lilly Grants?
Sustaining Momentum for Pastoral Excellence
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Sixty-three programs around the United States are now engaged in various efforts to call forth and sustain pastoral excellence. In response to an invitation from Lilly Endowment Inc., these programs designed and submitted proposals to enhance excellence among pastoral leaders and congregations. In an intensely competitive process, these 63 were chosen to receive grants from more than 700 proposals that were submitted. As a result of their efforts, more than 5,000 pastors and about 6,000 laity have participated in peer learning communities, and thousands more have taken part in diverse other initiatives for learning, support, and formation, according to the latest project reports.
But what happens after the Lilly grant money is spent? Will there be life after Lilly for the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence initiative? Can these extraordinary efforts to call forth and support pastoral excellence be sustained? How will they be funded? Which strategies and activities merit continuation? How does pastoral excellence become an integral part of church culture rather than a special initiative?
The Sustaining Pastoral Excellence grants are part of a broad effort to promote a cultural shift toward stronger leadership in the Christian church. Such major cultural transitions necessarily require many actions by countless people and institutions over an extended period of time. Pastoral excellence is multi-faceted and contextual; calling forth and sustaining excellence clearly requires long-term strategies that extend far beyond the grant-life of the Lilly Sustaining Pastoral Excellence initiative.
Many recipients of the Lilly SPE grants tell me that the issue of sustainability is high on their agenda. Their attention naturally turns quickly to finances. Yes, systemic change does require adequate and extended funding, but other issues must be addressed first. Funding alone does not bring systemic change or pastoral excellence. More than money is required.
Imagination sustains momentum more than money does. Scarcity of imagination precedes shortage of funds. Without imagination, funding perpetuates mediocrity. As you think about the future of your Sustaining Pastoral Excellence program, ask yourself the following questions: What has sparked the imaginations of pastors, laity, and congregations? Have pastors and congregations become more imaginative in their ministries? If so, what changes in individuals, congregations, and systems are taking place?
Faith in God’s abundance is more sustaining than strategies to avoid scarcity. Preoccupation with survival seduces individuals and institutions into a presumption of scarcity. Premature fixation on funding diverts attention from gifts already present and tends to supplant celebration of abundant grace with competition for limited resources. Prior to the question, “How can we get the money to survive?”, is another question: Where are the signs of God’s abundant grace manifested in our SPE program? Grace includes unmerited gift from God; but grace is fundamentally the free gift of God present to transform and make new. Where do you see the power and presence of God at work in pastors and congregations? There you will find abundance for sustainability!
Narratives about changed lives and transformed communities contribute to sustainability. Isolation and untold stories beget scarcity and diminish the common good. Shared accounts of pastoral excellence strengthen community and produce abundance. What stories of reconciliation and transformation from SPE peer groups and other initiatives need to be told? How do those stories relate to the story of God’s action to reconcile and transform the entire creation? Stories precede finances as resources for sustainability.
Connections sustain. Fragmentation depletes. The Sustaining Pastoral Excellence programs that are most likely to thrive in the long term are those that are intentional about making and deepening connections. Institutional turf protection diminishes imagination, saps passion, and furthers disintegration. Cooperative connections, on the other hand, prompt imagination, stimulate passion, and increase abundance. What partnerships are being formed in the SPE programs? How are pastors and congregations being connected in new and deeper relationships? Sustainability requires connections and partnerships.
The Lilly Endowment’s financial investment has the potential to promote a culture of pastoral excellence. Considerable momentum has already been generated, as the 63 SPE programs implement their strategies for systemic change. Sustaining that momentum requires imagination rooted in God’s abundance, stories of changed lives and communities, and cooperative connections and partnerships. These are essential if the Sustaining Pastor Excellence programs are to have life beyond the Lilly grants.
Kenneth L. Carder is director of Pulpit & Pew: The Duke Center for Excellence in Ministry and professor of the practice of pastoral formation at Duke Divinity School. He was bishop of the Mississippi Area of the United Methodist Church from 2000 to 2004 and the Nashville Area of the UMC from 1992 to 2000.
