Lilly Endowment to Give 40 Pastors $45,000 Each for Sabbatical
Some 40 lucky Indiana churches will receive up to $45,000 each next year to fund much-needed sabbaticals for their pastors.
Some 40 lucky Indiana churches will receive up to $45,000 each next year to fund much-needed sabbaticals for their pastors. The Lilly Endowment announced on Thursday that pastors can now submit their resumes to the Indiana clergy renewal program to compete for the grants.
Next year marks the eighth consecutive year the Endowment will be running the project, which takes pastors around the world or the nation for weeks in an effort to renew their energies and their faith.
“Pastors’ ordinary schedules may leave them little time to think and reflect on their ministries, “ said Craig Dykstra, the Endowment’s senior vice president for religion, in a press release. “The renewal program, which is designed by the pastor together with the lay leaders of the congregation, is intended to allow the pastor to get away for a substantial period of time and get in touch with the deep motivations and essential sources of energy that led him or her to the ministry in the first place,”
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Pastors can use the sabbatical to travel around the world or to re-engage with family or friends. They can use the time to read up on topics that had interested them in the past or explore a new hobby. Congregations can use up to $15,000 of the money for a replacement pastor while their leader tours.
Whatever, the use, the grants are meant to reinvigorate America’s spiritual leaders.
“Lilly Endowment seeks to strengthen congregations by providing an opportunity for pastors in Indiana to step away briefly from the persistent obligations of daily parish life,” a statement from the group explained. “Renewal periods are not vacations, but times for intentional exploration and reflection, for drinking again from God's life-giving waters, for regaining the enthusiasm and creativity for ministry.”
The Indiana program began in 1999, and gave birth to a National Clergy Renewal Program that also offers up to $45,000 each directly to Christian congregations for the support of their pastor. The National program, which began in 2000, chooses up to 100 grant recipients each year, with deadlines for proposals generally due in June. The Indiana program, meanwhile, chooses up to 40 recipients each year, and the deadline is set for January of that year.
Since 1999, the Endowment has invested $6.1 million in the program for nearly 200 congregations and their pastors.
According to Dykstra, the application process is “not an easy one,” and “it takes the intentional collaboration of the pastor, his or her family, and the congregation to design a renewal program that is a result of the shared vision.”
The renewal program is open to all pastors who have not taken a sabbatical in the past seven years. This means recipients of the 1999 grants are still eligible to apply. The final date to submit applications is January 31, 2006.
For more information, visit: www.lillyendowment.org or attend the informational meeting at the North United Methodist Church in Meridian St. Indianapolis on Oct. 4.
Since 1999, the endowment spent $6.1 million to provide for about 200 sabbaticals in Indiana and $18.9 million for more than 600 congregations elsewhere.
