Baylor receives major grant for Truett’s Future Church Project

WACO—Baylor University has received a $1 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to help Truett Theological Seminary launch its Future Church Project.

The project—co-directed by Truett faculty Angela Gorrell and Dustin Benac—is designed to respond to the expressed needs and challenges of the church through relational engagement, research and resourcing.

“We are grateful for Lilly Endowment’s vision and its support for the Future Church Project,” Benac said. “In a time of so much transition for the church and its leaders, I am hopeful because of what is emerging in this moment: the renewal of theological education through more collaborative approaches to ministry, teaching and leadership.

“We look forward to partnering with many others across Baylor, Truett and the broader Waco community to envision and implement this collective work.”

Gorrell likewise expressed appreciation to the Lilly Endowment for its support and excitement about the project.

“With great hope and joy, we look forward to collaborating with excellent scholars, practitioners and students to pilot helpful, imaginative solutions to challenges facing the church,” she said.

The project is being funded through Lilly Endowment’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative, a three-phase initiative designed to help theological schools across the United States and Canada as they prioritize and respond to the most pressing challenges they face as they prepare pastoral leaders for Christian congregations both now and into the future.

The Future Church Project will connect the seminary’s Program for the Future Church, the Truett Church Network and local nonprofit organization Mission Waco to achieve five goals:

• Discover and address current and emerging challenges that confront local churches while cultivating collaboration between Truett, the church and the community.
• Build collaborative, interdisciplinary hubs for research around the challenges facing the church.
• Create a culture of experimentation and exploration of alternative modalities for theological education and leadership development.
• Nurture and enliven the souls and work of early-career ministers.
• Increase Truett’s financial sustainability through innovative fund-raising and recruitment efforts.

With a focus on forward-thinking strategies and initiatives, the Future Church Project will strengthen Truett Seminary’s capacity to prepare and support pastors and congregational lay ministers into the future.

Address the needs of churches and ministry leaders

The Future Church Project also will support collaborative and interdisciplinary research across Baylor University, engaging researchers in order to understand and pilot solutions to the complex challenges facing local communities and Christian leaders.

“The grant award by Lilly Endowment affirms the Seminary’s ability and potential to address the needs of congregations and ministry leaders in thoughtful and innovative ways,” Baylor Provost Nancy Brickhouse said. “We are grateful to Lilly Endowment for this award and look forward to witnessing the realized goals of the Future Church Project.”

Truett Seminary is one of 84 theological schools that will benefit from a total of more than $82 million in grants through the second phase of the Pathways initiative. Together, the schools represent evangelical, mainline Protestant, nondenominational, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Black church and historic peace church traditions such as Church of the Brethren, Mennonite and Quakers. Many schools also serve students and pastors from Black, Latino, Korean American, Chinese American and recent immigrant Christian communities.

“Theological schools have long played a pivotal role in preparing pastoral leaders for churches,” said Christopher L. Coble, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for religion. “Today, these schools find themselves in a period of rapid and profound change.

“Through the Pathways Initiative, theological schools will take deliberate steps to address the challenges they have identified in ways that make the most sense to them. We believe that their efforts are critical to ensuring that Christian congregations continue to have a steady stream of pastoral leaders who are well-prepared to lead the churches of tomorrow.”

Lilly Endowment launched the Pathways initiative in January 2021 because of its longstanding interest in supporting efforts to enhance and sustain the vitality of Christian congregations by strengthening the leadership capacities of pastors and congregational lay leaders.

“Even though various reports of the demise of the church in North America are greatly exaggerated, this is no time to rest on ecclesial laurels,” said Truett Seminary Dean Todd D. Still. “That Lilly Endowment would invest so generously and Drs. Gorrell and Benac would devote themselves so fully to such a timely and necessary project is a great grace.

“Through the years, Lilly Endowment has helped to fund significantly a number of strategic programs at Baylor in general and at Truett in particular. May the multifaceted, innovative, collaborative work of the new program for the Future Church flourish and bear much good fruit.”