Grant to Duke Divinity Will Bring Churches, Leaders Together for Change

Duke Divinity School has received $6.7 million from Lilly Endowment Inc. to promote innovative pastoral leadership and excellence in ministry, Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead announced Tuesday.

The grant supports "Advancing Pastoral Excellence," a new phase of the program "Pulpit & Pew: Research on Pastoral Leadership." The Indianapolis-based endowment also funded the first four-year phase of Pulpit & Pew, which is based at Duke Divinity School and has undertaken numerous research projects in partnership with churches and church leaders across the country. Topics researched have ranged from pastoral health issues to images of clergy in the media to clergy compensation.

"This splendid new grant from Lilly Endowment will allow Duke Divinity School to become an instrument helping pastors, churches and other institutions address important challenges, effect significant change and implement creative programs to enhance the formation and development of pastoral leaders and congregations," Brodhead said.

Divinity School Dean L. Gregory Jones said the new grant "will build on the momentum generated by Pulpit & Pew to strengthen work in pastoral leadership for the substantial benefit of the church."

"The vocation of Christian ministry faces numerous challenges -- many exacerbated by a scarcity of resources within the church and the changing landscape of the broader American culture in the 21st century," Jones said. "Christian leaders struggle to work effectively and with integrity, while staying faithful to the Gospel and to their various religious traditions. The new grant identifies seven critical themes, with a working group of pastors, church leaders, scholars and others assigned to design and test strategies for change in each area."

The themes, many of which were initially identified and explored by the first phase of Pulpit & Pew, include:

-- The economics of pastoral leadership;

-- Nurturing healthy pastoral lives;

-- Assessment and evaluation of pastors;

-- Pastoral placement and fit;

-- Calling a new generation of pastors;

-- Getting started well in pastoral ministry; and

-- Pastoral work and the shaping of communities.

Advancing Pastoral Excellence will sponsor several initiatives around these subjects that will involve a variety of people with the ability to effect change. These include:

-- Pastors and faith-based institutions undertaking pilot programs to test ideas identified by working groups;

-- Two national summits with a broad range of church leaders;

-- A leadership development program designed to enhance key institutional leaders' abilities to lead change, and

-- An ambitious communications program to encourage national dialogue and help pastors cultivate new patterns of writing in public forums beyond the church.

"The emphasis and focus of Advancing Pastoral Excellence will be on developing strategies that promote change throughout the church and among those involved in calling forth, educating and deploying ministers," said Kenneth Carder, director of the Divinity School's Center for Excellence in Ministry. "The overall goal is to further understanding and practice of excellent ministry and how that excellence is formed and sustained."

Carder, who retired in August as an active United Methodist bishop, brings to this new project a lifetime of service to the church and experience as a "pastor to pastors."

"We do have pastors who are dispirited, confused, feeling isolated, struggling in systems that sometimes diminish them and sap them of their passion," Carder said. "We will be working with new models, but models that will be rooted in the Christian tradition -- indeed, in the Gospel itself. We would like to see in four years a church that has a clearer vision of what quality, excellent ministry means and how to implement and sustain that ministry."