2 D.C.-area seminaries get $1M grants

Two D.C.-area seminaries have each received a $1 million grant to help them train future pastoral leaders.

Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria and Wesley Theological Seminary in the District are among 74 U.S. institutions receiving “Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative” grants from the Lilly Endowment, a philanthropic nonprofit based in Indianapolis.

The grants are being bestowed to schools affiliated with “evangelical, mainline Protestant, nondenominational, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Black church and historic peace church traditions,” according to the endowment. Many of the schools will use the money to support students and pastors from Black, Hispanic, Korean American, Chinese American and recent immigrant communities.

“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,” Christopher L. Coble, the endowment’s vice president for religion, said in a statement.

Beth Ludlum, vice president of strategic initiatives at Wesley Theological Seminary, said the grant “is really about helping seminaries and divinity schools find ways to reach more people who are preparing to lead local congregations, and to do it more sustainably for the institution.”

Ms. Ludlum said the Methodist school will weigh how to “create more articulated forms of education that are accessible to more people in more places” and develop programs that don’t require the three-year, residential commitment of a masters of divinity degree, “the gold standard” of theological training.

Those likely to be interested in a nondegree program would be “people who are going to be in a part-time pulpit in a church, who are doing hospital ministry, hospital chaplains, prison chaplaincy, [or] are working in a think tank in Washington, D.C., and see that as their ministry,” she said.

The Rev. Dr. Elisabeth M. Kimball, associate dean of lifelong learning at Virginia Theological Seminary, said the Episcopal institution will use its grant to develop “mutual ministries” where lay members participate in running congregations.

“There’s a phrase that we use a lot in this proposal, which is that it’s time, as a church, to shift from being communities gathered around a minister to administering communities where clergy companion, equip and form the ministry of all the baptized to meet God’s call in their daily lives,” Ms. Kimball said.

“Every altar can’t have a full-time priest with benefits, [so] we need to have lay people equipped to do local ministry,” she added.

The school will “get some of our faculty visiting and coming back and teaching, we hope, with new content, [and] we’ll have seminarians doing their contextual ministry in these sites,” Ms. Kimball said.

The Lilly Endowment announcement said a complete list of grant recipients can be found online at https://lillyendowment.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/pathways-grantees.pdf.