July 5, 2023
Contact: Judith Cebula
317.916.7327 | cebulaj@lei.org
Grants to Help Parents Share Faith with Their Children
INDIANAPOLIS – Through the Christian Parenting and Caregiving Initiative, Lilly Endowment Inc. has approved grants to 77 organizations to provide resources for parents and other caregivers to help them share more effectively their Christian faith and values with their children.
In this national and competitive initiative, grants range from $240,000 to $1.25 million and are supporting a variety of approaches that draw on cutting-edge research about child development and parenting to inform faith practices in the home. These approaches include forming parenting support groups in congregations and creating intergenerational parenting mentoring networks.
Some organizations are producing resources to help parents and children engage in daily Christian practices in their homes through prayer, scripture readings and storytelling. Many organizations are helping families develop faith-based rituals to help children grow spiritually by marking significant milestones in the lives of their children and at family celebrations. Other organizations are developing peer-coaching programs and offering training so that parents and caregivers can develop confidence in sharing faith.
“We’ve heard from many parents who are seeking to nurture the spiritual lives of their children, especially in their daily activities, and looking to churches and other faith-based organizations for support,” said Christopher L. Coble, the Endowment’s vice president for religion. “These thoughtful, creative and collaborative organizations embrace the important role that families have in shaping the religious development of children and are launching programs to assist parents and caregivers with this task.”
The organizations participating in the initiative seek to honor the needs of all kinds of families. Many programs work with parents raising children in a variety of family structures, including single-parent families, blended families and foster families. Others are designed to serve parents and caregivers from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds in culturally appropriate ways. Some programs focus on distinct populations, such as immigrant families, families who are refugees, families with children who have experienced trauma and families with children who have special needs.
Among the organizations receiving grants through the Christian Parenting initiative are denominational judicatories, congregations, colleges and universities, faith-based camps, seminaries and publishing houses. Reflecting the diversity of Christianity in the United States, they are affiliated with mainline Protestant, evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox Christian and Pentecostal faith communities. Many of the organizations are rooted in Black church, Hispanic and Asian Christian traditions.
Find a complete list of the organizations here.
Building on recent research that affirms the pivotal role parents, grandparents and other caregivers play in the religious lives of children, the Endowment launched the Christian Parenting and Caregiving Initiative in 2022 with an invitational round of grants to 22 organizations. The initiative is part of the Endowment’s grantmaking that supports efforts to help individuals and families from diverse Christian communities draw more fully on the wisdom of Christian practices to live out their faith fully and well passing on a vibrant faith to a new generation.
About Lilly Endowment
Lilly Endowment Inc. is a private foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly Sr. and his sons Eli and J.K. Jr. through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. While those gifts remain the financial bedrock of the Endowment, it is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion and maintains a special commitment to its hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana. A principal aim of the Endowment’s religion grantmaking is to deepen and enrich the lives of Christians in the United States, primarily by seeking out and supporting efforts that enhance the vitality of congregations and strengthen the pastoral and lay leadership of Christian communities. The Endowment also seeks to improve public understanding of diverse religious traditions by supporting fair and accurate portrayals of the role religion plays in the United States and across the globe.