September 25, 2024
Contact: Judith Cebula
317.916.7327 | cebulaj@lei.org

Grants Will Support Efforts to Nurture Faith Lives of Children Through Worship and Prayer

INDIANAPOLIS – Lilly Endowment Inc. has approved grants to 91 organizations through its Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative. The aim of the initiative is to foster the spiritual growth of children by helping Christian congregations more fully and intentionally engage children in intergenerational corporate worship and prayer practices.

The grants total more than $104 million and range from $ 126,845 to $1.25 million each. The Endowment awarded the grants in a competitive round of the initiative to organizations that represent a broad spectrum of Christian traditions in the United States. They include Catholic, mainline and evangelical Protestant, Orthodox, Anabaptist and Pentecostal faith communities. Several organizations are rooted in Black Church, Hispanic and Asian American Christian traditions.

Grant-funded programs will help congregations include children more fully in worship services and nurture their spiritual growth. These programs will help congregations attend to the experiences of children in a variety of ways: drawing on insights from recent research on child development; enhancing the role of music and the arts to teach children about worship; using biblical storytelling practices to engage children; recognizing the unique contributions of children with disabilities and including them in worship practices; producing bilingual and other kinds of worship resources appropriate for children from diverse backgrounds; making more direct connections between worship and daily family life; and exploring and incorporating sensory-rich prayer practices within faith traditions.

Some examples of funded organizations include:

Baptist Grove Church (affiliated with the General Baptist State Convention of North Carolina), which will form a partnership with Campbell University Divinity School to develop and share resources to enhance intergenerational worship by helping congregations incorporate insights from research on child development with storytelling practices from Black Church traditions.
Engaging Disability with the Gospel (based in Mississippi and affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America), which will provide training for church leaders to help them acquire the knowledge and skills to include children with disabilities more fully in corporate worship and prayer practices.
Catholic Diocese of Austin in Texas, which will work with parishes to develop multicultural and multilingual children’s choirs and music programs that will prepare children to assist in worship and contribute to intergenerational worship through music ministries.
South Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, which will work with two organizations, Messy Church USA and Narrative 4, to help pastors and lay leaders in congregations of varying sizes draw on the arts and storytelling to develop and implement new intergenerational worship practices.
Presbyterian Theological Seminary in America (based in California), which will work with Korean American congregations in the Reformed tradition to develop new bilingual worship practices that bridge generations and the resources to implement them.

Find a full list here of grant-funded organizations, which include denominational agencies, faith-based resource agencies, church-related colleges and universities, theological schools, Christian publishing houses and congregations.

“Congregational worship and prayer play a critical role in the spiritual growth of children and offer important settings for children to acquire the language of faith, learn their faith traditions and experience the love of God as part of a supportive community,” said Christopher L. Coble, the Endowment’s vice president for religion. “These programs will help congregations give greater attention to children and how they can more intentionally nurture the faith of children, as well as adults, through worship and prayer.”

In 2023, the Endowment made grants to 33 organizations in an invitational round of the Nurturing Children initiative. Grants to Indiana Wesleyan University are supporting a coordination program that encourages shared learning and collaboration among organizations in both rounds of the initiative.

The Nurturing Children initiative reflects the Endowment’s longstanding interest in programs that support the religious lives of individuals and families and that foster the growth and vitality of Christian congregations in the United States.

Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based, private foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly and his sons, Eli and J.K. Jr., through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. Although gifts of stock remain the financial bedrock of the Endowment, the Endowment is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. The Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion. Grantmaking in religion seeks to deepen and enrich the lives of Christians in the United States, primarily by 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 endeavors that provide fair and accurate portrayals of the role religion plays in the United States and across the globe.