Diocese of North Carolina Receives $996,000 Lilly Endowment Grant for Clergy Support

By Diocesan House

The Diocese of North Carolina has received a nearly $1 million grant to help establish Reimagining Curacies, a program designed to form newly ordained clergy into community-conscious leaders dedicated to the values of Becoming Beloved Community through authentic community and racial reconciliation. It is part of Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Thriving in Ministry, an initiative to support a variety of religious organizations across the nation as they create or strengthen programs to help pastors build relationships with experienced clergy who can serve as mentors and guide them through key leadership challenges in congregational ministry.  

Reimagining Curacies focuses on developing clergy into transformative leaders during their initial placements in congregations after they graduate from seminary. While traditional curacies place new priests in one congregation for two or three years, this new model will assign cohorts of three priests to three vibrant congregations near each other for three years, with each priest serving one year in each congregation. These placements will be geographically proximate to one another but differ in size, liturgical preference, racial and ethnic composition, community context and specialized ministries. North Carolina’s rich mixture of urban, suburban and rural communities in close proximity to each other will allow priests to experience the range of challenges and gifts the state’s communities have to offer.

These new priests will also benefit from spiritual direction, mentoring, coaching and leadership development experiences with their peers and colleagues. It is the Diocese’s hope that supervising and mentoring clergy will continue to develop their own sense of vocational identity for the future church and experience the gift of real relationship with peers and partners in ministry. At the same time, the congregations involved in this initiative will develop a broader sense of their own gifts, as well as their own missional identity.

The Diocese hopes this program and what we learn from it will offer a model to other dioceses and to The Episcopal Church as a whole. As seminaries—and the church—change, we need additional models for clergy formation that take seriously the challenges and opportunities of ministry in this age. By reimagining curacy for the future church, we hope to enable new clergy, longer-tenured clergy and congregations to thrive in ministry together.

“It is with gratitude and great excitement that we announce the nearly $1 million Lilly Endowment grant in support of Reimagining Curacies,” the Rt. Rev. Sam Rodman. “The Diocese of North Carolina sees as its primary priority the building up of Beloved Community. We have begun to focus our energy and resources around the work of racial reconciliation and the growth that comes from the hard work of building authentic community. We are blessed with a broad range of exceptionally gifted and creative clergy who are embracing the challenges of forming and shaping leadership for the congregations of the 21st century, and with the support of this grant, we will be able to engage even more deeply in that work through the visionary leadership of new clergy.”

The Diocese is one of 78 organizations located in 29 states that is taking part in the nearly $70 million Thriving in Ministry initiative. The organizations reflect diverse Christian traditions: mainline and evangelical Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox. Thriving in Ministry is part of Lilly Endowment’s grant-making to strengthen pastoral leadership in Christian congregations in the United States, a grant-making priority at Lilly Endowment for nearly 25 years.

“Leading a congregation today is multi-faceted and exceptionally demanding,” said Christopher L. Coble, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for religion. “When pastors have opportunities to build meaningful relationships with experienced colleagues, they are able to negotiate the challenges of ministry and their leadership thrives. These promising programs, including The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina’s Reimagining Curacies, will help pastors develop these kinds of relationships, especially when they are in the midst of significant professional transitions.”

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The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina consists of more than 40,000 baptized members, 109 churches, and 10 chaplaincies and campus ministries. 

Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by three members of the Lilly family—J.K. Lilly Sr. and sons Eli and J.K. Jr.—through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly & Company. While those gifts remain the financial bedrock of the Endowment, the Endowment 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. The Endowment maintains a special commitment to its hometown, Indianapolis, and its home state Indiana. Its grant-making in religion focuses on supporting efforts to strengthen the leadership and vitality of Christian congregations throughout the country and to increase the public’s understanding of the role of religion in public life.