Lilly Endowment Awards Multi-Million Dollar Grant to Fund the Faith and Leadership Collaborative

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary has received a $10 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to help establish the Faith and Leadership Collaborative. This funding will bring together change-making organizations who are committed to co-creating and co-owning a model for future-focused theological education.

The Faith and Leadership Collaborative is being funded through Lilly Endowment’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative. This initiative is designed to help theological schools across the United States and Canada as they prioritize and respond to the most pressing challenges they face as they prepare pastoral leaders for Christian congregations both now and into the future. The grant to Garrett Seminary is one of 45 that was approved in this competitive round of funding to support theological schools as they lead large-scale collaborations with other seminaries, colleges and universities, and other church-related organizations.

For the past three years, Garrett Seminary has embraced a strategic plan to help more students access and afford theological education, and to build partnerships across the United States and throughout the world—nurturing leaders in the communities they already serve. The Faith and Leadership Collaborative builds on this foundation by knitting together academic institutions, denominational bodies, and innovative centers that resource clergy, scholars, and lay leaders. Participating organizations will help seminarians, lay leaders, and pastors learn from professors and other subject-matter experts across various modalities. Together, we’ll create a pooled library of technology, software, data, and educational resources, and improve all partners’ financial capacity by sharing administrative costs. The Collaborative will then act as a springboard for both established congregations and new ministries, nurturing programs for social impact and building templates that faith communities can easily replicate.

“Congregations, denominations, the academy, and research centers must combine our efforts if we want the church to thrive,” says Garrett Seminary President Javier A. Viera. “Our world’s many crises do not follow the boundaries we’ve erected between Christian institutions. Healing those cultural fractures demands a church that’s pooling our resources, sharing our wisdom, and amplifying our collective power.”

The Faith and Leadership Collaborative will launch in partnership with eight leading organizations representing higher education, denominational leadership, theological formation, social impact, and financial sustainability—including Dakota Wesleyan University; the Northern Illinois/Wisconsin and Dakotas/Minnesota Episcopal Areas of The United Methodist Church; Phillips School of Theology; Bexley-Seabury Seminary; The Oikos Institute for Social Impact; Asociación para la Educación Teológica; The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University; and Wespath Benefits and Investments. As the Collaborative expands, it will establish a framework that additional organizations can join and will launch Innovation Hubs to center work in five core areas: practical church leadership, social impact, Hispanic leadership, holistic clergy well-being, and emerging ministries.

“There is no shortage of brilliant, faithful people with important insights about where the church should devote our time and resources,” says Becky Eberhart, Garrett’s Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships. “What we’ve lacked is infrastructure that unites these efforts and makes them mutually reinforcing. That changes now.”

Beginning with the launch of the Garrett Collective on January 21, 2025—a shared online platform for theological resources and educational cohorts—the Faith and Leadership Collaborative will swiftly transform this audacious vision into practical assets that leaders can access across the church and academy. “We’re deeply grateful to the Lilly Endowment for investing in this shared work,” says President Viera. “As we form leaders in the way of Jesus, we need resources and systems that are fit to deliver the gospel’s liberating love.”

Lilly Endowment launched the Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative in 2021. Since then, it has provided grants totaling more than $700 million to support 163 theological schools in efforts to strengthen their own educational and financial capacities and to assist 61 schools in developing large-scale collaborative endeavors.

About Lilly Endowment Inc.

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 about religion and lift up in fair, accurate and balanced ways the roles that people of all faiths and various religious communities play in the United State and around the globe traditions in the United States and across the globe.

About Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Garrett Seminary is a graduate school of theology, ministry, and public service committed to forming courageous leaders in the way of Jesus who cultivate communities of justice, compassion, and hope. Offering a full range of masters and doctoral degrees, as well as certificates, licensing, and lifelong learning programs, Garrett prepares religious leaders and social impact innovators for service in the church and the world. The seminary is home to major research centers and institutes that advance scholarship, resource congregations and organizations, and convene global conversations on faith and social transformation. Located on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, since 1853, and historically related to the United Methodist Church, Garrett stands as a vital hub of research, training, and equipping—serving churches, communities, and social impact organizations around the world with intellectual rigor, spiritual depth, and transformative vision.

Website: www.garrett.edu

Contact:
Benjamin Perry

Director of Communications | Garrett Seminary

Benjamin.Perry@garrett.edu