Grantee Directory

ReShaping Church is an intentional, guided, one-year process to support congregations and leaders who seek to make the most of this unique moment in time and transform a season of uncertainty and crisis into an opportunity for clarity, growth, transformation, and mission. With the aid of a congregational coach and the discernment from all-church learning, ReShaping Church seeks to come alongside churches as they seek their own unique answers to questions like, “What is God doing in these days? Who are we as a people of God? Where is God calling us to serve? How can we become all that God purposes us to be?” The ReShaping Church idea and congregational process arose out of the early weeks of the pandemic, when Central joined Pinnacle Leadership Associates in delivering a series of webinars. The congregational process is intended to help churches resist the urge to snap back to pre-pandemic thinking and to courageously seek God’s leading in this tremendous opportunity for adapting to a new normal with all its ministry possibilities. The first cohort of 12 churches includes American Baptist congregations in Kansas, Indiana, and Wisconsin, as well as a United Church of Christ body in Ohio and Presbyterian churches in South Carolina. Beyond 2021, ReShaping Church has the capacity for 12-16 additional congregations in 2022-2024.

The last few years have brought new challenges to congregations. In many places, participation is down, fatigue is up and a unified sense of mission is lost. When a pastor decides to leave, whether for retirement, another call, or at the request of the congregation, the congregation is faced with an opportunity to regain that sense of mission. However, more often, the anxiety and lack of resources has led more and more congregations to choose to close or consider part-time or lay pastoral leadership. Through this project, we aim to greatly expand the support that the Illinois Conference already provides congregations during the season of pastoral transition. This program will add a facilitated congregational retreat early in the transition process, retreat opportunities for transitional leadership, learning opportunities that bring together leaders from several congregations to learn together, additional support for profile development (which includes visioning work) which helps congregations find their next pastor, assessment and visioning support that matches the particular need of the congregation and more. This program utilizes learning communities and spiritual practices to transform this potentially fragile time for a congregation into a rich opportunity for clarity and growth.

CB&LF will work with churches that are in marginalized communities where resources typically have been disinvested for many years. The Transform Church-Transform Community 2.0 program is a structured learning model that provides the resources, guidance and direction participants will need to effectively reach the communities they serve. Participants will have the opportunity to ask hard questions, talk through problems and concerns with their peers, and objectively assess the strengths and weaknesses of their ministries. Armed with clarity, they will have the tools to position themselves to develop sustainable strategies that their congregations can implement and support. This work is important to CB&LF as one of our primary goals is to assist all churches to thrive within their communities, leaving no one behind. Each congregation that fully engages in the program is expected to achieve two or more of these Spiritual Outcomes: 1) clarification and understanding of the church mission, values, and work in this new environment; 2) an increase in the number of community residents and church members engaged in new church-sponsored or church-involved community-focused activities, events, and workshops; 3) younger and older leaders engaged and encouraged to help move the church and their communities in a positive direction together; 4) strengthened community connections with each church viewed as a hub of resources within their individual communities (e.g., food and clothing pantries or youth programs); 5) increased engagement with not-for-profits, civic, and other religious groups in individual church communities and 6) an increase in church vitality reflected through an array of performance indicators including membership growth, growth in the number and variety of revenue streams, engagement of lay and clergy church leaders in learning and capacity building programs and other performance indicators that are likely to emerge over the course of the program as congregational imagination and activity expands.

The Damascus Project is a shared theological learning initiative of the Minnesota and Wisconsin Conferences, United Church of Christ. One way we nurture vitality within the body of Christ is through our online learning platform, the Damascus Project Network, which aims to transform the people of God through theological study and equip them for effective leadership within their congregations and communities. We are a community of lifelong learners committed to walking together and participating in transformative conversations in the life of faith and leadership. We learn together so that we are better equipped to love each other, nurture the body of Christ, and transform the world. We provide multiple pathways to authorized ministry in the United Church of Christ, provide continuing education to clergy, and provide coursework for theologically curious lay learners and training to lay leaders. We pay special attention to the needs of small and rural churches in our Upper Midwestern Conferences and invite those churches to share their struggles and wisdom both with us and with one another. The Thriving Congregations Grant allows us to expand our programing in two areas: 1) A Thriving Congregations curricular track for clergy and laity, which offers coursework in church governance, shared leadership, healthy communication, and reflective listening as well as providing supportive cohorts for church moderators, treasurers, pastoral relations committee members and governing boards; 2) Our Living Faith curricular track, which offers online confirmation cohorts for young people in small and rural churches, facilitated by faith formation leaders from across our conferences, and supplemented by outdoor ministry experiences. We provide the facilitators, online learning platform, learning, retreat, and liturgical materials to help all of our young people experience a vital and engaging confirmation program.