This past week I traveled to Indianapolis with a team from Wartburg Seminary as part of the Lilly Endowment funded Ministry in Rural Areas and Small Towns program. What I did not know until I arrived in Indiana is that this program is run by Duke Divinity School’s Forum for Congregational Life (previously Leadership Education initiative).
For the past two years, the Northwest Intermountain Synod has been a sub grant recipient of Wartburg’s CaSTLE (country and small town lived ecclesiology) . We were one of the only synods that received a a grant from Wartburg’s Rural Ecumenical Experiments bucket. The other bishop along in Indiana was my colleague Bishop Tessa Moon Liseth, who serves the Eastern North Dakota Synod, has received funds to train pastor mentors and lay leaders.
Here’s a full list of Lilly Grantees. You can see that it was a very ecumenical group–Episcopalians (IONA), Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, non-denominational, and more.
The other thing I didn’t know until about a week before the conference was that the topic of this gathering was program evaluation–something I am usually overwhelmed and intimidated by even though I know it can be very valuable if done well.
I made so many fun connections (some new and some reunions):
- Pastor Sarah (UMC) from Montana (sub grant participant in the NC Rural Center,
- Darren and team from the NC Rural Center,
- Jodi from Duke (we have at least one mutual friend),
- LSTC grad Rob Salier who teaches at Christian Theological Seminary and who I’ve known for years, was an excellent presenter
- The great folks from Rural Strategies (learned yesterday that Ben Fink was trained by Organizing for Mission years ago when Sue Engh was at the helm); sometimes High Country News picks up articles from Rural Strategies; if you want to read good journalism covering rural America I recommend subscribing to The Daily Yonder
- The IONA Collaborative Team from the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest
- Allen Stanton, who wrote The Gift of Small, and friend Phillip Blackburn from University of the Ozarks
