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Conference, Wellesley church pool Lilly resources

January-February, 2003

The Massachusetts Conference and The Wellesley Congregational Church are combining their resources to work together at enhancing pastoral excellence in local churches.

Not long after the Conference was awarded a $1.5 million Lilly Endowment grant for a pastoral excellence project, the Wellesley Church and its partner church, the Charles Street AME in Boston, each were awarded $850,000 grants by Lilly.

Since the Wellesley program and Conference program had similar goals, the staff at both settings decided to link their projects together.

“We did it because it seemed like a natural fit,” said Susan Dickerman, Associate Conference Minister for Leadership Development. “Their program is a new model for how recent seminary graduates learn to be pastors in the local church setting. Part of our program is to provide resources for people who are new to ministry in that setting.”

Now, instead of hiring two full-time associates for the project, the Conference will be hiring one full-time and two part-time associates. One of those part-time associates will work 15 hours per week for the Conference, and 15 hours per week for the Wellesley church.

The Conference has received 17 applicants for the three positions, and will be conducting interviews in early February. The positions will be:

• A full-time Associate for Church and Ministry Concerns, who will facilitate and coordinate the work of the 11 Associations to work toward consistent criteria for ordination, formulate guidelines for ethical ministerial conduct and establish expectations for continuing education;
• A part-time Associate for Pastoral Growth & Development, who will work to provide training, resources and networking for those who have been in ministry for more than three years;
• A part-time Associate for New Clergy Development, the linked position, which will be focused on providing training, resources and networking opportunities for local church pastors with less than three years experience.
  The Wellesley church received the grant to develop a pastoral residency program, where student pastors will learn about becoming ministers “on the job” at the Wellesley church – much like doctors learn through hospital residency programs.

In their proposal to Lilly, Wellesley Senior Pastor Martin Copenhaver and Moderator Bradford Harding wrote that the program is based on the idea that seminary students “are not given sufficient opportunity to develop the skills and practices they need to thrive, or sometimes even survive, in parish ministry … Seminary education is necessarily limited because it does not take place in the complex, organic context of life in an actual congregation.”

The church plans to call five pastoral residents, each of whom will serve for two years. They will meet regularly with the pastoral residents at Charles Street AME, and will work closely with the church’s staff to learn while doing.

“This is an opportunity to live out more fully an important aspect of what we perceive to be part of the call to our congregation to nurture, call and support new pastors for faithful and effective service to Christ’s Church,” Copenhaver and Harding wrote in the proposal.

The Lilly Endowment also granted $23,057 to the Union Congregational Church of East Bridgewater to allow its pastor, Marcia Cham, to take part in Lilly’s National Clergy Renewal Program.

The program allows pastors to “step back from their busy lives and renew their spirits for the sake of their ongoing ministries,” according to Lilly.

The grant enabled Union Congregational to hire a student pastor to take over some of Cham’s duties while she took part in the program.

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