$1.1 Million Grant to Help Local Churches Become More Fruitful in Their Ministry with Children

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South Carolina Advocate | November 26, 2024

For years, churches have sought ways to be more fruitful in ministry with children. Soon, United Methodist churches in South Carolina will have new tools to support this effort thanks to a $1.1 million grant from the Lilly Endowment.

This funding will enable the South Carolina Conference of The United Methodist Church to establish a new ministry in collaboration with Messy Church USA, Narrative 4 and the West Virginia Conference UMC via its Portico online learning system.

Titled “Connecting Children in Worship and Prayer,” the ministry will foster a culture of belonging in congregations and promote a shift in how worship is experienced, focusing on intergenerational practices involving storytelling and the arts.

This will incorporate the following:

Leadership Development: The five-year grant will support training for pastors and lay leaders from congregations large and small, beginning with an initial cohort of 12 churches. Each year after, leaders from 12 more churches will be added to this leadership cohort, until lay and clergy from a total of 60 churches will have been trained and as many as 500 children reached. Program leaders will recruit churches from across the conference to ensure diversity within the cohort.

Messy Church Partnership: Messy Church USA will walk alongside the conference in developing a family retreat program that empowers parents as spiritual leaders. It will help the conference create a children’s worship day camp, where children can learn to design, plan and lead worship for the community using creative arts. These congregations will model and teach children ways to pray in these “messy” experiences.

Story Exchange with Narrative 4: Narrative 4 will train church leaders in story exchange, a practice that encourages participants to deepen their engagement with narratives, exercise curiosity, extend empathy and internalize wisdom. This process encourages a deeper connection among participants.

Online Learning through Portico: The collaboration with the West Virginia Conference will make its powerful online learning management system, Portico, available to the leadership cohort to provide courses, videos, Bible studies and webinars in support of these programs.

Bishop Leonard Fairley, resident bishop of the South Carolina Conference, expressed his gratitude for all those who had a hand in bringing these resources to South Carolina.

“This generous grant will help us live into Jesus’s mandate, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs,’” Fairley said. “The grant will help us give our children voice and agency, and we look forward to what they will teach us through this gift.

“I pray that their generation will teach ours some much-needed lessons in humility.”

Connecting Children is funded through the Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative, a national initiative of the Lilly Endowment designed to help Christian congregations more fully and intentionally engage children in intergenerational corporate worship and prayer practices.

“Congregational worship and prayer play a critical role in the spiritual growth of children and offer settings for children to acquire the language of faith, learn their faith traditions, and experience the love of God as part of a supportive community,” said Christopher L. Coble, Lilly Endowment vice president for religion. “These programs will help congregations give greater attention to children and how they can more intentionally nurture the faith of children, as well as adults, through worship and prayer.”

The Rev. Millie Nelson Smith, director of Connectional Ministries for the South Carolina Conference, sees the grant as an answer to long-standing prayers.

“It affords us the opportunity to lean heavily into Our 4 Priorities by empowering local churches to nurture children, engaging them, their families and others in the congregation in exciting and vibrant worship experiences that involve all generations,” Nelson Smith said. “It will help children in our congregations develop in their faith while reaching out to children from extended families and within the community to connect and grow disciples of Jesus Christ who will be the ones who carry our faith into the future.”

Toni Taylor, a member of Philadelphia UMC in Fort Mill who led the effort to secure the grant, said the Lilly grant “represents a strategic investment in uniting and revitalizing the United Methodist community through intergenerational worship, fostering belonging and inclusivity for all members—especially children.”

Taylor added, “Our connectional system will leverage collective wisdom, innovative approaches and partnerships such as Messy Church USA and Narrative 4 Story Exchange to bring voice to our children in worship.”

The Rev. Cathy Joens, during her ministry as a conference congregational specialist specializing in age-related ministries, invited Taylor to lead the effort.

“Worship is like blood is to the human body,” said Joens, who is now the director of church relations for Epworth Children’s Home. “We are created to worship and praise God. This grant allows us to work alongside churches in creative and meaningful ways that allow our families and children to grow deeper in their worship and daily lives.

“At the end of the day, it is about building deepening relationships with God and one another. The tools that we will be able to access and offer to local church leaders will make a lasting impact.”

Dan O'Mara serves as director of communications for the South Carolina Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. This article is republished with permission from the South Carolina Advocate, the conference news journal.