Westmont Earns Grant for Youth Theology
Westmont has received a grant of $590,400 to establish Trailhead: Seeking God’s Call, a high school youth theology institute. Part of Lilly Endowment Inc.’s High School Youth Theology Institutes initiative, Trailhead seeks to encourage young people to explore theological traditions, ask questions about the moral dimensions of contemporary issues and examine how their faith calls them to lives of service.
Four two-day modules form the heart of Westmont’s two-week summer residential program; each module addresses a critical social concern and a fundamental theological theme. The modules include visits with local ministries or social service providers, theological reflection on topics related to those visits, academic analysis of relevant issues, and thematically inspired worship experiences. Workshops on leadership, spiritual formation, and vocational discernment, as well as opportunities for rest, reflection and recreation, will augment these core experiences.
The first summer program is scheduled for summer 2017. Students who will be rising 10th, 11th and 12th graders that summer will be eligible to apply.
Westmont’s Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts will develop and implement the program, with support from the Dallas Willard Center for Christian Spiritual Formation and the Mosher Center for Moral and Ethical Leadership. The program will draw on faculty from Westmont and Fuller Theological Seminary.
“Westmont wholeheartedly shares Lilly Endowment’s desire to nurture the intellectual aptitudes and interests of religiously serious young people,” says President Gayle D. Beebe. “We’re committed to sustaining that exploratory, reflective spirit in our students during their undergraduate years.”
Westmont is one of 82 schools participating in the initiative located in 29 states and the District of Columbia. Although some schools are independent, many reflect the religious heritage of their founding traditions, including Baptist, Brethren, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Reformed churches, as well as Roman Catholic, non-denominational, Pentecostal and historic African-American Christian communities.
“These colleges and universities are well-positioned to reach out to high school students in this way,” said Dr. Christopher L. Coble, vice president for religion at Lilly Endowment. “They have outstanding faculty in theology and religion who know how to help young people explore the wisdom of religious traditions and apply these insights to contemporary challenges.”
Lilly Endowment is giving $44.5 million in grants to help a select group of private four-year colleges and universities around the nation create the institutes. The grants are part of Lilly Endowment’s commitment to identify and cultivate a cadre of theologically minded youth who will become leaders in church and society.
An additional grant to the Forum for Theological Exploration will establish a program bringing together leaders of the high school youth theology institutes to foster mutual learning and support.
Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based, private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by three members of the Lilly family, J.K. Lilly Sr. and sons J.K. Jr. and Eli. Through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly & Company supports the causes of religion, education and community development. They seek to deepen and enrich the religious lives of American Christians, largely through initiatives to enhance and sustain the quality of ministry in American congregations and parishes.