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$2
million Lilly Endowment grant
STH to enlist Christian clergy to study urban ministries
By David J. Craig
When most white working- and middle-class Americans fled cities to surburbia beginning in the 1950s, urban churches struggled to adapt to the changing demographics. While nontraditional and ethnic ministries popped up and prospered in cities, many Catholic and Protestant churches faced a dwindling and aging membership and eventually stood nearly empty or closed.
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| Claire Wolfteich, an STH assistant professor of practical theology and spiritual formation, and Bryan Stone, the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at STH, are directing a five-year study that will involve research conducted by 96 pastors from cities across the United States about the challenges faced by urban churches. Photo by Vernon Doucette |
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But not all mainline congregations withered away. Some prospered by altering
worship services and social programs in ways that embraced ethnic minorities
and young people. How clergy can meet the challenges of urban pastoring
is the subject of a new School of Theology study, which will enlist 96
ministers from cities across the United States over the next five years
to identify obstacles to their work and potential solutions. The study
is funded by a $2 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., an Indianapolis-based
foundation that recently awarded 47 such grants as part of its Sustaining
Pastoral Excellence program.
“In the urban context, pastoral excellence is the ability to respond
creatively, openly, and flexibly to a wide range of religious, social,
economic, political, and cultural imperatives while maintaining a confident
and constant spiritual center,” says STH Dean Robert C. Neville.
“We are bringing to bear the full resources of a school of theology
embedded in a major research university to help these pastors develop
and then disseminate an imaginative, structured program of study, theological
reflection, and spiritual discipline to address the challenges of the
urban ministry.”
Serving as co–principal directors of the BU study are Bryan Stone,
the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at STH, and Claire Wolfteich,
an STH assistant professor of practical theology and spiritual formation.
The first four years of the program are divided into six-month segments,
each featuring a dozen pastors grouped into four-member teams. The pastors
will apply in groups of four, all of whom must live in the same city but
need not be of the same denomination. When applying, each team will identify
one issue in urban ministry that it wishes to study, and the team then
will work with STH faculty to develop a six-month research program to
address the issue.
The groups may choose to tackle an organizational issue, such as how best
to serve an ethnically diverse or a multilingual congregation, says Wolfteich,
or they may examine a subject pertaining to the pastors on a more personal
level, such as how to integrate their private spiritual life with their
public responsibilities.
“Pastors are so busy that it can be hard for them to have their
activities be an expression of their faith and spirituality rather than
something that depletes it, and then they end up feeling isolated and
diffused,” Wolfteich says. “Spiritual dilemmas involving pastors’
public roles might also arise, such as how congregations should respond
to public crises, or what types of prayers are appropriate when pastors
are called upon to pray at a public event outside of a church.”
The pastors’ research, which will begin next April, will include
reviews of literature as well as examinations of their own or nearby congregations.
They will meet with the other members of their group at least twice a
month to discuss their findings, and together will issue a written report
at the end of the six-month period. The grant also funds a four-to-eight-
week leave for each participant, to give them time away from their congregational
duties.
The pastors will visit BU at the beginning of their six-month program
for an orientation and again at the end of the six months to share their
results with STH faculty and students. In addition, STH faculty members
will visit each group to consult with them on their research.
“We’ll be in constant contact with the pastors to guide their
study, because many of them will not have been in seminary for a long
time,” says Wolfteich. “So we’ll bring to them the best
resources of the academy, and then they’ll return to share with
faculty and students at BU what they have learned, which will stimulate
our own research. It’s a mutually informative process.”
At the end of the five-year study, Stone and Wolfteich plan to publish
a collection of case studies based on the research of the 24 groups, which
they hope will serve as a guide for other urban pastors. The case studies
will be disseminated at an international conference on urban ministry
hosted by STH at the end of the study. In addition, Stone and Wolfteich
want to eventually author a book about the challenges faced by urban ministers
and possible solutions, which will draw from interviews with the study’s
participants.
“In the end, I hope this study helps urban pastors cope with the
complex challenges they face, such as the diversity and density of the
city, and the fact that people there move around so much,” says
Stone. “But I also hope that we can restore a sense in pastors that
the city is a great place to do ministry, that it’s an enjoyable
place to work full of opportunities as well as challenges.”
Wolfteich says pastors who participate in the study will be encouraged
to continue meeting informally to discuss pastoral issues after their
portion of the research is complete. “Because isolation is one of
the key problems pastors face, one of the things we teach in seminary
is the importance of networking, so that pastors have somewhere to go
for friendship, for intellectual stimulation, and for nurture,”
she says. “So we’re hoping that they’ll find ways to
replicate what they do in the research teams, either with the same pastors
or with different ones.”
1 November 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations