The Christian and Missionary Alliance has received a $1.25 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to help establish Alliance Worship’s Transformational Worship: Pathways to Alliance Faith Continuity.

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

This initiative seeks to create deeper life worship experiences for our kids and youth in hopes that faith is carried into adulthood. For this grant, we created a pathway that would help children’s leaders, especially lay leaders, create worship environments for kids in their churches. Professional development opportunities will anchor this pathway and teach these leaders how to shepherd and leverage kids worship experiences for spiritual growth and maturity. These trainings will be augmented by cohorts of practice that walk with leaders as they attempt to create transformational worship experiences for kids. The main professional development ministry trainings will take place in Alliance Worship Conferences and Next Conferences (Church Ministries’ Youth and Children’s Regional Conferences). In addition, the grant will also create much needed resources for children’s ministry workers throughout the denomination.

Through Transformational Worship: Pathways to Alliance Faith Continuity (TW), we will leverage the vast influence, competencies, and experience of two ministries operating within our denominational framework—Alliance Worship and Alliance Kids—to cultivate intergenerational worship environments and transformational worship experiences throughout our U.S. congregations. These two ministries advance the deeper life values that have defined our organization from the start. With Lilly Endowment’s generous support of this project, Alliance leaders of traditionally “adults-only” worship spaces will receive opportunities to attend in-person and online personal development events where they will learn about the need within our churches for engaging, intergenerational worship experiences involving children.

The Christian and Missionary Alliance is one of 91 organizations funded through the latest round of the initiative. They represent and serve congregations in a broad spectrum of Christian traditions, including Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical, Orthodox, Anabaptist and Pentecostal faith communities. Several organizations are rooted in Black Church and Hispanic and Asian American Christian traditions.

“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’s 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.”

About Lilly Endowment Inc

Lilly Endowment Inc. is a private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly Sr. and his sons Eli and J.K. Jr. through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. While those gifts remain the financial bedrock of the Endowment, it is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion and maintains a special commitment to its hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana. The principal aim of the Endowment’s religion grantmaking is to deepen and enrich the lives of Christians in the United States, primarily by seeking out and supporting efforts that enhance the vitality of congregations and strengthen the pastoral and lay leadership of Christian communities. The Endowment also seeks to improve public understanding of diverse religious traditions by supporting fair and accurate portrayals of the role religion plays in the United States and across the globe.