Seminary receives $1.2 million grant for Anabaptist Thriving Congregations program
Published: March 15, 2024
By Annette Brill Bergstresser
ELKHART, Indiana (Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary) — Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) in Elkhart, Indiana, has received a $1,249,830 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to establish a program to help congregations deepen their study of the Bible with the goal of connecting more authentically with their communities.
The project is being funded through Lilly Endowment’s Thriving Congregations Initiative. The aim of the initiative is to encourage the flourishing of congregations by helping them deepen their relationships with God, enhance their connections with each other, and contribute to the vitality of their communities and the world.
The five-year project — titled “Anabaptist Thriving Congregations” — is designed to equip Mennonite congregations in the U.S. and Canada to read and interpret both the Bible and their sociocultural context for the purpose of being witnesses to the gospel in their local community. Malinda Elizabeth Berry, PhD, will serve as Grant Director for the project in her role as Director of AMBS’s Faith Formation Collaborative (FFC).
Berry noted that a core belief of Anabaptism — a Christian movement that began in central Europe in the 16th century — is that faith communities consisting of ordinary people can read and interpret Scripture together under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. However, the practice of studying Scripture together on a regular basis has diminished over time among Mennonites. Berry is excited to introduce congregations to Confessional Bible Study — an approach to Bible study developed at AMBS that is at the heart of the new project.
“What I love about this approach is that it offers us a new vision for bringing Mennonites together around the Bible and does so in a way that helps us grow in mind, body and spirit,” she said.
“Gathering ‘professional readers’ like my colleagues who can read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew, and ‘everyday readers’ like me who read Scripture in translation” is central to the practice of Confessional Bible Study, added Berry, who also serves as AMBS Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics.
“When we bring together the realities of ordinary living with the insights of biblical scholarship, something special begins to happen,” she said. “Scripture has power to be a vital dialogue partner with us as we adapt to the changing cultural and social contexts where our congregations find themselves. I believe that the more a congregation gathers all kinds of readers to study and interpret Scripture together, the more equipped its members will be to identify their common values and mission.”
The idea for the project emerged from a listening process that AMBS conducted in 2021 with leaders in the seminary’s sponsoring denominations, Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada. In response to the question, “What is the most meaningful thing AMBS can do to support current and future congregational leaders?,” many leaders asked for help in understanding their social contexts, leading congregational discernment processes and teaching biblical stories to engage the present context.
The new program addresses these specific needs, Berry said. Each year, “Seminary Sages” (AMBS Teaching Faculty members and other professionals) will train and accompany teams of three to five “Congregational Guides” (including a pastor) to lead their congregations in a structured learning process. They’ll study their social and cultural contexts and learn to lead Confessional Bible Study. Then they’ll reflect together on what they’re learning, how it’s shaping their congregation’s values and mission, and how it will help them embody the good news of God’s love in their community.
Congregational Guides from multiple congregations will be part of cohorts to exchange ideas, support and encouragement throughout the process, Berry noted. Three to five congregations will be invited to participate in the pilot cohort to begin in the fall of 2024. Congregational leaders interested in participating can email formationcollaborative@ambs.edu.
Several leaders connected with AMBS have expressed enthusiasm for the new program.
Billy Funk, a Master of Divinity student at AMBS, and Brian Andrew O’Leary (MDiv 2018) have used Confessional Bible Study at Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship in Goshen, Indiana — Funk as a pastor who works with youth faith formation and O’Leary as a lay leader.
“As a teacher and a pastor, we have observed how reading the Bible with the Confessional Bible Study approach promotes engagement and personal investment in both youth and adults — even from those who have found it difficult to connect to the Bible in the past,” they wrote in a letter of support for the grant in June 2023. “For both youth and adults, the Bible became a conversation partner that connected to lived experience and, in turn, connected participants to each other in deeper dialogue.”
Ruth Yoder Wenger, Pastor of North Bronx (New York) Mennonite Church and Conference Minister for the New York City congregations of Atlantic Coast Conference of Mennonite Church USA, communicated support for the initiative as well, noting that “recent discussions among pastors in the New York City Council of Mennonite Churches reflect a growing interest in communal discernment that engages the Bible as a sacred conversation partner.”
AMBS is seeking a Program Administrator and Administrative Assistant to implement the program (see ambs.edu/employment). Berry will develop the instructional modules for the trainings. She expects that when the program concludes in 2028, it will have generated many resources for ongoing use by the seminary.
AMBS is one of 105 organizations that have received grants through a competitive round of the Thriving Congregations Initiative. Reflecting a wide variety of Christian traditions, the organizations represent mainline Protestant, evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox, peace church and Pentecostal faith communities.
“Congregations play an essential role in deepening the faith of individuals and contributing to the vitality of communities,” said Christopher L. Coble, Lilly Endowment’s Vice President for Religion. “We hope that these programs will nurture the vibrancy and spark the creativity of congregations, helping them imagine new ways to share God’s love in their communities and across the globe.”
About Lilly Endowment Inc.
Lilly Endowment Inc. is a private 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. A 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.
About AMBS
Located in Elkhart, Indiana, on ancestral land of the Potawatomi and Miami peoples, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary is a learning community with an Anabaptist vision, offering theological education for learners both on campus and at a distance as well as a wide array of lifelong learning programs — all with the goal of educating followers of Jesus Christ to be leaders for God’s reconciling mission in the world. ambs.edu
About AMBS’s Faith Formation Collaborative
The purpose of the Faith Formation Collaborative is to collaborate with the church in forming people who respond to God’s presence, sense the Spirit’s movement and know Jesus at the center of their lives.
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