NPU Receives $8M Grant to Strengthen Pastoral Leadership and Theological Education

North Park University (NPU) has received an $8,184,203 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. for its seminary, North Park Theological Seminary, to launch One Covenant Community, a collaborative project that aims to cultivate pastoral leadership across the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) by strengthening vocational discernment, theological education, credentialing, and lifelong support.

The project is funded through Lilly Endowment’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative, which supports theological schools in the United States and Canada in responding to their most pressing challenges. The NPU grant is one of 45 to be awarded in a competitive round of funding to support theological schools in their work with other seminaries; colleges and universities; and church-related organizations.

One Covenant Community will unite every major Covenant entity involved in congregational leadership development and support. Partner organizations include all 11 ECC regional conferences, as well as groups such as Serve Clergy and Serve Locally, Centro Hispano de Estudios Teológicos (CHET), Alaska Christian College, Minnehaha Academy, Midtown Leadership Institute, Mission Springs and Covenant Harbor Camps, the Mosaic Commission, and the Association of Covenant Spiritual Directors. These partners will support church leaders with continuing education; strengthen partners’ institutional capacity; and foster Covenant identity, unity, and belonging.

Lilly Endowment launched the Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative in 2021. Since then, it has provided grants totaling more than $700 million to support 163 theological schools in efforts to strengthen their own educational and financial capacities and to assist 61 schools in developing large-scale collaborative endeavors.