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DOCTORAL DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIP

2009 award description and application

2008 fellowship recipient: Bradley Koch

SEMINARS

Conversations with Clergy and Laity: Faith, Money & Giving
A seven week seminar for clergy and congregations in collaboration with the Indianapolis Center for Congregations. The programs consist of all-day sessions for clergy in May and three evening sessions for laity from participating congregations in October. A purpose of this seminar is to help congregations begin to feel more at ease in facing money issues and to teach clergy how to engage in money-talk in redemptive ways with their parishioners.

Key observations to date:

Clergy are uncomfortable with money-talk and find fund-raising to be a necessary evil.
Annual congregational fund-raising efforts, when viewed through the eyes of the laity, appear to be framed in anxiety and guilt.
Religious giving, when tied to fundraising appeals to meet the annual budget, is little more than obligatory or transactional giving.
The word stewardship has lost its original meaning and purpose and become synonymous with “fund-raising.”
People of wealth want their larger gifts to be special and beyond the ordinary fund-raising programs and projects.
Congregations need to become more savvy in dealing with parishioners of wealth.
People experience joy in giving when such giving is connected to special programs or causes that involve the entire congregation: the annual fish fry, the bazaar, etc. (While these special events seldom raise much money they create and build upon a sense of community/togetherness which appears to be pivotal to the creation of an esprit de corp.)
Public talk about money is still viewed as a social taboo. (One individual, on being informed as to the mission of the Lake Institute, replied: “My God, you mean that you’re going to talk about faith and money? Those are the two most personal issues in my world. I would never tell anyone about either my faith or what I do with my money.”
When analyzing how congregations spend their money – most of the money stays internal – it is valid to ask the extent to which religion is a friend of philanthropy.

Creating Congregational Cultures of Generosity
Congregations seek counsel as to the latest fund-raising techniques or programs; they want help in designing a capital/building campaign. Such campaigns are like icing on a cake. The question is how does one bake the cake? This seminar sees congregational generosity to be a three-legged stool:
(1) Leadership with integrity (2) Institutional accountability (3) Donor sensitivity.

Creating a Philanthropic Cathedral for your Soul: Spiritual Values and Philanthropic Discernment
This seminar is for donors who wish to explore the spiritual dimension of their humanness as a key to their personal philanthropy. Via the philanthropic autobiography, the crafting of a portrait of hope as a legacy for the future, and the reading and telling of stories of generous giving, each participant is freed to embark on a journey into their own soul as a way to discover the joy and potential of transformative giving.