18 Projects Receive Foundation Grants
Episcopal News Service. December 3, 1981 [81317]
NEW YORK -- Eighteen projects throughout the Church have received grants totaling $149,500 from The Episcopal Church Foundation this year. Ranging in scope from a diocesan survey of clergy salaries, with particular reference to the non-stipendiary clergy, to support for a street ministry in Appalachia, the grants were authorized at recent meetings of the Foundation's board of directors.
A study of the election of bishops in the Episcopal Church has been partially funded by a $7,500 grant to the Committee on Pastoral Development of the House of Bishops. The study will provide a data base for making judgements about what works well and what works poorly among the many issues involved in planning and carrying out the election of bishops.
The Episcopal chaplain at Wayne State University in Detroit received $7,500 to help mount a campus alcohol project which aims at prevention through education and training professionals for counseling. The project's ultimate goal is to move the university to initiate an employees' assistance program and an interdepartmental center for alcohol studies.
A grant of $2,000 helped support a second consultation on preaching jointly sponsored by the Foundation and The Board for Theological Education at the College of Preachers in Washington, D.C., at which five homiletics professors each brought two recent seminary graduates to test the effectiveness of their seminary training for preaching.
A two-part consultation on the theology of the priesthood, sponsored by the Trinity Institute of Trinity Parish, New York City, received $7,500 to help bring together 17 scholars from various disciplines to reflect on the priesthood. The Council for the Development of Ministry and The Board for Theological Education are cooperating in this effort. The second phase will be a three-day conference in 1982 for seminary faculties.
Convenant House in Charleston, W. Va., pursues a street ministry to the urban poor not covered by current available social service programs. Created by the Charleston Interdenominational Council on Social Concerns, composed of representatives of 15 Protestant and Roman Catholic churches and a Jewish temple, the project received a grant of $5,000 to help it get started.
Under the supervision of the chairman of the Planning Commission of the Diocese of Vermont, a survey will determine equitable levels of clergy compensation within the diocese, paying special attention to the non-stipendiary clergy. An $11,000 grant will support this work.
A grant of $5,000 will enable the Episcopal Services System of the Diocese of Chicago to produce a 15-minute sound/slide presentation for promoting its program of consultation and referral assistance to parish clergy and lay persons who know people needing help with alcoholism, chemical dependency and depression, among other difficulties.
The Episcopal Society of Ministry on Aging, Inc., is sponsoring production in large type of selected services from the Book of Common Prayer for use by visually impaired persons, with the help of a $10,000 Foundation grant.
The sum of $7,500 was authorized as a challenge grant to FOCUS (Fellowship of Christians in Universities and Schools) of Greenwich, Conn., to raise funds to support its regional offices. The organization trains young men and women for positions of Christian leadership in society through workshops and weekend conferences. Committees are active in eight regions affecting 100 independent schools.
To discover the impact of religious television on people's religious life, an ad hoc committee of The National Council of Churches will study how religious. TV programs affect involvement with the local church and the community. A Foundation grant of $10,000 will aid the survey
The Native American Theological Association of Minneapolis was awarded a grant of $8,000 to help finance a trial year at seminary that will allow Indian and Eskimo men and women to test their vocation and explore the possibility of entering the ordained ministry.
A grant of $12,000 was authorized for an oral history of the late Presiding Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill, founder of The Episcopal Church Foundation, to be prepared by the Columbia University Oral History Research Office. The bishop's family and friends will be interviewed, and their recollections will provide this addition to the history of the Church.
To help underwrite the preliminary costs of an October 1981 pilgrimage in New York City, the Taize community, an outpost of the French community, received $5,000. The pilgrimage was designed to overcome isolation and passivity among students and young adults as they visited Episcopal, Roman Catholic and Orthodox cathedrals and parishes.A $10,000 grant was made to the Custodian of the Book of Common Prayer to finance a prospectus advertising a special limited edition of the Standard Book of Common Prayer, which it is hoped will be donated to dioceses and cathedrals as well asHistoric St. Mark's in the Bowery in New York City has trained neighborhood youth in carpentry, masonry, plastering and plumbing as they worked to restore the church badly damaged by fire. A $9,000 grant will help complete the restoration of the east and west graveyards to provide recreational areas for local children and the elderly. to parish churches.
With the aid of a $7,500 grant, St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin, Tex., will make available to faculty members opportunities for continuing education that relates the faith to an academic discipline. Financial aid may be used each year or allowed to accumulate for seven years as a sabbatical nest-egg.
The General Convention's Commission of the Church in Small Communities will be aided by a $10,000 grant in developing case histories of ten small congregations, urban and rural and of differing cultural and economic environment, to aid diocesan and parish leadership in working with small churches.
The Diocese of Tennessee received a $15,000 grant for part of the Episcopal Church's share of the costs of an ecumenical display featuring a film presentation at the 1982 World's Fair on Energy in Knoxville.
In addition to grants, The Episcopal Church Foundation makes loans for parish and mission building programs and awards fellowships to recent seminary graduates for doctoral study. The Foundation is a national, independent organization for lay men and women who support significant projects not included in regular church budgets.