Growing in Grace: Accessible Worship for All God’s Children

NASHVILLE, Tenn. October 4, 2024/Discipleship Ministries/ - Discipleship Ministries has received a $1.25 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to help establish a new program entitled Growing in Grace: Accessible Worship for All God’s Children.

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.

Growing in Grace is a Wesleyan institute that will form all children into anti-ableist Christians through worship by helping them learn and believe that all God's creation is God's good creation. In U.S. society, ableism exerts significant power, which is evident in the limited presence of people with disabilities in all aspects of communal life, including the church. As a result, churches often lack knowledge and resources to provide supportive spaces that form all children to resist ableism and embrace disability as part of God’s good creation. Growing in Grace will address this need through the cultivation of accessible worship practices that integrate all children—disabled and nondisabled—in intergenerational communities of inclusion and belonging.

Through these practices:

• Churches will practice preaching, worship, and teaching that does no harm and does good for the entire community.
• Children will engage in anti-ableist worship as a rehearsal of living as disciples who embrace all people as God's good creation.
• Children will learn, believe, and act in ways that create cultures that embrace persons of diverse embodiments within and beyond the church.

Discipleship Ministries is one of 91 organizations funding 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.

For more information, please contact Dr. Lisa Hancock.

The mission of Discipleship Ministries is to support annual conference and local church leaders for their task of equipping world-changing disciples. An agency of The United Methodist Church, Discipleship Ministries is located at 1908 Grand Ave. in Nashville, Tenn. For more information, visit www.UMCdiscipleship.org, the Press Center at www.UMCdiscipleship.org/about/press-center or call the Communications Office at (877) 899-2780, Ext. 1726.