Grant Awarded for Multi-Faith Engagement Team Project

June 24, 2014 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: John W. Morehead

Tel. (801) 643-6983

Email: johnwmorehead@msn.com

EVANGELICAL TEAM PROJECT RECEIVES GRANT FROM THE LOUISVILLE INSTITUTE TO EXPLORE POSITIVE MULTI-FAITH ENGAGEMENT

SALT LAKE CITY— The Evangelical Chapter of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy will administer a grant of $45,000 from The Louisville Institute that will fund a Collaborative Inquiry Team of pastors and scholars who will conduct case studies over three years on churches involved in constructive forms of multi-faith engagement. The results will be disseminated within significant venues of Evangelicalism for strategic and maximum impact on the local church

The Evangelical multi-faith engagement collaborative inquiry project brings together a diverse group of three pastors and three academics as a team that will identify ways in which Evangelicals can be more effective as they engage their neighbors in a multi-faith world. The team will conduct case studies that explore how various churches are engaging in positive forms of interaction with other religious groups, and how they have wrestled with the challenges and concerns that often contribute to ineffective encounters. John Morehead, team director and Custodian of the Evangelical Chapter of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy, shared his optimism about this: “I’m excited about the possibilities this team project holds for both the church and adherents of other religions as we engage them in a post-9/11 world.”

These studies will provide important insights that will comprise a new neighborhood theology and praxis of multi-faith engagement that maintains faithfulness to Evangelical convictions, and which embraces the Christian values of love of neighbor and enemy, grace, and hospitality.

Our Collaborative Inquiry Team includes the diversity within Evangelicalism and team members come from across the country. The pastoral part of the team is comprised of Carrie Graham, a multifaith church planter in Austin, Texas; Bob Roberts, Jr., founding and Senior Pastor of NorthWood Church near Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas; and Phil Wyman, pastor of The Gathering in Salem, Massachusetts. The academic part of the team includes Sang-Ehil Han, PhD., Vice President for Academics and Professor of Theology and Spirituality at Pentecostal Seminary in Clevand, Tennessee; Paul Louis Metzger, PhD., Professor of Christian Theology and Theology of Culture at Multnomah Biblical Seminary/Multnomah University; and John W. Morehead, MA, Custodian of the Evangelical Chapter of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy. Our original team included Jill Riley, a church planter in Billings, Montana who resigned from the team after the first year for personal reasons.

The Collaborative Inquiry program supports teams of four to six pastors and professors who propose projects to strengthen the life of North American Christian congregations. A maximum award of $45,000 enables each team to spend three years exploring together a question of vital importance to the church.

Louisville Institute is funded by the Religion Division of Lilly Endowment and based at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary (Louisville, Kentucky). The Institute's fundamental mission is to enrich the religious life of North American Christians and to encourage the revitalization of their institutions, by bringing together those who lead religious institutions with those who study them, so that the work of each might inform and strengthen the other.

The Louisville Institute web page for this Collaborative Inquiry Team can be found here.

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The Evangelical Chapter of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy prepares Evangelicals to better imitate Christ as they engage their multi-faith neighbors in their communities and around the world. To learn more visit the website at www.EvangelicalFRD.org. If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with John Morehead, please contact him at (801) 643-6983 or johnwmorehead@msn.com.

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