NEWS RELEASE

TRIANGLE PASTORAL COUNSELING, INC.

Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Project

316 W. Millbrook Road, Suite 217

Raleigh, North Carolina 27609

 Contact:         Richard L. Hester, Project Director        

                        919-847-7442

                        richardlhester@earthlink.net

                        For Immediate Release

                        September 19, 2003

LILLY ENDOWMENT PROJECT SEEKS APPLICATIONS FROM PASTORS

The Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Project of Triangle Pastoral Counseling is seeking qualified pastors to apply for its two-year, March 2004-March 2006, program.  Participants will form a peer group, led by the staff, with eight other pastors from diverse backgrounds.

In 2002 the Lilly Endowment initiated the program Sustaining Pastoral Excellence that seeks “to focus attention and energy on maintaining the high caliber of many of the country’s pastoral leaders.”   The Endowment invested $57.9 in this program nationwide.

Triangle Pastoral Counseling received Lilly Endowment funding of $685,393 and is one of 47 institutions in the U.S., out of more than 700 applicants, to receive a Sustaining Pastoral Excellence grant. 

“Few people who aren’t pastors can understand the stress, the chaos, and the loneliness that comes with the territory of being a pastor to a congregation,” said Dr. Richard Hester, Director of Triangle Pastoral Counseling’s Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Program.  “Most of the work of pastors is not visible to the congregation, and pastors are often the target of criticism for things over which they have no control.  Such conditions create an isolation for pastors in which it’s easy to lose one’s priorities, awareness of one’s strengths and gifts, and the essence of one’s calling.  This project aims at breaking down this isolation through peer support and mentoring.”

Rev. Kelli Walker-Jones, Associate Project Director, said, “Pastors serve a community, but they usually have no one to care for them.  Seldom do they have a support group of their peers.  We will help pastors in this project develop support networks and pass these skills on to other ministers.” 

Dr. Stanley Hauerwas, of the Duke University Divinity School Faculty, wrote, “I can think of few interventions in actual pastoral ministry more important than what this project intends. . . . It gives the time for the development of those kinds of skills and relationships that seem to me so crucial today if people are not literally to die in the ministry.”        

Many organizations are trying to help pastors.  Program after program comes across pastors’ desks offering to fix them.  What makes this project different?

• A peer support group facilitated by the project staff, extending over two years.

• The biblical idea of covenant as an integrating theological theme for the project.

• A collegial community for mutual teaching and learning.

• Support for strengthening pastoral leadership through teaching sessions, reading, and theological reflection on case material.

• Guidance and support for the participant’s spiritual life.

• Ongoing contact with an experienced mentor who provides consultation and support and is as close as the telephone.

• Attention to family—both one’s family of origin and of procreation.

• Annual retreats.

• A Lilly Endowment investment of more than $30,000 in each project participant.

An application form can be downloaded from the Triangle Pastoral Counseling web site, www.tripastoralcounseling.org.  The deadline for applications is December 1, 2003.         

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