The Fuller Youth Institute (FYI) at Fuller Theological Seminary was recently awarded a $1.1 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. The goal of the Living a Better Story (or LABS) project is to discover and develop new congregational ministry approaches which effectively guide today’s diverse teenagers to Christ-centered narratives that satisfy their longings for identity, belonging, and purpose.
As an increasing number of young people in the US drift from faith, they also drift from the church. Churches missing young people end up missing the vitality, creativity, insight, and passion young people provide. Integrating FYI’s existing work from best-selling books and research projects like Sticky Faith and Growing Young, this new three-year project aims to conduct an extensive exploration of existing innovative approaches to ministry with teenagerswhose origin stories and current impact could be sources of inspiration, and even offer templates, for diverse churches nationwide.
“We are deeply encouraged by Lilly Endowment Inc.’s support of the Fuller Youth Institute’s work,” said Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Seminary. “The LABS project recognizes that too many churches’ existing ministries with young people are falling short and new church-wide approaches are needed. This new research can help close the gap between many young people’s current narratives and more fulfilling and authentic Christ-centered ones. The congregations and researchers who participate in this project will inspire the wider Church to be thoughtful and innovative as it strives to revitalize its ministries and offerings.”
Over the course of the three-year LABS project, FYI intends to:
- Leverage its extensive networks in order to unearth existing effective and interesting ministry approaches that have yet to be popularized
- Better understand diverse young people’s current narratives, as well as alternative Christ-centered narratives that fuel innovative ministry approaches
- Design and execute a 2-year cohort training process with 24-30 diverse congregations who will contextualize approaches that have been discovered and/or develop their own fresh approaches
- Broadly share the insights gained with tens of thousands of multicultural church leaders with the aim of popularizing innovative approaches to ministry with teenagers
