Unbinding the Gospel Project

The Lilly Endowment has awarded a major new grant, with two stated purposes:

1. to support 1000+ churches to use the Real Life Evangelism Series (Unbinding the Gospel, Unbinding Your Church and Unbinding Your Heart) in the most systematic and effective ways possible for their own contexts, and
   
   
2. to help pastors and lay leaders in these 1000 churches to work together as "communities of inquiry," in essence as field researchers, as they discover, evaluate and work with the dynamics of congregational transformation through faith development and faith sharing.

Martha Grace Reese, Director of the original Mainline Evangelism Project, the research project in which the Series is grounded, will serve as the director of this new research, the "Unbinding the Gospel Project." An extraordinary group of gifted coaches will work with Reese on this four-year project.

In the news:

11/7/08: 1st Findings from Churches in Project

1/11/08: CHALICE PRESS AUTHOR TO DIRECT RESEARCH IN EFFECTIVE CONGREGATIONAL TRANSFORMATION