Following a meeting of the Kern Family Foundation board, The Wesleyan Church was awarded a grant to support a pilot Faith, Work and Economics Conference in the fall 2015.
The grant will fund thirty Michigan pastors, accompanied by two lay leaders from their church, to explore the intersection of work, faith and economics and to develop an action plan to live out this understanding in their own lives, implement it into the life of their church and ultimately promote it into the associations, businesses, and universities that make up their community.
The grant will help explore, teach, and better understand a biblical understanding of God’s design for work, economics and faith; facilitate conversations and collaboration between Wesleyan clergy and lay leaders regarding faith, work and economics; and, engage participants and their churches to apply these principles to support their churches and communities. By engaging these biblical and theological realities we hope to expound and leverage the faith, work and economics message and its partnership mechanism to help transform lives, churches and ultimately communities to become flourishing reflections of God’s kingdom of heaven.
The project, co-created and co-led by The Wesleyan Church’s office of Generous Living and the division of Education and Clergy Development, will add to a growing effort of the church to support pastors, churches, and communities to understand the importance of work, integrate it within their teaching, discipleship, and equipping ministries, helping pastors to flourish.
The Kern Family Foundation invests in the rising generation of Americans, equipping them to become tomorrow’s leaders and innovators. It is a sponsor of Made to Flourish: A Pastors’ Network for the Common Good. Made to Flourish is dedicated to growing the numbers and influence of pastors and churches actively integrating faith, work, and economics for ministry that produces human flourishing. By God’s grace, Made to Flourish pastors are becoming in increasing measure pastors who are spiritually whole, relationally healthy, pastorally prepared, and culturally engaged.
Kern Family Foundation
