August 1, 2023

By Jeff Huett

DECATUR, Ga. – The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has received a $1.25-million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to promote family-church partnerships that help immigrant and refugee parents navigating difficult circumstances nurture emotionally stable children.

This work is being funded through Lilly Endowment’s Christian Parenting and Caregiving Initiative. The aim of the initiative is to help parents and caregivers share their faith and values with their children.

CBF’s program addresses the crucial role of parents in children’s emotional stability and development. Recognizing the challenges faced by children experiencing adversity and toxic stress, especially those from immigrant and refugee families, CBF conducted a survey among 15 field personnel serving in the United States.

The survey revealed vital partnerships formed with families and congregations serving diverse communities facing issues such as poverty, homelessness, substance abuse and limited access to mental health care. CBF’s field personnel and congregational partners are actively engaging with families navigating difficult circumstances.

CBF has developed a comprehensive three-stage approach to reduce parental trauma symptoms, enhance healthy parenting skills, foster secure attachment and promote effective faith formation and spiritual practices within families. The three stages encompass trauma healing, resource development and faith formation.

CBF plans to invest the program’s first year in extensive research to ensure a strong foundation, conducting listening sessions with families, faith leaders, and mental health practitioners. The collected data will inform the development of a pilot program based on the proposed framework.

Over subsequent years, the pilot will scale up, aiming to engage 50 partner congregations in providing direct care and inviting additional partnerships to benefit from the program’s learnings.

Javier Perez, CBF’s Director for Mission Strategy and Programs, said the initiative will bring transformation to both CBF’s Global Mission field work as well as local congregations throughout the network.

“We’re excited about the potential impact of this transformative program and look forward to nurturing children’s emotional well-being, strengthening families and fostering faith formation within communities,” Perez said.

Brian Foreman, CBF’s Coordinator of Congregational Ministries, said through funding this proposal, Lilly Endowment has affirmed CBF’s concern that spiritual formation instruction often takes place in a silo from the impacts of trauma and mental health needs.

“Our efforts are aimed at providing the building blocks for a healthy faith,” Foreman said. “Centering this work with families partnered with CBF Field Personnel and local congregations has far reaching impacts for how we resource congregations working with children and families, as well as those working with displaced populations.”

CBF Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley expressed appreciation for the “dynamic collaboration between CBF’s Global Missions team and Congregational Ministries team that led to this extraordinary opportunity to offer Christ’s love and healing to families in the midst of intense trauma.”

“Beyond offering grace in the midst of trauma, the lessons learned from families in relationship with our field personnel will help us discover new ways to encourage congregations across our Fellowship in the nurture of faith in new generations while also leading to even closer partnerships between congregations and our field personnel in the mission we have all been given by Christ,” Baxley said.

CBF is one of 77 organizations receiving grants through this competitive round of the initiative. Reflecting the diversity of Christianity in the United States, the organizations are affiliated with mainline Protestant, evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox Christian and Pentecostal faith communities. Many of the organizations are rooted in Black church, Hispanic and Asian Christian traditions.

“We’ve heard from many parents who are seeking to nurture the spiritual lives of their children, especially in their daily activities, and looking to churches and other faith-based organizations for support,” said Christopher L. Coble, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for religion. “These thoughtful, creative and collaborative organizations embrace the important role that families have in shaping the religious development of children and are launching programs to assist parents and caregivers with this task.”

Lilly Endowment launched the Christian Parenting and Caregiving Initiative in 2022 because of its interest in supporting efforts to help individuals and families from diverse Christian communities draw more fully on the wisdom of Christian practices to live out their faith fully and well passing on a vibrant faith to a new generation. 

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CBF is a Christian network that helps people put their faith to practice through ministry efforts, global missions and a broad community of support. The Fellowship’s mission is to serve Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission.