The Macedonian Ministry Foundation, Inc. has received a grant of $5 million from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its National Storytelling Initiative on Christian Faith and Life 2025. This grant will support a new multi-year effort of The Ministry Collaborative (TMC) to cultivate a renewed culture of Christian storytelling across congregations, faith communities, and public-facing platforms.
The grant to support the work of TMC is one of 60 grants Lilly Endowment has made since 2024 through its Storytelling initiative. Recipients include media organizations, denominational judicatories, church networks, publishers, educational institutions, congregations, and other nonprofit charitable organizations.
TMC will engage its national network of pastors, lay leaders, facilitators, and congregations to equip participants to locate their lives within God’s story and to practice Christian storytelling as a formative discipline of prayer, confession, witness, and communal discernment. The project’s central goal is to help individuals and communities find their footing in God’s story and share that story with humility, depth, and hope.
The project will launch 30 new peer-learning storytelling cohorts across the country, supported by trained facilitators who help create spaces where stories can be shared with honesty, spiritual depth, and theological grounding. As these cohorts take root, TMC will gather compelling stories from its network, share them through podcasts, mini-documentaries, blogs, and other multimedia platforms, and bring participants together for national gatherings that foster collaboration and learning. The work will culminate in a growing digital archive that showcases Gospel-shaped transformation in diverse communities and contexts.
Through this initiative, TMC seeks to renew the church as a community of storytellers—where stories of grace, struggle, faith, and hope can be shared across generations, cultures, and contexts.
Mark Ramsey, Executive Director of TMC reflects that, “Storytelling has always been at the heart of Christian life, but many people today feel disconnected from the stories that shape identity, deepen faith, and invite belonging. This grant allows us to create spaces where people can rediscover that their lives are part of God’s ongoing story—and to share those stories in ways that bring hope, understanding, and renewed imagination to their communities.”
The aim of Lilly Endowment’s National Storytelling Initiative on Christian Faith and Life is to help organizations identify, produce, and share with a wide variety of audiences compelling stories that portray the vibrancy and hope of Christian faith and life.
About Lilly Endowment Inc.
Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly Sr. and his sons Eli and J.K. Jr. through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. Although the gifts of stock remain a financial bedrock of the Endowment, it is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff, and location. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education, and religion and maintains a special commitment to its founders’ hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana. A primary aim of its grantmaking in religion is to deepen the religious lives of Christians and to support efforts that enhance congregational vitality and strengthen leadership in Christian communities. The Endowment values the broad diversity of Christian traditions and seeks to foster public understanding about religion through fair and accurate portrayals of its impact on society.
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