Parish Development Grants for 2023

The overall purpose of Parish Development Grants is to assist parishes in the diocese as they develop, with God’s help, into healthier, more faithful, and more effective communities of faith. We are interested, therefore, in making grants to parishes that have a vision for their own development and would like diocesan assistance in moving toward the vision.

In preparing an application, parish leaders may find the following definition of parish development helpful:

Parish Development is the development of parishes of all sizes, locations, and conditions into more faithful, healthy, and effective communities of faith that are:

• Focused on and faithful to their unique reason for being/primary task as parishes; which are local expressions of the Body of Christ that gather people into Christian community, transform people in their baptismal identity & purpose, and send them out to be God’s presence in the world.
• Connected to and expressive of their unique ecclesial tradition, ethos, and character.
• Self-renewing and responsive to the challenges and opportunities before them.
• Sustainable or working towards greater sustainability in terms of congruence (or “fit”) between the elements of their organizational life: vision for ministry, leadership, culture, size, property, finances, etc.
• Nurture a parish culture that is transparent, honest, open to learning and hopeful.
  
  

Some examples of the kinds of grants we would like to support are:

• Grants that seek to increase attendance, and stewardship within a parish via the development of an additional liturgy that will attract new people and/or a different population to the parish.\
• Grants that seek to build the capacity of a parish to attract and form children in Christian faith via the initiation of Godly Play or some other program of children’s formation.
• Development of pilot programs of any size that would be of benefit to the broader Church and are sustainable by the parish over time.

Grant money distributed goes to a wide variety of projects, from music concert series produced in partnerships with organizations in the community to new appliances for a commercial grade kitchen to audio/visual/tech equipment to aid in livestreaming, liturgical production and parish communications to establishing programs for Christian formation to serve seekers of all ages.

$15,000 is the maximum amount which will be granted to a project in a single year.

Intent to Apply forms and information sheets are now on the diocesan website here and there is a a firm submission deadline of August 30, 2022.

The Diocese of New Westminster does not fund capital projects through this Parish Development Grants process, funds for such projects may be accessed through other granting facilities.