Empowering Experiments

Mini-Grants 2024-25

Empowering Experiments (EE) is our granting program in which we seek to empower established or aspiring non-traditional faith leaders in a ministry project with which they wish to experiment.

Applicants may request funding for a project in the range of $500-$6,000 for the 2024-25 application process.

With grantees, we will also ask how TCL might best be a support to your project, whether that means helping you brainstorm or connecting you with folks that can help, etc. We want to be a relational and tangible support to your innovative ministry project!

EE applicants will propose either:

  1. a project which culminates in a single event, or 

  2. it may be an ongoing series of events which can range from 3-12 months of recurring session.

For this cycle, the experiment will need to culminate or take place during the calendar year of 2025.

Criteria for submission includes responding to the following questions in small answer form. Please limit responses to each question to half a page or less in 12-point font. Please include the number and re-state the question before answering each one. Please email responses and other relevant attachments and links to help@thechurchlab.org between June 1 and August 31, 2024:

  1. What is your preferred contact info, including name, preferred email, best number to reach you (though we will likely use email)?

  2. Specific amount requested. (Please note that we typically give about $6,000 out per year in total, whether we split that among grantees or choose one grantee for the year.) If you request more than $1,500, please indicate -in all honesty- if you’d be willing to accept partial funding. We do not aspire to this but have needed to consider it in the past. We encourage you to respond based on what’s best for your project and constituency.

  3. Please describe your project generally, and how it takes a risk(s) or attempts to offer an experience or service which is unexpected in a traditional church environment (however you define traditional). 

  4. TCL’s mission is to seek innovative paths of spiritual growth for all, helping discovering the Church’s future and the future of faith practice. How does your project help people spiritually grow?

  5. Please express how your experiment is framed by an enduring theological foundation.

  6. What is the purpose of this experiment? 

  7. Who does it serve? How? 

  8. How is your project innovative?

  9. What risks does it involve, whether in content or operationally or both?

  10. Where, when and/or with what frequency will this experiment take place?

  11. Why is this type of experiment something you feel is important for the future of faith practice in the US?

  12. Does this experiment involve various stages? For instance, is there further research you will need to do to provide more specifics to this experiment? Are there materials or supplies that would need to be created or gathered? Are there recruitment needs? Space/location needs?

  13. How do you anticipate using the funds, if it is not all for compensation for your time and energy (which is legitimate)?

  14. Because this is a one-time, non-renewable grant, how will this serve as a springboard or a helper in developing your ministry or this project's purpose beyond the scope of this one-time (or if a series, a single timeframe) effort?

  15. If you are a previous grant recipient, and your proposal’s content is somehow related to initiatives from previous funding: How are you building on (rather than continuing the same work in) what you experimented with before? How are you creating independent sustainability through your funding models, other partnerships, etc.?

  16. How did you find out about this grant opportunity?

  17. If your proposed project involves holding space for or facilitating diverse, sensitive, tense or divisive conversations or interactions of any kind, please include an extra page or even a 5-10 minute informal video expanding on your philosophy, approach and framework. How has it worked in the past? What have you learned from it? How do you imagine this approach meshes well with that of TCL?

  18. Please attach a resume along with information about your interest in and relevant experience with ministry and non-traditional ministry efforts. Websites or brief multi-media sites or samples are welcome. References are welcome.


We will seek to notify applicants of awards by or before November 1, 2024. 

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