Marion, Ind. (Dec. 11, 2025) – Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) has received a grant of $10 million from Lilly Endowment Inc. to help support Wesley Seminary’s Vocational, Integrated, and Adaptive (VIA) Journeys initiative. VIA Journeys is an ambitious, collaborative model designed to deliver personalized, applied, theological education for pastors and lay leaders across a wide range of ministry settings.
VIA Journeys brings together Christian communities, including Wesleyan Holiness, Methodist, Nazarene, Pentecostal, Evangelical, and interdenominational traditions, across five sectors: seminaries and universities, Bible schools, churches, ministry organizations, and technology and AI partners.
VIA Journeys is being funded through Lilly Endowment’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative. This initiative is designed to help theological schools across the United States and Canada as they prioritize and respond to the most pressing challenges they face as they prepare pastoral leaders for Christian congregations both now and into the future. The grant to IWU is one of 45 that was approved in this competitive round of funding to support theological schools as they lead large-scale collaborations with other seminaries, colleges and universities, and other church-related organizations.
“This project is a bold, innovative, paradigm-shifting plan to reshape the theological educational model,” said Indiana Wesleyan University President Jon Kulaga, Ph.D., “not only for our collaborators, but for the broader landscape of graduate seminary education.”
VIA Journeys is inspired by Micah 4:2 (NIV): “Many nations will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.’” Reflecting this call to seek God’s presence and formational guidance together, VIA Journeys envisions a highly collaborative approach to theological education that supports leaders serving congregations in diverse communities, denominations, and a wide variety of ministry contexts.
“True to our mission of equipping, supporting, and celebrating all who are called to serve, VIA Journeys will bring together a constellation of ministry partners to create customized, mentor-driven, and AI-powered lifelong learning pathways to meet and anticipate the changing needs of an increasingly diverse ministry landscape,” said Rev. Yamil Acevedo, Ph.D., executive vice president of Wesley Seminary.
With support from Lilly Endowment, Wesley Seminary will expand its capacity to collaborate with other ministry partners and continue positioning itself as an innovative leader in theological education, coming alongside ministry leaders to deepen their theological foundations, strengthen their practical skills, and sharpen their spiritual formation faithfully, transform their communities, and expand God’s Kingdom.
Lilly Endowment launched the Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative in 2021. Since then, it has provided grants totaling more than $700 million to support 163 theological schools in efforts to strengthen their own educational and financial capacities and to assist 61 schools in developing large-scale collaborative endeavors.
About Lilly Endowment Inc.
Lilly Endowment Inc. is a private 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. While those gifts remain the 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 hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana. A principal aim of the Endowment’s religion grantmaking is to deepen and enrich the lives of Christians in the United States, primarily by seeking out and supporting efforts that enhance the vitality of congregations and strengthen the pastoral and lay leadership of Christian communities. The Endowment also seeks to improve public understanding of about religion and lift up in fair, accurate and balanced ways the roles that people of all faiths and various religious communities play in the United States and around the globe.
