Concordia Seminary in St. Louis has been selected by Lilly Endowment to receive a grant of $108,935 in support of the Seminary’s annual Exploring Church Careers Event (ECCE) for high school youth. The grant will provide half of the funding needed to provide the program over the next four years.

The ECCE is four-day retreat on the Seminary campus is designed to identify, inform and encourage high school youth toward service in a church work vocation. The retreat features Bible study, worship, and off-campus trips to ministry sites to enable youth to hear from adults who are serving in a wide variety of church work vocations. The 2007 ECCE will take place Aug. 4-7. Additional information can be obtained online at www.csl.edu/Admissions_HighSchoolYouth.aspx.

“Concordia Seminary was honored to have been selected as one of the first 23 institutions to receive the Theological Programs for High School Youth Grant from Lilly Endowment in 1998,” commented Rev. Glen Thomas, special assistant to the president at Concordia Seminary. “This initial grant was supplemented in 2001 and 2003 with two additional grants from the Endowment totaling $175,000. As a result, more than 500 high school youth have attended an ECCE on the campus of Concordia Seminary. In addition, many hundreds more have been identified as possible future leaders in the church through the ECCE’s nomination process.”

Lilly Endowment is based in Indianapolis, Ind. Its "Theological Programs for High School Youth" grants program is designed to challenge schools to find ways through which a new generation of youth can be informed and encouraged for future service in the church. "Our aim in this program is to provide major support to those theological schools that can successfully find and develop a new generation of talented young Christians," said Craig Dykstra, vice president for religion at Lilly.

For more information, contact Seminary Relations, Concordia Seminary, 801 Seminary Place; St. Louis, MO 63105; 314-505-7370; SemRelations@csl.edu.