The Banner has a subscription to republish articles from Religion News Service. This story by Yonat Shimron, was published June 9, 2025 on religionnews.com.
Craig Dykstra, a longtime philanthropy executive who, through his grant-making, helped nurture theologically grounded Christian congregations and strong pastoral leaders, died June 1 after a long illness. He was 78.
For nearly a quarter-century, from 1989 to 2012, Dykstra served as vice president of religion at the Lilly Endowment in Indianapolis, a significant position responsible for overseeing the United States’ largest grant-making program for religious inquiry and support of faith-based institutions. He later served as a research professor of practical theology at Duke Divinity School, from which he retired in 2020.
At a time when mainline denominations were declining, Dykstra helped Christian leaders design grant programs to strengthen and root congregations in age-old congregational Christian practices, such as hospitality, forgiveness, and singing. He wanted to reward pastoral excellence and to cultivate Christian vocations among young people.
In all, he was responsible for shepherding 6,321 Lilly Endowment grants to congregations, denominations and divinity schools. Among the most notable were grants supporting the creation of summer youth academies for high school students exploring a Christian vocation and a sabbatical program to help pastors take time off for theological reflection and renewal. Much of his grant-making supported theological schools in encouraging interaction with congregations.
Related: CRC Pastors Among Renewal Grant Recipients, Nov. 12, 2021
“He believed the church provides a community of practice where we engage together intergenerationally and across centuries and cultures in practices that respond to God’s grace and form us into who we are for the good of the world,” said Dorothy Bass, who edited several books with Dykstra and served as the director of the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith.
For the most part, the grants Dykstra helped develop resisted individualistic and primarily intellectual notions of Christian faith in favor of congregational formation within communities.
“Theology and theological education are burdened by a picture of practice that is harmfully individualistic, technological, ahistorical, and abstract,” Dykstra once wrote. He wanted to cultivate practical theology—activities done together in the worship of God that form lifelong habits.
Related: CRCNA Among Organizations Receiving Funds Aimed at Helping Parents Pass ‘Faith and Values’ to Their Children, Aug. 18, 2023
Dykstra wrote six books and multiple book chapters on Christian education and faith development.
Born in Detroit, he was raised in the Reformed Church of America. After completing an undergraduate degree in philosophy at the University of Michigan, he earned a master of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and served briefly as a Presbyterian pastor. He completed his Ph.D. at Princeton, then taught at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary and at Princeton Theological Seminary before being recruited to the Lilly Endowment in 1989.
L. Gregory Jones, who served as dean of the Duke Divinity School before becoming president of Belmont University, said he remembered Dykstra for helping to guide his theological thinking. Years ago, after giving a talk on the decline of Christianity and the forces responsible for it, Jones said, Dykstra pulled him aside for a talk.
“He said, ‘anybody can provide that kind of narrative, that’s too easy. You really need to find ways to think about what solutions we could work toward,’” Jones said. “It really changed my imagination. Rather than saying ‘we can’t,’ and being an armchair quarterback, he (encouraged me) to focus on, ‘OK, how can I be part of creative solutions?’”
Dykstra also encouraged funding for religion journalism, including the PBS television news-magazine program “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly,” which aired from 1997 to 2017, as well as the transformation of Religion News Service into a nonprofit in 2011.
Dykstra and his wife, Betsy, were members of Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, where a memorial service for Dykstra was held June 20.
(Editors note: Religion News Service receives support from the Lilly Endowment.)
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