Fermi Project educates evangelical Christian leaders on their responsibility to renew culture; this includes understanding the culture and findings of science, not just as they relate to religion, but on its own terms. Our audience is influential church leaders, pastors and church planters who represent the future of growing churches in America. Through Fermi Project’s “Thinking About Science” program, multiple media guide church leaders into ministry opportunities to engage science and scientists: these media include live events, research, essays, online content, small-group curricula, books and culture shaping projects.
We will integrate Thinking About Science into Fermi Project’s existing outreach to influential leaders in the American evangelical church. Our proven niche has been an ability to convene innovator and early adopter church leaders and to aggregate content around topics related to future developments in culture. Fermi Project’s expertise is in taking theoretical ideas and driving leaders to act on their learning in practical ways.
We will develop content for church leaders around three key themes relevant to evangelical ministry and life in order to build bridges across a conflict-ridden terrain.
- We will introduce science as a central channel of current and future culture;
- We will introduce ways to minister to scientists which will include understanding, respecting and appreciating their vocations and their specific cultural context; and
- We will introduce some of the biggest questions about the relationship between science and religion to an audience that has self-identified as wanting to avoid historical antipathies to culture.
Integration into our broad outreach curriculum avoids the problem of only a few curiosity-seekers self-selecting into a “Science Track” of learning or into Science special events (based on survey data, we estimate that method would touch only 10% of our audience). Participants come to Fermi Project desiring a broad range of content already filtered for quality and for diversity, trusting us to identify the most important avenues of learning.
The major program elements include:
- Six expert presentations given at Fermi Project’s annual Q Gathering, an invitation only environment for young, influential church leaders reaching over 2000 leaders in a live event setting, and over 10,000 through online viewing.
- Six 5000-word essays (Q Shorts) commissioned and delivered to 2000 church leaders, one every six months.
- Three Curriculums (Society Room Studies) developed and distributed to pastors, church leaders and small group leaders, creating important discussion among over 10,000 church leaders that leads to action in their communities.
- Six Podcast interviews distributed to over 4500 church leaders
A council of Science will be established to work with our identified team of program advisors to select topics and speakers, to review essays, study guides, and questions for accuracy and relevance to ministry.
Finally, as is the case with each initiative we develop, our plan is for this project to be financially self-sustaining by the completion of the grant cycle. The content developed will be made self-sustaining through the marketing of downloadable essays, event registration fees and the sale of small-group study kits.
