Dear Friends,
Last year The Davenant Institute celebrated its tenth anniversary and began laying the strong foundation for the next decade of fruitful ministry. Even as this year has marked major leadership transitions, we have seen the Lord’s faithfulness as he has continued to grow our work through our residential study center, our publishing house, and our graduate program.
With the end of the fiscal year approaching later this month, we want to ask you to support our work financially before June 30th as, in God’s goodness, we seek to do even more.
What Have We Achieved This Past Year?
At Davenant House this May, we hosted our first gathering of area pastors for our “Congregational Life in a Digital Age” project, funded by Lilly Endowment’s “Thriving Congregations Initiative.” This was an exceptional time of instruction, discussion, and fellowship, led by Joseoh Minich and Brad Littlejohn as they explored key texts and questions related to technology and human nature. We look forward to continuing this work of equipping pastors and their churches to help their congregations thrive in our unique time and place, and out of it producing resources which will bless the wider church.
Our recently published and timely book Religion and Republic: Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War by Miles Smith has become one of our fastest-selling books and has become the #1 new release in several Amazon categories, including Christian History. We also published the next volume of our ongoing modernization of Richard Hooker’s Laws and Michael Lynch’s translation of John Davenant’s On the Death of Christ—an exciting continuation of our mission to publish and popularize the riches of early English Protestantism. We have many more exciting books coming down the line this year and next.
At Davenant Hall, we have seen steady growth in new enrollments into our M.Litt. program and we will be graduating our first M.Litt. students this month! We have also launched 8 separate graduate certificates, and will soon be launching a Master of Studies degree in Classical Protestantism. More and more students are seeing the benefit of having a graduate course of study grounded in historic primary texts and exploring the depth and breadth of the Protestant tradition.
What Could We Achieve in the Next Year?
As we turn our attention to what the Lord has in store for us in our second decade, it is our goal to expand our audience and secure our future, being good stewards of the resources and people that God has given us to have the broadest impact for years to come. To that end, every dollar you donate in the month of June will be matched by our generous sponsors up to $35,000.
How then could your support aid our work over the next 12 months by donating now?:
- $10,000 would cover the cost of a student-management system for Davenant Hall so that we can efficiently and effectively manage the increasing number of enrollments and degree students.
- $10,000 would help to ensure continuation of our Ad Fontes print journal and Commonwealth, our unique online outlet that retrieves the legacy of classical Protestantism for contemporary politics.
- $15,000 would fund a new series of translations of never-before-translated early Protestant books, beginning with the translation of the Saumur Disputations, a deeply influential series of theological debates after the Synod of Dordt covering dozens of key doctrines, in the same vein as our hugely successful edition of the Leiden Synopsis.
- $35,000 would support an exciting soon-to-be-announced publishing project that will make a major early Protestant theologian broadly available in an attractive hardback series.
All these needs add up to $70,000 to raise this month. With our $35,000 in pledged matching donations, every dollar you give doubles your impact. We could hit that milestone with a hundred $50 gifts, fifty $100 gifts, twenty $250, ten $500 gifts, five $1,000 gifts, two $2,500 gifts, and one $5000 gift. Please consider making a one-time contribution of $100, $500, $1,000, $2,500, or $5,000 before June 30 to help Davenant close this fiscal year strong as we lay the groundwork for the next ten years.
We are incredibly grateful for your faithful support and for the Lord’s abundant blessings over the past decade. With your continued prayers and support, we trust that the next ten years in the life of the Davenant Institute will prove to be even more fruitful as we seek to expand our audience and secure our future. Thank you for being part of our army of friends and for joining us as we work to retrieve the riches of classical Protestantism to renew and strengthen the contemporary church.
In Christ,
Nathan Johnson
Interim Executive Director