The Living Church Foundation finds itself today, by God’s grace, at a crossroads of creativity, riding a wave of healthy business success and sustained growth — due, in large part, to an influx of new leaders, the best and brightest of their generation. They have joined our staff; they fill the pages of our flagship magazine and write for our popular blog. The circulation of The Living Church has steadily grown for five years and continues to move from strength to strength; Covenant now leads the conversation of the whole Anglican Communion.
We are more than a magazine. In addition to the news, teaching, and cultural analysis found in THE LIVING CHURCH, our weblog, Covenant, reaches hundreds of thousands of Anglicans worldwide with a team of evangelical and catholic writers. We offer several resources for the worship and prayer life of the Church: The Episcopal Musician’s Handbook, a guide to hymn selection in harmony with the liturgical seasons; Illuminations, a lector’s aid for Sunday worship; and Daily Devotionals, spiritual commentary on the Daily Office readings. Through the Living Church Institute, we are creating new resources for Christian education, and our staff is often on the road to host conferences, lead workshops, and consult. Your gift to the Living Church Foundation serves the revitalization and faith of the Church. Our ministries touch hundreds of thousands of lives each year.
We are a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, and your donations are fully tax-deductible. We provide several ways to give to the Living Church Foundation:
When your parish, diocese, or institution becomes a partner of the Living Church you help defray the everyday costs of producing a substantive Anglican journal of thought and opinion, maintaining a high-quality website, and many other publishing and teaching initiatives. Nearly a fifth of our annual income comes from dozens of faithful TLC partners from around the church at multiple giving levels (Sponsor, Guarantor, and Associate). We thank our Partners by listing them in the back pages of every issue and providing free subscriptions. Higher giving levels receive an annual column with a photo in the magazine, and are thanked on the Contents page of the magazine for helping make their sponsored issue possible.
Contact Dr. Christopher Wells, Executive Director (cwells@livingchurch.org or (574) 323-7095), to become a Living Church Partner today.
For 140 years, the Living Church has created a transformative ministry devoted to healing, unity, and revitalization of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. Your support will allow us to continue to help develop the next generation of young priests and scholars.
Richard Clements, CEO and co-owner of 405 Plastics & Distribution, Oklahoma City, and board member of TLC
You may make a gift to our Annual Fund in your name, in honor of someone you would like to recognize, or in memory of someone who has died. We thank our Annual Fund donors by listing their names in THE LIVING CHURCH each year, along with recognition of giving levels and gifts made in honor or memory of a loved one. Without many tax-deductible gifts each year, we would need to raise the cost of a magazine subscription considerably, pricing out a large portion of our more than 5,000 subscribers.
Without TLC, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to develop as a writer and Christian leader. The enthusiasm and collaboration, fed by deep friendships, has spread to my fellow Canadian Anglicans and beyond!
Dr. Jeff Boldt, Toronto
How to give to the Annual Fund
By check:
Your check is welcome at any time. Simply write to us at:
The Living Church Foundation
P.O. Box 510705
Milwaukee, WI 53203-0121
Online giving:
You may also make a secure online donation with your credit or debit card, by clicking the button below. For your convenience, you may make either a one-time gift or set up a recurring monthly donation.
In the providence of God, TLC is strategically placed to engage the next generation of Church leaders in a classic Anglican understanding of apostolic Christian faith. I pray that God’s people will generously support this work.
Dr. Grace Sears, Past President of the Order of the Daughters of the King and Vice President of the board of TLC
Means of making a planned gift include:
- A Bequest in a Will or Trust: Donors may designate a specific amount, a percentage of their estate, or a specific asset. They may also name the Living Church Foundation as a contingent beneficiary.
Retirement Accounts: Donors may make direct gifts from their retirement fund to the Living Church Foundation or name the Living Church Foundation as a contingent beneficiary of the fund. Often retirement funds are the most heavily taxed asset of an estate.
- Life Insurance: Donors may make the Living Church Foundation the owner and beneficiary of a new policy or an existing policy that is no longer needed, or a contingent beneficiary of an existing policy.
- Real Estate and Other Gifts: Donors may make a gift of their home or other real estate, in addition to various types of personal property, such as works of art, boats, or other property.
- Life Income Gifts: Charitable gift annuities, charitable remainder trusts, and pooled income funds provide a donor and/or a designated beneficiary income for life, after which the Living Church Foundation receives the gift. These types of gifts can reduce or eliminate certain taxes. You may contact the Episcopal Church Foundation directly for more information (see below).
We encourage all potential donors to seek their own professional legal, tax, or financial advice before finalizing any planned gift.
Please notify The Living Church Foundation of your intention to leave a planned gift or to discuss options: Dr. Christopher Wells, cwells@livingchurch.org or (574) 323-7095.
You may also contact the Episcopal Church Foundation directly to create a Life Income Gift or a Donor-advised Fund at giving@episcopalfoundation.org or (800) 697-2858.
TLC’s first ever endowment campaign is focused on funding the Living Church Institute, an ambitious suite of educational programing and ministerial enrichment. Our strategic goal is to draw out hundreds more leaders: to attract them, encourage them in their faith, and help to send them into the Church as ordained and lay leaders in confidence and hope.
Where We Are
In-person teaching.
TLC’s editors and dozens of colleagues have organized or are now planning more than 25 public conferences, seminars, courses, and teaching days across the Church — in the U.S., Canada, England, in Rome, and in the Holy Land, in close collaboration with multiple seminaries, dioceses, parishes, and independent institutions. And this is just the beginning. Visit livingchurch.org/tlci/ for an up-to-date list, and for photos, papers, and press coverage from past events.
TLC’s editors and dozens of colleagues have organized or are now planning more than 25 public conferences, seminars, courses, and teaching days across the Church — in the U.S., Canada, England, in Rome, and in the Holy Land, in close collaboration with multiple seminaries, dioceses, parishes, and independent institutions. And this is just the beginning. Visit livingchurch.org/tlci/ for an up-to-date list, and for photos, papers, and press coverage from past events.
Expanded publishing.
We now have in development a new line of pamphlets, curricula, catechisms, and books for teaching the faith to all ages. Later this year, the Living Church Institute will publish a set of 21 pamphlets entitled Anglicans Believe, given to brief, accessible introductions to the Christian essentials, written by some of the best teachers the world over. Next, we will publish a set of practical catechetical resources for families in partnership with Church of the Incarnation, Dallas. Fresh Sunday school and confirmation curricula will follow.
Leadership development and discipleship.
The Living Church gathers and serves a broad network of leaders, influencers, teachers, and creative thinkers, and shares their gifts with the wider Church. This work takes place all around the world but has found a new center in our second office in Dallas, which presents an ideal laboratory for theological research and teaching, meetings, and sustained attention to formation and discipleship.
The ministry of TLC opened our imaginations to serving in the Episcopal Church, nourished in us a sense of belonging in the Anglican Communion, and provided a community of like-minded colleagues. Through this vibrant network, our minds and ministries have been transformed.
The Rev. Clint and Theresa Wilson, Nashville
Our Need.
The potential here is vast, and we need further resources to realize it. The present endowment campaign will fund, first of all, a Director of Programs, to oversee TLC’s burgeoning educational ministry, and to organize the dozens of young leaders who offer their talents free of charge. $3 million will serve as the beginning of a permanent endowment, the income of which will fund — more and more, over time — creative, independent programming in service of historic orthodoxy, and the equipping of faithful leaders for the future.
Is God calling you to invest in us?
The Living Church is here to stay. Our vision is clear. What we need are creative investors who share our faith and hope for the future, trusting in God’s plans and promises for the Church (see Matt. 16:18).
The Living Church is, without question, the most important organizing force in American Anglicanism and among the most creative ministries in the wider Communion. TLC has motivated an impressive group of younger leaders who will prove key to our future flourishing.
The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology, Wycliffe College, Toronto
Leadership development and discipleship.
The Living Church gathers and serves a broad network of leaders, influencers, teachers, and creative thinkers, and shares their gifts with the wider Church. This work takes place all around the world but has found a new center in our second office in Dallas, which presents an ideal laboratory for theological research and teaching, meetings, and sustained attention to formation and discipleship.
Living Church Endowment Fund
By giving to the Living Church, you invest in an independent, entrepreneurial ministry that reaches round the globe to help transform the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. Our endowment is invested with the Episcopal Church Foundation, a well-regarded nonprofit ministry independent of the Episcopal Church. Their $450 million program is currently managed by State Street Global Advisors, one of the largest managers of assets in the world.
Means of Making a Gift
Donors may support the Endowment Fund of the Living Church either by a direct gift of cash or gifts of appreciated securities with long-term capital gains (stocks, bonds, or mutual fund shares). If you would like to make a gift from your portfolio to the Living Church Foundation, please contact Dr. Christopher Wells at cwells@livingchurch.org or (574) 323-7095.
Pledges may be designated under one of these giving tiers:
Dorothy L. Sayers Associate
$500
Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) was a celebrated poet, playwright, novelist, critic, and apologist whose body of work remains an inspiring entry in the history of Anglican divinity and a model of creative cultural engagement.
C.S. Lewis Guarantor
$1,000
Lewis (1898-1963) remains a lively and much-loved icon of Anglican learning, venerated throughout the universal Church as a brilliant teacher and holy lay leader.
Bishop D. Bruce MacPherson Friend
$2,000
Bishop MacPherson (1940-2017) was a beloved board member and then president of the Living Church who served as a suffragan bishop in Dallas and Bishop of Western Louisiana.
William Reed Huntington Sponsor
$3,000
Huntington (1838-1909), longtime rector of Grace Church, Manhattan, was the genius behind the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, which animated early Anglican thinking about Christian unity and flexible forms for structuring the church.
Bishop John Henry Hobart Benefactor
$5,000
We owe the High Church revival of the Episcopal Church, in large part, to Bishop Hobart of New York (1775-1830), who wrote tracts, founded schools, and helped inspire the missionary movement west, one fruit of which was The Living Church itself, begun in Chicago in 1878.
St. Augustine of Canterbury Patron
$10,000
St. Augustine of Canterbury was commissioned c. 597 by Pope Gregory the Great to re-evangelize England, initiating what would become a genuinely English Church, set within and accountable to a wider whole.
Bishop Charles Chapman Grafton Founder
$25,000
Bishop Charles Chapman Grafton (1830-1912) was the second Bishop of Fond du Lac and a great visionary, ecumenist, philanthropist, fundraiser, and movement builder. Grafton dedicated his life to developing church institutions in the upper Midwest and to sowing seeds of evangelical and catholic renewal for the coming century.
Gifts above Founder level will receive their own designation.
You may also support TLC by means of a planned gift. (See “Planned Gifts” below.)
For a copy of TLC’s Endowment Fund Policies and Guidelines, reports on the performance of investments, or for any other questions, please contact Dr. Christopher Wells, Executive Director, at cwells@livingchurch.org or (574) 323-7095.