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King To Lead Lake Institute On Faith And Giving

Religion scholar David P. King will lead the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, effective July 1. King will succeed William G. Enright, who will become a senior fellow at the Institute.

“We are delighted that an outstanding scholar of David’s caliber will lead Lake Institute into the next phase of its future, helping congregations, clergy and laity enrich their understanding of the relationships among faith, philanthropy and fundraising,” Lilly Family School Founding Dean Eugene Tempel said in a statement.

King is currently an assistant professor of church history at Memphis Theological Seminary. He won a Lake Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the Lake Institute in 2011 to fund a study on the Federal Way, Wash.-based World Vision. King’s official title, when he takes the helm at the Lake Institute, will be the Karen Lake Buttrey Director, so named for one of the Institute’s founders, who died in 2010.

“I am honored to join Lake Institute and the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the pioneers in this field,” said King in the statement. “Very rarely does an institution have the ability to influence both the study and the practice of its subject in the ways Lake Institute does.”

Enright has served as the Lake Institute’s first full-time director since 2004. “Bill has brought Lake Institute’s vision to life and has an enormous impact,” said Tempel. “He has changed the way many clergy, lay leaders and congregants across the country think about religion, money and giving. We are indebted to Bill for all he has accomplished on behalf of the institute and our school,” he said.

“It has been an honor to be part of the world’s first school of philanthropy, to help implement Karen Lake Buttrey’s vision for increasing understanding and conversation around faith and giving and to work with the Lake Institute’s outstanding board of advisors to carry out its important mission,” said Enright.

The Lake Institute was founded in 2002. Among its programs is the Executive Certificate in Religious Fundraising. The program was piloted at Christian Theological Seminary in 2013 and is currently offered by eight universities and seminaries in 2014. The program will officially roll out next year. The Institute seeks to “establish the study of faith and giving as an area of serious academic inquiry.”