Who We Are

The Society for the Increase of the Ministry (SIM) supports scholars preparing for ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church. For over 150 years, SIM has awarded scholarships to qualified, full-time seminary students who are:

• Named postulants or candidates by their dioceses
• Sponsored by parishes, congregations or chaplaincies in communion with the Episcopal Church
• Enrolled at one of the accredited Episcopal seminaries or an accredited, bishop-approved non-Episcopal seminary

SIM’s Scholarship Committee, through its time-tested, comprehensive process of working with seminary financial aid officers, has traditionally awarded needs-based financial support. The vision of SIM’s funding to seminarians is expanding to encompass models of service-based and merit-based scholarships.

An independent, non-profit, 501(c)3 scholarship granting body, SIM was established in 1857 in Hartford, Connecticut. A visionary group of Episcopalians founded SIM when rapid expansion in the Church, barely two generations into its life independent of the Church of England, called for addressing the need to develop and nurture ordained leadership. The founders wisely foresaw the Church’s need to minister amid the social, economic and demographic changes in Amerian society.

SIM was established to recruit, encourage and support the Church’s future leaders. After over $6,000,000 in scholarship grants to nearly 5000 students, many who became leaders as parish rectors, deans, or bishops, Episcopalians today can be thankful for this mid-nineteenth century vision and responsible commitment to future leaders of the Church.

SIM carries out its mission of support of the theological education and training of the future ordained leaders of the Episcopal Church in three distinct ways:

Financial: scholarships and grants

Pastoral: daily prayers and semi-annual visits to our recipients

Advocacy: supporting seminarians in the councils of the Church

SIM works closely with the Episcopal seminaries and other education and training programs, as well as with all bishops and commission on ministry of the sponsoring dioceses of SIM recipients. SIM maintains a close working relationship with the Office of Ministry Development at the Episcopal Church Center and with the Church Pension Group (CPG), providing financial counseling through CPG’s Plan Ahead program.

SIM maintains an identity independent of seminaries, dioceses and national church bodies in order to keep a clear focus on meeting the needs of men and women entering Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church.

In keeping with SIM’s commitment to support our students both financially and pastorally, the Executive Director Tom Moore, and the staff of SIM have committed to pray daily for the students supported by SIM. In discussing this practice we learned that some of us used the Ember Day collects in rotation, and some prayed specifically for the academic, spiritual and family lives of our students as well as for their relations with their deans, faculties, home rectors, bishops and field work supervisors, as well as for their physical health. We then decided to attempt writing a collect which we we would use.

We would invite our readers to join us in this ministry of prayerful support by using this collect or others of your choosing and on whatever schedule may be appropriate to your circumstances.

A Collect for Seminarians

O God of all who teach and all who learn, bless we pray
all who study to serve you as priests in your Church. Most especially do we intercede for those seminarians who are the recipients of your gifts
given through the Society for the Increase of the Ministry. Enable the Society to uphold these students in body, mind and spirit in the realization of their vocation. Watch over and support them along with the faculty and administration of their seminaries that all may be done to your honor and glory and that the Gospel may be advanced by their ministry in your Name, through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.