I. The Problem We Cannot Ignore

There is a generation of young people being formed right now — and the Church, for large swaths of that generation, is not in the room.

This is not a new observation. Researchers, denominational leaders, and youth workers have documented for more than two decades the gradual disengagement of American youth from active Christian participation. What has changed is the pace and the depth. The Barna Group's 2023 Gen Z: Volume 2 report found that only 35% of Generation Z considers faith important to their identity — down sharply from prior generations — and that the steepest drop-off occurs between ages 13 and 18, precisely the window when identity, meaning, and belonging are being most actively constructed. David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock describe in Faith for Exiles a generation that does not reject transcendence but encounters it almost exclusively through digital media, immersive entertainment, and peer networks largely disconnected from institutional religion. The data does not describe indifference — it describes a generation that is spiritually curious and institutionally disconnected. That is an important distinction, because it means the door has not closed. It means the door has not yet been found.

The structural problem compounds the cultural one. The churches most likely to serve youth who are economically marginalized — small rural congregations, urban storefront ministries, community nonprofits operating in underserved neighborhoods — are also the least resourced to respond innovatively. A 2022 National Congregations Study found that the median American congregation has fewer than 80 active participants and an annual budget under $85,000. For these organizations, the cost of professional youth programming, let alone emerging formation technology, is simply prohibitive. Youth ministry budgets in small congregations rarely exceed a few thousand dollars annually. Staff, if present at all, are part-time and often volunteer-supplemented. The organizational bandwidth to evaluate, procure, and deploy new formation tools — let alone the resources to fund them — simply does not exist.

Meanwhile, well-resourced megachurches, parachurch organizations, and Christian educational institutions continue to develop increasingly sophisticated tools for engaging digital-native youth. Dedicated youth ministry budgets in the hundreds of thousands. Professional staff with advanced degrees. Production-quality media, experiential events, and emerging technology deployments. These organizations are doing genuinely excellent work. The tragedy is not what they are doing. The tragedy is the geography of who benefits.

The result is a two-tiered landscape of Christian formation: those with access to innovation, and those without. It is a divide that tracks closely — and painfully — with the existing fault lines of race and economic class in American Christianity. The communities most in need of compelling, theologically grounded formation are the communities least equipped to provide it. That is the structural injustice at the center of this proposal.

ZionSphere was founded in Rocky Mount, North Carolina — a community that lives on the underserved side of that divide — with a specific conviction: that this disparity is not inevitable. It is the product of distribution, not scarcity. The tools exist. The theology is ancient and available. What has been missing is an organization whose sole purpose is to close the access gap. ZionSphere is that organization.

The Open Doors Program is ZionSphere's answer to a question the Church has not yet found a structural way to ask: What would it look like if the most compelling, theologically grounded, experientially rich faith formation tools were given away — freely and intentionally — to the communities least likely to develop them on their own? This proposal is the answer to that question, made concrete, costed out, and ready to build.

II. ZionSphere: Organization, Mission, and Origin

ZionSphere is a faith-technology organization founded in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Its mission is to make immersive, theologically grounded Christian formation accessible to underserved youth — at no cost to the communities it serves. The organization operates under the fiscal sponsorship of the Christian Ministry Alliance (CMA), a 501(c)(3) organization with an established track record of supporting faith-based initiatives and providing the governance infrastructure that early-stage ministry organizations require to operate with integrity, accountability, and institutional credibility.

Rocky Mount is not an incidental address. It is a community that sits at the intersection of rural poverty, racial economic disparity, and genuine spiritual resilience. Nash County, where Rocky Mount is located, has a poverty rate nearly double the national average, with a youth poverty rate that places it among the most economically challenged counties in North Carolina. The churches and youth organizations that serve this community do so with extraordinary commitment and very limited resources. ZionSphere was built here intentionally — not as a gesture toward proximity, but as a genuine act of organizational grounding. The problems this program is designed to solve are not abstract in Rocky Mount. They are Wednesday-night realities.

The organization's development to date has been driven by a conviction that credibility in this work requires doing the hard things first: building the platform before making claims about it, establishing the governance structure before seeking major funding, and developing the deployment framework in genuine partnership with the communities it is designed to serve. ZionSphere's fiscal sponsorship relationship with CMA reflects this commitment — CMA provides not only the 501(c)(3) infrastructure for grant-receiving and financial management but an active accountability relationship with the organization's programmatic development and deployment decisions.

Founder and CEO Starkey Roberson has led the organization's early development through platform architecture, establishing the fiscal sponsorship relationship with CMA, and designing the eligibility and deployment framework that will govern the Open Doors Program. ZionSphere operates with an emerging advisory network spanning ministry leadership, technology, and community development — relationships that inform program design and provide the organizational accountability appropriate to this stage of development. The five-year grant period will allow ZionSphere to formalize these advisory relationships, build a governance board appropriate to an independent 501(c)(3), and construct the institutional infrastructure that a program of this scale requires.

Governance and Accountability Infrastructure: Year 1 of the grant period includes the formalization of ZionSphere's governance structures, reflecting the organization's commitment to institutional maturity and responsible stewardship. ZionSphere will establish an advisory board in theology, youth ministry, education research, nonprofit governance, and immersive media — with board formalization completed by Year 1, Quarter 2. Simultaneously, the organization will develop and implement comprehensive youth safeguarding protocols, theological review processes for all content, and an ethics review process for program deployment decisions. These structures are not optional add-ons — they are foundational to operating responsibly in youth formation and immersive technology contexts. CMA's fiscal sponsorship includes ongoing governance accountability. All policies, partnerships, and deployment decisions are subject to CMA review.

ZionSphere enters this grant period as an early-stage organization with a functioning platform, a clear theory of change, and a five-year plan grounded in both organizational realism and genuine ambition. It does not enter as an organization with all answers already in hand — it enters as one with the intellectual honesty to name what has yet to be built and the organizational capacity to build it.

III. The Platform: Jonah and the Whale

ZionSphere's flagship experience, Jonah and the Whale, is the product at the center of the Open Doors Program. To describe it accurately, it is necessary first to describe what it is not.

It is not a game. There is no score, no competition, no reward system optimized for engagement metrics. It is not a film or animated retelling of the Jonah narrative that participants passively consume. It is not a Sunday school supplement or a digitized version of existing curriculum. It is a contemplative, first-person immersive encounter with a living biblical narrative — designed to place the participant inside the story as an active presence, not an observer.

When a young person puts on a ZionSphere headset and enters the Jonah and the Whale experience, they do not watch Jonah receive his call — they stand beside him in the marketplace, surrounded by the sounds and textures of the ancient Near East, as the weight of divine commission lands. They do not observe the storm — they are on the ship, feeling the disorientation of a world coming apart beneath them. They do not read about the whale — they are enveloped by it, suspended in darkness and stillness, in a space that is simultaneously terrifying and, somehow, safe. And they do not simply move on to the next scene — they are given time, silence, and guided reflection prompts to dwell in what they have just experienced.

This design is deliberate at every level. The narrative pacing mirrors the structure of Ignatian contemplative practice — entry, immersion, interior movement, and integration. The environmental details are theologically and historically considered. The debrief structure that follows the experience is designed to facilitate the kind of community conversation that anchors individual spiritual experience in shared meaning. Nothing in the platform exists for spectacle. Everything exists for formation.

The platform is designed for facilitated group use, making it suitable for youth group settings, after-school programs, retreat environments, and classroom contexts. A standard deployment session runs approximately 60 to 90 minutes: 10–15 minutes of facilitator-led preparation and orientation, 20–25 minutes of immersive experience, and 30–45 minutes of structured group debrief. The pacing is intentional — the debrief is not an afterthought. It is the pedagogical core of the program. The VR experience opens something; the debrief is where that opening is explored in community.

Youth leaders receive a comprehensive curriculum guide that walks them through pre-experience preparation, in-experience facilitation, and post-experience debrief — equipping them to draw out the theological content and personal reflection that the immersive encounter opens up. The guide includes facilitator scripts, reflection prompts organized by age and developmental stage, small-group discussion frameworks, and follow-up session materials for subsequent youth group meetings. Leaders do not need a theology degree to run this program effectively. They need the guide, the training, and the willingness to sit with young people in the questions the experience opens.

ZionSphere's deployment model includes operational safeguards designed for working with minors in a VR environment. Each deployment kit includes clear facilitator protocols addressing motion sensitivity, optional seated configurations, equipment hygiene between users, supervised headset use, and recommended group sizes. Partner organizations are trained on these protocols during onboarding. The curriculum guide includes language for parent communication and informed participation. Youth data collection — described in detail in Section VII — operates under a consent framework with parental notification requirements embedded in the partner agreement.

IV. Theological and Pedagogical Foundations

ZionSphere's design does not emerge from enthusiasm about technology. It emerges from a sustained engagement with scholarship in theology, cognitive science, education, and adolescent development. The platform is the application of ideas that have been tested over centuries and validated through contemporary research.

Embodied Cognition

Research across cognitive science and educational psychology consistently demonstrates that physical and sensory engagement deepens comprehension, emotional memory, and meaning retention in ways that abstract instruction cannot replicate. The work of researchers including Shaun Gallagher, Mark Johnson, and George Lakoff establishes that the body is not a passive recipient of ideas but an active participant in the formation of understanding. Scripture encountered through the body — through sensory immersion, spatial memory, and visceral emotional response — is Scripture more likely to be retained, revisited, and integrated than Scripture received through abstract instruction alone. This is not a dismissal of those traditional forms. It is an addition to them.

Ignatian Contemplative Tradition

The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, developed in the sixteenth century and practiced continuously in Christian communities ever since, provide one of the most well-developed frameworks for imaginative engagement with Scripture in the history of Christian formation. The Ignatian practice of compositio loci — imaginatively constructing the sensory environment of a biblical scene and entering it as a participant — is precisely the contemplative methodology that ZionSphere's platform operationalizes through immersive technology. ZionSphere is not inventing a new approach to Scripture engagement. It is giving a five-hundred-year-old approach a new instrument.

Narrative Theology

Drawing on the foundational work of Hans Frei, whose landmark The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative argued that modern Christianity had systematically displaced the story of Scripture with doctrinal abstraction, and on the constructive contributions of N.T. Wright's narrative epistemology, ZionSphere frames Scripture as a living world into which participants are invited — not a text to be analyzed, a set of propositions to be memorized, or a moral framework to be applied. The Jonah and the Whale experience is designed to make that invitation tactile, spatial, and unavoidable.

Adolescent Faith Development

James Fowler's developmental framework for faith formation, Kara Powell and Chap Clark's Sticky Faith research, and the findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion (Christian Smith et al.) converge on a consistent insight: meaningful adolescent faith formation requires experiential engagement, relational context, and opportunities for personal meaning-making. It does not happen primarily through information transfer. ZionSphere's platform is designed specifically for the developmental window of adolescence — providing the experiential encounter that opens the door to the relational and communal formation that follows.

Digital Native Engagement

Generation Z has grown up inside immersive digital environments. They are fluent in virtual worlds, narrative gaming, and experiential media in ways that no prior generation has been. This is not a deficit to be corrected — it is a literacy to be engaged. ZionSphere meets young people in a medium they already inhabit, and uses it to deliver an encounter they have not yet had.

V. The Open Doors Program: Delivery Model

The Open Doors Program is the operational infrastructure through which ZionSphere's platform reaches the communities it was designed to serve. It is a structured, four-stage deployment model governed by a clear eligibility framework, an accountable partnership structure, and a commitment to genuine organizational capacity-building — not dependency creation.

Eligibility and Application

Organizations apply through ZionSphere's online portal, which walks applicants through a structured assessment that evaluates community need, organizational readiness, and youth reach. The eligibility framework — developed in partnership with CMA — prioritizes three community categories: rural congregations and ministries, urban underserved organizations, and suburban low-income communities. Within those categories, applications are scored on a transparent rubric that weighs the proportion of youth from low-income households (measured by free/reduced lunch eligibility as a proxy), annual operating budget, youth ministry budget, size of active youth program, and presence of paid youth staff.

The result is a scoring model that directs hardware and platform access to the organizations where the need is greatest and the conventional barriers to access are highest. The application process is intentionally accessible — designed to be completable by a volunteer youth leader with no grant-writing experience.

Vetting and Approval

CMA's role as fiscal sponsor and governance partner extends directly into the program's vetting process. Its established network of ministry relationships and institutional accountability structures provides the verification credibility that ensures approved organizations have the organizational capacity to steward equipment responsibly, the ministry context to deploy the platform appropriately, and the community embeddedness to sustain the program over time. This is not a perfunctory review — it is the accountability backbone of the entire Open Doors model.

Deployment and Onboarding

Approved organizations receive a complete VR deployment kit — headsets, charging infrastructure, carrying cases, and all necessary peripherals — together with full platform access, printed and digital youth leader curriculum guides, and dedicated onboarding from ZionSphere's program team. Onboarding includes training in facilitation methodology, debrief practice, basic device maintenance, and platform navigation. The explicit goal is organizational independence: ZionSphere wants partner organizations to run this program confidently on their own, not to remain dependent on ZionSphere's ongoing technical presence.

Ongoing Support and Program Assessment

Partner organizations receive sustained access to ZionSphere's support network throughout their program participation. Quarterly check-ins, usage data collection, and youth outcome surveys provide the feedback loop through which the program learns, adapts, and improves. This data also constitutes the primary research dataset for ZionSphere's academic partnerships and annual impact reporting.

Partners participate in ZionSphere's regional cohort model — described in detail in Section VI — which creates peer learning communities among participating organizations. Quarterly cohort gatherings (virtual and in-person) allow partner organizations to share facilitation best practices, troubleshoot challenges, and build the relational networks that amplify the program's community impact beyond any single organization. These cohorts are a deliberate capacity-building mechanism: they reduce ZionSphere's direct support burden over time while building the organizational resilience of each partner.

Equipment is tracked under a stewardship agreement embedded in the partner contract. Partner organizations agree to maintain equipment, complete usage reports, administer youth surveys, and participate in cohort gatherings as conditions of continued access. This accountability framework is not punitive — it is the mechanism through which ZionSphere gathers the data it needs to learn, improve, and make the case for continued and expanded investment. Organizations that fulfill their stewardship obligations in good standing are eligible for refreshed hardware, expanded device kits, and priority access to new content experiences as they are released.

VI. Five-Year Implementation Plan (2026–2031)

The five-year grant period maps to Phase 1 of ZionSphere's ten-year Open Doors roadmap. The plan is organized to move through four distinct operational phases: foundational establishment, rapid scaling, programmatic deepening, and long-term sustainability transition. Each phase builds on the last and is designed with clear, measurable milestones.

Year 1 — Foundation (2026)

Year 1 is the organization-building year. Core program staff will be hired (see Section VIII). The curriculum guide will be finalized in partnership with theological advisors and field-tested youth workers. Ten pilot partner organizations will be selected across three to five states, representing the three priority community categories. The outcome assessment framework will be developed in partnership with academic collaborators, with baseline instruments administered at pilot sites. Hardware procurement and logistics infrastructure will be established to support scaling in Year 2.

Year 1 Milestone: 10 partner organizations, 3–5 states, baseline data collected, curriculum guide finalized.

Year 2 — Expansion (2027)

Year 2 accelerates deployment significantly. Building on pilot learnings and refined onboarding processes, ZionSphere will expand to 30 partner organizations across 10 states. A second VR experience — currently in early development — will be launched, expanding the platform's content library and enabling partner organizations to serve returning youth with fresh material. A regional cohort model will be established, creating peer learning communities among partner organizations that reduce ZionSphere's direct support burden and build relational networks among participating ministries. Preliminary impact data from Year 1 pilot sites will be compiled and shared publicly.

Year 2 Milestone: 30 partner organizations, 10 states, second experience launched, regional cohorts operational.

Year 3 — Deepening (2028)

Year 3 focuses on programmatic quality as much as scale. Deployment will expand to 60 partner organizations. ZionSphere will publish its first formal impact report, drawing on two full years of outcome data from pilot and first-wave organizations. A train-the-trainer model will be developed and piloted, enabling partner organizations to onboard adjacent ministries within their networks — extending reach while reducing centralized staffing requirements. Content development continues with at least one additional Scripture experience entering production.

Year 3 Milestone: 60 partner organizations, first impact report published, train-the-trainer model piloted.

Year 4 — Maturation (2029)

Year 4 marks the activation of ZionSphere's earned-revenue strategy. Deployment reaches 85 partner organizations across 18 or more states. Simultaneously, ZionSphere begins licensing the platform to well-resourced congregations, parachurch organizations, and Christian educational institutions at market-based rates. This tiered model — in which paying partners subsidize free deployment to underserved communities — is the financial architecture through which long-term sustainability becomes possible. Formal sustainability planning for post-grant operations begins this year.

Year 4 Milestone: 85 partner organizations, 18+ states, earned revenue streams active, sustainability plan initiated.

Year 5 — Sustainability (2030–2031)

Year 5 completes the first phase of the Open Doors vision and positions ZionSphere for independent operation. The program reaches 100 or more partner organizations across at least 20 states, with more than 5,000 youth having participated. The comprehensive five-year impact study is published in partnership with academic collaborators. Earned revenue and a diversified grant portfolio together cover program operating costs. ZionSphere enters Year 6 no longer dependent on a single funding source.

Year 5 Milestone: 100+ partners, 20+ states, 5,000+ youth reached, five-year impact study published, projected to achieve operational sustainability.

Ten-Year Context: This five-year plan constitutes Phase 1 of ZionSphere's ten-year Open Doors vision. Phase 2 (2031–2035) projects expansion to 250 or more partner organizations serving 15,000 or more youth, the development of a full K–12 curriculum ecosystem built around multiple Scripture-based VR experiences, and the establishment of ZionSphere as a self-sustaining national infrastructure for immersive faith formation in underserved communities.

VII. Evaluation Plan and Outcomes Framework

ZionSphere is committed to honest, rigorous, and transparent documentation of its impact. The evaluation plan is designed not to produce favorable numbers but to generate genuine understanding of what the program does and does not accomplish — and to improve continuously on that basis.

Outcomes will be measured across three primary domains:

Scripture Engagement

Pre- and post-program surveys will measure youth self-reported engagement with biblical narrative, frequency and quality of personal Scripture interaction, and depth of narrative comprehension. Instruments will be adapted from validated tools in religious literacy and biblical engagement research, with modifications appropriate for the age range and community contexts ZionSphere serves.

Spiritual Curiosity and Faith Formation

Drawing on validated instruments from the Sticky Faith framework (Fuller Youth Institute) and the Exemplary Youth Ministry study, ZionSphere will measure youth spiritual openness, self-reported sense of personal faith identity, and engagement with questions of meaning, purpose, and transcendence. Qualitative data from focus groups and youth leader observations will complement survey data, providing the narrative texture that numbers alone cannot capture.

Community Connection and Retention

Six- and twelve-month follow-up instruments will assess youth retention in faith community participation, engagement in peer formation activities, and youth leader assessments of relational depth following program participation. This longitudinal dimension is essential — ZionSphere is not interested in measuring whether a VR experience was exciting. It is interested in whether it contributed to durable formation.

Data governance reflects ZionSphere's commitment to responsible stewardship of youth information. All youth survey data is collected under age-appropriate consent frameworks, with parental permission required for participants under 18. Data is stored securely, disaggregated to protect individual identity in any published reporting, and used solely for program evaluation and improvement purposes. Partner organizations receive clear data-use agreements as part of their program contracts. ZionSphere does not sell, share, or license participant data to third parties under any circumstances.

ZionSphere is in early conversation with academic collaborators in theology, education, and digital media regarding formal research partnerships. Institutions will be identified and agreements formalized during Year 1 as part of the evaluation infrastructure build-out. The Research Associate hired in Year 1 (see Section VIII) will be responsible for managing these relationships and ensuring methodological rigor throughout the evaluation process. Annual impact reports will be made publicly available and submitted to Lilly Endowment. A comprehensive five-year study, co-authored with academic partners, will be produced at the close of the grant period with the intention of contributing to scholarly literature in faith formation and experiential education.

ZionSphere's evaluation stance is explicitly one of learning, not marketing. The program will undoubtedly encounter implementation challenges, unexpected outcomes, and formative failures that teach as much as successes. The commitment to Lilly Endowment — and to the field — is that those findings will be documented honestly, shared transparently, and used to improve the program continuously throughout the grant period and beyond.

VIII. Staffing Plan

ZionSphere's current team reflects its early-stage status. The grant funding will enable the recruitment of the five core staff members required to execute the Open Doors Program with fidelity, scale, and accountability. These are not aspirational positions — they are the minimum organizational infrastructure required to serve 100 partner organizations responsibly.

Founder and CEO Starkey Roberson provides strategic leadership, funder relationships, organizational governance, and external representation throughout the grant period. Fiscal and governance accountability are maintained through the CMA sponsorship structure.

IX. Sustainability and Long-Term Independence

ZionSphere does not intend to remain grant-dependent indefinitely, and this proposal is not designed to fund perpetual operations. The five-year Lilly investment is a launch investment — the capital required to prove the model, build the infrastructure, and generate the evidence base that unlocks the next chapter of organizational life.

Beginning in Year 4, ZionSphere will activate a parallel earned-revenue stream through platform licensing to well-resourced congregations, Christian schools, parachurch organizations, and faith-based educational institutions. These organizations — for whom the cost of a ZionSphere license is a budget line, not a barrier — will pay market-based rates for platform access, hardware, and curriculum. Their payments directly subsidize the cost of free deployment to Open Doors partner organizations in underserved communities. This is not cross-subsidization as an afterthought — it is the designed financial architecture of a sustainable, scalable program.

By the end of Year 5, ZionSphere projects that earned revenue combined with a diversified grant portfolio — including foundation grants, denominational partnerships, and individual major donor relationships cultivated during the Lilly period — will together cover the full operating cost of the Open Doors Program. The transition to financial independence is not a hope. It is a planned outcome with specific Year 4 and Year 5 milestones attached to it.

Earned revenue will be structured at multiple price points. A full institutional license — including hardware, platform access, curriculum, and onboarding support — will be priced for larger congregations and Christian educational institutions at a rate that covers the cost of one Open Doors free deployment per paying unit. A lighter "platform-only" license tier will serve organizations that have existing hardware or wish to access content without a full kit. A professional development and training track, available to seminaries, ministry training programs, and youth ministry certification organizations, will create an additional revenue stream while extending ZionSphere's reach into the formation pipeline for the next generation of youth leaders.

These revenue streams are not speculative — they reflect real demand that ZionSphere is already beginning to encounter from well-resourced ministry contexts that have heard about the platform and want access. The sustainability model converts that demand into structural subsidy for communities that would otherwise be left out. It is the financial architecture of an organization designed to serve the margins by engaging the center.

X. Alignment with Lilly Endowment's Exploring Christian Practices Initiative

The Exploring Christian Practices Initiative invites proposals that deepen understanding and practice of historic Christian faith, that expand access to formation resources for communities that have been underserved, and that demonstrate genuine potential for long-term impact. ZionSphere's Open Doors Program responds to that invitation directly.

The program does not invent a new Christian practice — it gives ancient practices new reach. Contemplative Scripture engagement, embodied encounter with biblical narrative, communal debrief and meaning-making: these are not novel ideas. They are historic Christian formation disciplines that have been inaccessible to the youth who most need them because of cost, geography, and organizational capacity. The Open Doors Program removes those barriers.

The proposal also reflects the Initiative's interest in the intersection of tradition and contemporary life. ZionSphere does not treat technology as neutral or inherently formative — it treats it as a tool that requires theological intentionality to use well. The design of the Jonah and the Whale experience reflects that conviction at every level: technology is in service of the ancient practice, not the other way around. The question driving every design decision is not "what does the technology make possible?" but "what does this young person need in order to encounter this story?"

ZionSphere is also committed to the kind of honest, longitudinal learning that the Initiative values. The evaluation plan described above is not designed to generate favorable press. It is designed to tell the truth about what works, what doesn't, and what the Church can learn from this experiment. That commitment to learning — alongside the commitment to access — is what ZionSphere brings to the partnership with Lilly Endowment.

Finally, ZionSphere understands the Lilly Endowment's investment not as a grant to a single organization but as a contribution to a field-level question: can immersive technology serve genuine Christian formation for youth who have been left behind by both the Church and the technology sector simultaneously? This proposal is ZionSphere's answer — structured, honest, and ready to find out.

XI. Conclusion: The Door Is Open

A teenager in a rural North Carolina church sits in a folding chair on a Wednesday night, surrounded by well-meaning adults who love her and a curriculum designed before she was born. She is not disengaged because she doesn't care about meaning. She is disengaged because the form in which meaning is being offered has not yet found her.

ZionSphere is not here to replace her youth group, her pastor, or her tradition. It is here to hand her a headset and say: Step inside. Let the story find you.

The Jonah narrative — one of the most psychologically honest, theologically rich, and humanly relatable stories in all of Scripture — is waiting for her. It has been waiting for centuries. What has been missing is a door she could walk through.

With this investment, we build that door. We open it in 100 communities across 20 states. We hand it to youth leaders who will carry it into contexts we cannot reach alone. And we do the honest, rigorous work of finding out what happens when a generation that has grown up inside stories finally encounters the Story.

This is what ZionSphere is asking Lilly Endowment to fund: not a technology project, not a nonprofit startup, but a five-year act of access — a commitment that the most compelling expressions of Christian formation are not the exclusive property of the well-resourced, and that every young person, regardless of zip code or budget, deserves a chance to step inside the greatest story ever told.