|
Home
Hundreds Attending Midwinter Conference
CHICAGO (February 1, 2000) - Hundreds of Covenanters are participating in the annual Midwinter Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church, meeting at The Hyatt Regency O'Hare through Friday. The theme, Reflecting His Kingdom, celebrates the denomination's commitment to embrace ethnic diversity in the church.
This is the second year the denomination has focused on diversity in the Covenant - last year's theme was Celebrating Our Ethnic Diversity. "It's time to not only celebrate our diversity, but get serious about it," said President Glenn R. Palmberg. "Reflecting His Kingdom must be more than just a matter of appearance - it must be a matter of how we live and work together," he explained. "That is hard work, but it is crucially important, and I am looking forward to exploring it together during the Midwinter Conference."
Crawford Loritts, Jr., associate director of U.S. Ministries for Campus Crusade for Christ, was Monday evening's opening speaker. He served as co-chair of the 1997 National Congress on the Urban Family and has founded a Campus Crusade for Christ ministry called Legacy, which is dedicated to rebuilding and restoring urban families. Tuesday, a plenary session explored the subject of ethnic diversity, led by a panel of Covenant clergy and lay people, including president Palmberg; Jorge Maldonado, president of Centro Hispano de Estudios Teologicos Del Pacto Evangelico (CHET) in Bell Gardens, California; and Greg Jao of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Chicago. Moderator for the discussions was Jim Sundholm, associate superintendent of the ECC's Northwest Conference.
John Perkins, founder of a variety of successful community development ministries in Mississippi and an internationally known speaker and teacher, will be the keynote speaker at the closing session. Perkins established the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) in 1989 and his vision has grown into an entity representing 600 organizations and 3,000 individual members in more than 100 cities. He is also publisher of Urban Family magazine and has written nine books.
"We're standing at one of the greatest opportunities for the Covenant church, an opportunity to demonstrate the power of the gospel, to transcend racial, cultural and ethnic barriers,' said Donn Engebretson, executive director of the Department of Ministry. "The plenary panel discussion will be an opportunity for the Covenant Ministerium to grapple with these issues and the opportunity that God has made available."
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
|
|
|
