Covenant News

Minnesota Woman Uses SPAM to Aid CHIC2K3 Fund Drive

WYOMING, MN (July 28, 2003) - For the past year Covenant churches have found creative ways to raise funds for CHIC2K3: Reaction, the denomination's upcoming triennial youth conference in Knoxville, Tennessee.

One Covenanter's efforts, however, took creativity to another level. Pam Darsie of Linwood Covenant Church earned money for her church's students by creating "SPAM chicks" for an Easter morning fundraiser. Her efforts helped students earn more than $400 for a CHIC breakfast that day.

"We got regular sized cans of SPAM and I had a cookie cutter in the shape of a baby chick," said Darsie, whose son-in-law Tim Ciccone is a youth pastor at Forest Park Covenant Church in Muskegon, Michigan. "We sliced the SPAM – six slices to a can – and just stamped them out and served them with pancakes and scrambled eggs and more traditional breakfast food."

Darsie admits that she's not the definitive expert on SPAM. Her church's previous full-time youth pastor, Troy Hoppenrath (now serving a Covenant church in Windsor, Colorado), began using SPAM for publicity for the youth group and for other events. During one event students carved various shapes out of SPAM to illustrate what a good leader would be.

"We've done a lot of fun things with SPAM," Darsie said. "Our last youth pastor came up with a term for SPAM – Special People Aiding Ministry – and he ordered up SPAM shirts from Austin, Minnesota, and created our own logo on the back of the shirts. We're going to have a SPAM retreat in August and send the group to the SPAM Museum in Austin, Minnesota. We even had a SPAM baby shower for a dad who is on the youth ministry volunteer team. We found a baby carriage cookie cutter and made snacks."

Linwood Covenant Church, located near the Twin Cities, needed to raise $7,000 to send 26 students and four adults to this week's event at the University of Tennessee. The youth have earned much of their money by working at the concession stands at Minnesota Twins professional baseball games this spring and summer.

More about CHIC2K3: Reaction will be posted in stories throughout the next two weeks, both on www.covchurch.org and on the Covenant's CHIC2K3 link. To send more information about how your church raised money for CHIC2K3, contact Covenant Communications at newsdesk@covchurch.org.

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