Economic Institute to be Held at Covenant

This month the Chalmers Center will host the Christian Economic Development Institute, an eleven-day event designed to provide information to those who minister to the poor. The Institute, which will be held on the Covenant campus from May 20 through 31, is open to church leaders and missionaries, as well as “any Christian who is committed to empowering the poor in the U.S. or overseas.”

“There is really nothing out there like [the Institute]. This kind of training from a Reformed perspective [isn't] happening anywhere else,” said special projects consultant Tabitha Kapic.

According to literature distributed by the Chalmers Center, the Institute is not a conference, but is rather a “training process,” complete with “pre- and post- Institute assignment(s),” which will be ideally completed in “the context of the poor communities in which [the participants] are working.

The Institute will begin with a three-day course entitled “Theological Foundations and Principles of Community Development,” scheduled to be taught by Covenant faculty members Dr. Ray Clark, Dr. Roger Lambert, Chalmers Center director Dr. Brian Fikkert as well as Chalmers Center director of field operations/ training Steve Corbett.

Although the Institute will be divided among those who plan to work domestically and overseas, the “Theological Foundations” course is scheduled to be attended by all participants, which (according to Kapic) illustrates the importance of conveying the philosophy of “the whole redemptive history, how that applies to ministering to the poor.”

“The Chalmers Center is equiping churches, ministries, organizations to be the hands and feet of Christ, to the economically disadvantaged,” said Kapic. “The Institute is [sharing] what the Chalmers Center has learned out there.”

The Institute is scheduled to begin with a speech from John Perkins, former Chair of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA), an organization that is assisting the Chalmers Center in publicizing the Institute.

According to Kapic, Dr. Fikkert spoke before “thousands” of people to promote the Chalmers Center and the Institute at the Nov./Dec. Dallas conference of the CCDA.

Also publicizing the Institute is “Mission to North America (MNA), which has been heavily promoting the Institute to their contacts and PCA churches.

Like MNA, Food for the Hungry International and World Relief are also promoting the Institute, as well as “sending faculty members who will help with some of the training,” said Kapic.

The Institute has been advertised in WORLD magazine, a conservative weekly with Covenant connections.

“We have ten registered [participants] right now, they’re starting to trickle in,” said Kapic. “I don’t expect that we’ll see the bulk of our numbers until the beginning of May and the end of April. We’d love to have fifty people here, and if there is more, that’s wonderful…”

Added Kapic, “We want people to leave the Institute with an action plan for their ministry, and the tools to…implement them.”