Status
The denominational offices are located in Chicago, Illinois, where they also operate North Park University, North Park Theological Seminary and Swedish Covenant Hospital. There are related Bible colleges in Alaska and California. (See Alaska Christian College, and Centro Hispano de Estudios Teológicos).
The church is divided into ten regional conferences - Canada Conference, Central Conference, East Coast Conference (org. 1890), Great Lakes Conference, Midsouth Conference, Midwest Conference, North Pacific Conference, Northwest Conference, Pacific Southwest Conference, and Southeast Conference - and one administrative region - Alaska. The highest authority is an annual meeting of delegates sent by the local congregations. Covenant Publications is the publishing arm of the denomination. The denominational hymnal is The Covenant Hymnal: A Worship Book. A major church ministry is not-for-profit senior housing, the ECC being one of the top ten suppliers of such housing in the United States.
As of 2011, membership was 124,669 in 820 congregations in the United States (43 states) and an estimated 1500 members in 23 congregations in Canada (5 provinces). Average attendance in 2009 was 178,997. The denomination also has ongoing missions work in 25 countries worldwide, with 125 long term missionaries, project missionaries and short-term missionaries. The ECC has a worldwide membership of almost 278,000.
Membership is concentrated primarily in three regions of the United States: the Midwest, along the West Coast, and in the Great Plains region. California has the largest number of members, but the highest rates of membership are in Minnesota, Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska, and Washington.
Read more about this topic: Evangelical Covenant Church
Famous quotes containing the word status:
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“Knowing how beleaguered working mothers truly are—knowing because I am one of them—I am still amazed at how one need only say “I work” to be forgiven all expectation, to be assigned almost a handicapped status that no decent human being would burden further with demands. “I work” has become the universally accepted excuse, invoked as an all-purpose explanation for bowing out, not participating, letting others down, or otherwise behaving inexcusably.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“The censorship method ... is that of handing the job over to some frail and erring mortal man, and making him omnipotent on the assumption that his official status will make him infallible and omniscient.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)