Evangelical Covenant Church history

In the first period, the Covenant took over the missions work of the Swedish Covenant in 1889.

Nyvall had joined the staff of the Skogsbergh School in 1890 as the president and teacher at the seminary.

In 1891, the Covenant, at its annual meeting, voted to establish its own theological seminary.

The cornerstone for Old Main, the first building on the eight and a half acre campus, was laid in 1893.

The school was opened in the fall of 1894.

The first of these came in 1896.

The first Covenant Church in the Southeast formed in 1902 in Silverhill, Alabama when a Swedish-American land developer encouraged a number of his countrymen to share in his subdivision.

David Nyvall served as the first president of the seminary until 1905.

A seminary was built in China in 1909.

The first American born president of the Covenant, Theodore W. Anderson was installed in 1933.

Covenant missions to Africa centered around the Congo and started before World War II. In 1937 the Covenant sent its first missionaries to the Congo to take over the missions efforts of the Evangelical Free Church.

The Covenant Bible Institute (Covenant Bible College) was founded in 1941 in Alberta, Canada.

In 1944 the Covenant created a civil relations committee.

One of these was started in 1945 in Florida, the Covenant Palms.

When the mission to Ecuador began in 1947 there were only 1000 evangelicals in the entire country of Ecuador.

Work began in 1950 in Nagaoka in Niigata.

History is covered from Spener through 1962.

Formed in Keokuk, Iowa in 1972.

The Covenant created the Department of Covenant Women's Work in 1978.

Philipp Jakob Spener: Pietist Patriarch, Chicago, Illinois: Covenant Publications, 1986.

The current enrollment is much stronger due to the Presidential Scholarship program started in 2000, which pays tuition for 60 students (20 per year).

The church in Taiwan celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2002.