CHET was blessed with its largest student body in its 13-year history, 382 students. Graduates came from CHET’s Pre-Ministerial, Ministerial, Lay Counseling and Bachelor of Ministry Programs. Roberto Ghione, pastor of Nueva Esperanza (New Hope) Covenant Church in Simi Valley, California, received the Eldon and Opal Johnson scholarship for his outstanding contribution to the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC).
Ghione has opened a CHET satellite at his church that is focused on family counseling. He has also made inroads with a local Hispanic radio station and started a radio program that has become popular in southern California. Ghione has organized the Saturday afternoon call-in program with CHET President and Director Jorge Maldonado, pastor Daniel Anabalon of El Encino Covenant Church in El Encino and pastor Pablo Anabalon of Iglesia del Pacto Evangelico, located at Eagle Rock Covenant in Los Angeles.
The Johnson scholarship honors missionaries who returned from Bolivia and started the First Covenant Church in downtown Los Angeles, the first Hispanic ministry in the Pacific Southwest Conference. Rosa Orellana, a student of from Bell Gardens Covenant, was given the Edith Warning award for women’s ministry. Pasadena Covenant Church established the award in Warning’s memory. Edward Delgado, CHET academic dean and vice president, and John Barkman, treasurer for the CHET board of directors, presented the awards to Ghione and Orellana.
“Focus on new student curriculum and being active in various national and international organizations and conventions and focusing on creative ways of telling the story are ways that we are better recruiting for CHET,” said Delgado about the recent recruiting upsurge. “But more important are our present students as recruiters. We are providing relevant, practical, applicable educational opportunities for lay leaders and future and present pastors. And many present pastors are bringing their people – they’re saying ‘I received a good education and I want you to receive one.’ Students are being equipped for service beyond our denomination, but also within the Covenant.”
CHET is a theological and pastoral training center for Hispanic church leaders, pastors and lay leaders that was founded in 1989. Besides its regular programs, the school plans to offer a bilingual undergraduate certificate program (at least six modules) for community transformation. CHET graduates are now serving as pastors, church planters, missionaries, lay counselors and trained laity to Covenant and various other evangelical churches throughout the United States and Latin America.
For more information about CHET, call Delgado or Maldonado at 562-806-8325 or email them at chet@chet.org. The CHET web page can be found at www.covchurch.org/chet.
Copyright © 2011 The Evangelical Covenant Church.
