Award winners were announced during a reception held June 25. The awards were presented the following day during the Ministerium business meeting.
Elizabeth Kirsten Kronberg from Olympia, Washington, received the Victoria Welter Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded to a female seminarian who is a member of an Evangelical Covenant Church, enrolled as a full-time student at North Park Theological Seminary, and pursuing a master’s degree in ministry. Kronberg is completing her internship at River Ridge Covenant Church.
Camille Russell Wooden of Abundant Life Covenant Church in Pasadena, California, received the Phoebe Church Planter’s Grant. The award is presented to a female church planter who is currently involved in full-time church planting ministry and is in good standing with the Covenant Ministerium. The grant will be used to fund a nonprofit organization, The Life Community Enrichment Corporation. The LCEC’s mission is to impact the community through family enrichment, children and youth development, and community outreach.
Mary Miller, director of Making Connections Initiative for North Park Theological Seminary, received the Evelyn M.R. Johnson Leadership Award. The award is presented to a female minister in an ECC setting who has demonstrated excellence in ministry based on character, ministerial identity, contribution to the Covenant, and faithfulness to call. Miller was one of the first five female students to enter the seminary in 1977, one year after the denomination voted to ordain women. She was ordained in 1981. She was the first female vice president of the ECC and serves as co-chair of the Biblical Gender Equality Commission.
“The ACCW Awards program grew out of an ever-increasing need to share the faithful stories of women and our male colleagues who advocate for women to respond obediently to God’s call,” says Catherine Gilliard, president of ACCW and pastor of Commissioned Disciples Covenant Church in Stone Mountain, Georgia. “We know that God calls and sends whomever he chooses. It is important for us to give witness to a biblical community in which future generations will not question the voice of God when they hear it.”
The ACCW was formed in 1998 with female and male clergy colleagues advocating for the placement of female pastors in local churches. As the association enters into a new decade of ministry, members are engaging in exciting “New Day for ACCW” discussions, Gilliard says. “ACCW has an exciting role in helping to care for clergy women, provide times of fellowship, and encourage those who are called of God to be faithful as God equips those he sends.”
