The Swensons served for 24 years as missionaries in Colombia and Ecuador, and for the past eight years they have worked with Covenant Bible College (CBC) in Ecuador. They will relocate to Chicago and assume their new duties August 1.
The new position is part of a missions reorganization plan presented during the 2006 Annual Meeting. The couple will share responsibilities for missionary recruitment and assessment, education and training, member care, life transitions, itineration, prayer, and family support.
“Margie and Baxter will continue their missionary leadership by helping to raise up a new generation of Covenant missionaries and by helping to equip them for effective, sustained and strategic missionary service,” says Curt Peterson, executive minister of Covenant World Mission.”
The Swensons will work with college and seminary students and second career adults to consider a call to mission ministry. They will help provide pastoral care and crisis support for missionary families, complementing the work of regional and country coordinators and the Member Care Council of care professionals. And, they also will be available to speak in local Covenant churches about opportunities in mission service.
Lana Heinrich will continue to serve in the personnel division as will Eileen Thorpe, who will continue to work part-time to prepare the Missionary Prayer Calendar, provide greetings and recognitions for missionaries, and manage office records, reports and mission mailings. Barbara Fisk and Judy Amundsen will continue to facilitate missionary itineration in local churches and camps on a part-time basis.
“I am excited to welcome Baxter and Margie to the world mission office and anticipate with thanksgiving their creative, passionate and thoughtful leadership of missionary personnel,” Peterson says. “They will bring enormous strength to the recruitment, training, and care of new missionaries whom God calls to serve. We were all saddened by the closing of CBC-Ecuador campus, but God has opened a new door of discipleship, spiritual formation and mission service leadership for Baxter and Margie. They will help us think outside the box in world mission and will provide valuable insight in the advancement of the mission of God in this world.”
