Mandate eNewsletter, 2008 - Issue No. 3

From the Director: The Perfect Day
by Dr. Brian Fikkert

Somebody asked me last week, “What makes for a really great day for you at the office? When do you feel really excited about your work?”

Tears filled my eyes, and I got a lump in my throat as I struggled to respond. “That’s easy,” I choked out. “Today was the perfect day. I read the articles for this edition of Mandate and got to see how God is transforming the lives of the poor and of our Community Development students. Today it all came together.”

Let me explain. The Chalmers Center is joined at the hip with an undergraduate major in Community Development at Covenant College. Professors in the Department of Economics and Community Development are also staff of the Chalmers Center, splitting their time between training churches and missionaries around the world via the Chalmers Center and teaching undergraduates via the Community Development major. Although the Chalmers Center and the Community Development major have separate budgets, funding sources,¹ and managerial structures, the goal is to maintain sufficient synergy to create a dynamic learning community that includes churches, missionaries, community development practitioners, professors, students, and the poor themselves. Sometimes it is very messy, as we are wearing multiple hats. However, on good days it all comes together as the classroom is brought to the field, and the field is brought to the classroom.

How do the synergies happen? Here a just a few examples:

• During the summer between their junior and senior years, each Community Development student is required to complete a twelve-week, research internship for a host ministry that is working in a low-income community. Oftentimes, the host ministry is a trainee or partner organization of the Chalmers Center; thus, students are able to join with professors in better understanding the work of the Center and its grassroots affiliates.
  
  
• Professors regularly bring stories and examples from their work with the Chalmers Center into the classroom, thereby demonstrating how the theories, concepts, and tools both work and fail “in the real world.”
  
  
• Visitors to the Chalmers Center—missionaries, church leaders, and practitioners—regularly speak in undergraduate classes in the Community Development major.
  
  
• Several months after the tsunami hit, a Christian relief and development organization asked the Chalmers Center to help with a small business rehabilitation program in Indonesia. Chalmers sent two field staff to conduct surveys on the ground in Indonesia in order to determine the best way forward. The data were emailed to professors at Covenant and analyzed in a research methods class in the Community Development major. The results were then immediately emailed back to the field. It is not every day that students in the classroom participate in tsunami rehabilitation work!

This edition of Mandate highlights how God is using these synergies. We asked several of our Community Development students to write articles explaining what they did this past summer and how the Chalmers Center contributed to their educational experience at Covenant College. As these stories illustrate, God is using both poor people and students to transform the lives of one another. And as I read these articles, I think I got a bit more transformed myself. Not a bad day at the office!

As you read the articles in this edition of Mandate, please join me in praising God for what He alone is doing to bring His kingdom to bear in the lives of His people, whether they be in inner-city America, in rural Africa, or in the classrooms and offices of Covenant College.

You can read more about the Community Development major at http://www.chalmers.org/covenant/cdv.php. If you are interested in hosting a Community Development student on a research internship, contact Dr. Russell Mask, Chair of the Department of Economics and Community Development at Covenant College: mask@covenant.edu.

¹ The Community Development major is funded through the tuition payments of undergraduate students and donations to Covenant College’s general fund. The Chalmers Center is funded out of gifts from our donors, from fees for our training services, and from an annual budget allocation from Covenant College.

For more information about the Chalmers Center, visit us at www.chalmers.org.

12/01/08