Covenant College

[EduCativ]

The mission of Covenant College is to explore and express the preeminence of Jesus Christ in all things. We educate Christians to engage culture and cultures, to examine and unfold creation, and to pursue biblical justice and mercy in community. With the student-faculty relationship and strong teaching and scholarship at the foundation, our Christ-centered community seeks to help students mature in three primary areas:

• Identity in Christ
• The biblical frame of reference
• Christ-like service

We offer the world biblically grounded men and women equipped to live out extraordinary callings in ordinary places. We challenge one another to explore and express Christ's preeminence in all things.

Covenant College is a Christ-centered institution of higher education, emphasizing liberal arts, operated by a Board of Trustees elected by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), and exists to provide post-secondary educational services to the denomination and the wider public.

The College is committed to the Bible as the Word of God written and accepts as its most adequate and comprehensive interpretation of the summary contained in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms.

The focus of Covenant College is found in its motto, based on Colossians 1:18, "In all things Christ preeminent." Acknowledging Christ preeminent as the creator of all things, as the redeemer of people fallen into sin, as the touchstone of all truth, and as the sovereign ruler over all areas of life, the College strives to discern and to unfold the implications of His preeminence in all things. To serve this end, we seek to appropriate the mind of Christ as the biblical perspective from which we characterize and respond to reality. In attempting to make such a biblically-grounded frame of reference explicit and operative, we are committed to academic inquiry excellence. We seek to define all areas of the College's structure and program according to this understanding of our purpose.

We seek to implement our purpose given our belief that all human beings are created in God's image and are, therefore, spiritual, moral, social beings who think, act, value, and exercise dominion. Because we are called to reflect in finite ways what God is infinite, we attempt to institute programs designed to offer all students the opportunity to discover and express their potential in each facet of their redeemed humanness.

A Covenant student should be a person who is united with Christ and committed to Him. This union and commitment should lead to an understanding both of one's sin and of one's significance as a person redeemed by Christ, resulting in a growing awareness of purpose. This awareness of purpose should facilitate the development of goals, priorities, and practices that foster spiritual effectiveness and well-being, including the individual students' emotional, social, physical, and intellectual aspects.

As the College of the Presbyterian Church in America, Covenant College is led by trustees, advisors, and administrators selected and approved by the denomination. The board of trustees is made up of men who are teaching and ruling elders in the PCA. A combination of Covenant College alumni and representatives of the PCA's Women in the Church serves as advisors to the trustees' board. While the board is given oversight of the College, the president and senior administration are charged with carrying out the operations of the College.

A Covenant College education has a sure foundation. Our beliefs, philosophy, and curriculum are rooted in the infallible, eternal, and unchanging Word of God. Our founders had confidence in the Scriptures' truth and promises. On behalf of their children and generations to come, our founders envisioned a learning community where students would explore and express the preeminence of Jesus Christ in all creation and life.

We hold our students in high regard because of the commitment God has to them and their families. He consistently refers to his people as a "treasured possession" as he promises that he "will be their God, and they will be my people." This relationship shapes our life and study together at Covenant and gives us confidence that this investment has eternal value and priceless outcomes.

The College faculty and staff assume this weighty and wonderful responsibility in both teaching and relationships. Coursework across the disciplines helps our students come to understand better the gracious investment God has first made in them--designing each student with specific gifts, saving them from sin and death to eternal life, and calling them to particular roles of service and responsibilities they must assume in his kingdom.

To this end, we seek to discover his good gifts in the creation and culture and to redeem and nurture those gifts for the sake of his glory in the Church and society.

For more than 50 years, Covenant has pursued its mission to explore and express the preeminence of Jesus Christ in all things.

Founded in 1955 in Pasadena, California, Covenant College needed to expand into new facilities after just one year. Several professors helped Covenant move to St. Louis, Missouri, into a building donated by Catholic sisters. Over the next eight years, the institution increased in size and outgrew its facilities.

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