CHICAGO, IL (June 22, 2016) — Beth Seversen has been named the new full-time director of evangelism for the Covenant Church, it was announced today. Seversen has served the Make and Deepen Disciples team in the area of evangelism in various capacities since January 2015. Most recently, she served as part-time evangelism team leader.
“From the beginning, the Evangelical Covenant Church has been an evangelistic church,” said Michelle Sanchez, executive minister of Make and Deepen Disciples. “Having a full-time director of evangelism will help empower the Covenant to reach its fullest potential for evangelism in our day.”
She said Seversen is ideal for the position. “Beth is one of the most outstanding thinkers and practitioners in the area of evangelism that I have ever met,” Sanchez said. “She is a brilliant scholar and researcher who is familiar with the most effective approaches to evangelism today. But even more important, Beth lives it out. She has a long track record of fruitful evangelism in every part of her personal and professional life.”
That success has included initiating and leading a pastor evangelism pilot cohort in the Great Lakes Conference this past year. Pastors gather monthly for encouragement, accountability, and equipping in the area of evangelism.
“We have seen these pastors and their churches experience significant transformation,” Sanchez said. “As early as the fourth cohort meeting, pastors reported 10 conversions that month as a result of increasing their personal evangelism efforts.”
In addition to serving as director of evangelism, Seversen also will take on some interim responsibilities in the area of young adult ministry.
Seversen said she is thrilled to be named to the position. “I’m passionate about continuing Jesus’s mission of bringing people to new life in Christ, of transforming individuals and communities from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, of pushing back powers that bind and destroy, of restoring and healing all that is broken in the world, and of reconciling people to God and one another through Jesus’s death and resurrection.”
She continued, “I am especially focused on reaching our mosaic emerging generation to empower and partner with them in reaching their peers, to lead the church to reflect the kingdom of God and the mission of Jesus, and to be the mechanism for demonstrating the reconciling agency of the gospel through the power and unity of the Spirit to break down all partitions, and bridge all divides.”
Seversen previously served as associate pastor at Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, and at Hillcrest Evangelical Covenant Church in Prairie Village, Kansas. She and her husband, Mark, planted Meadowbrook Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.
She also served on the national evangelism team for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Most recently Beth was associate director of the Masters in Evangelism and Leadership and the Masters in Missional Church Movements program and adjunct faculty at Wheaton College and Graduate School. She earned a master’s of divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and is pursuing a doctorate in intercultural studies with a minor in education. She is researching ECC churches who are effective in reaching and retaining unchurched and dechurched millennials.
She has written journal articles, Bible study guides, and devotionals including contributing to The Women’s Devotional Bible (Zondervan).
