This week I’m taking the last of the four classes required by my denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), for those pastors who haven’t attended the denomination’s seminary.  The ECC is a relatively small denomination and not widely known.  Having been a part of the ECC for just a couple of years, I get regular questions from friends about its distinctives.  Answering that question is a blog post for another day, but yesterday I read the following quote from North Park Seminary professor Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom that gets at some of the history and theology that makes the ECC unique.

[ECC] President Gary Walter writes that the ECC is what you get when Pietists join together to do mission.  We have a devotional approach to an orthodox faith. We are committed to new and ever-deepening life in Christ.  We are a mission society whose membership is churches.  We are a church of missional Pietists- viable, yet ever renewing.

It’s the idea of missional pietism that is particularly appealing and one of the reasons the ECC has been a good fit for me.