Big changes already in works

for Eugene Bible College

By JOHN FORTMEYER
CNNW publisher
    EUGENE — New leadership, new programs and staffing and even a new name are coming very soon to Eugene Bible College.
    In fact, the transition has been under way much of this current school year.
Nationally known Hawaii megachurch found-er and pastor Wayne Cordeiro, an alumnus of the school who has been serving as its chancellor since last fall, will become the college’s new president next month.
    In an interview with Christian News Northwest, he declined to make public yet the college’s new name, but said it will be announced in the coming weeks. “There will be a fresh new name, a fresh look. Everything will have a brand new look.”
    Cordeiro replaces longtime EBC administrator David Cole, who had served as president for 11 years.
   “I wanted David to stay on at the college, but he felt there was a new ‘season’ starting,” said Cordeiro. He noted that Cole’s mother-in-law, who lives elsewhere in the U.S., is battling serious illness and that Cole and his wife felt they need to spend more time with her.
    Cordiero, who has been splitting his time between his Hawaii and Oregon responsibilities, said he will now reside here, although he will continue to oversee “like a bishop” New Hope Christian Fel-lowship on the Hawaiian island of Oahu and its more than 100 affiliated churches worldwide. New Hope, which has been identified as one of America’s top 10 most innovative churches, attracted 28,400 attenders during Easter services this spring.
   “I don’t manage the church anymore but I manage those who do,” he said. “But basically I am based out of Eugene.”
    Cordeiro was raised on Oahu and then lived in Japan for three years. He came to faith in Christ in an Open Bible Standard church and graduated in 1975 from EBC, which is Open Bible-affiliated. He served with Youth for Christ and as a staff pastor at Faith Center Foursquare Church in Hawaii before returning to Hawaii, where he founded New Hope Christian Fel-lowship about 15 years ago.
    In 1998, he founded Pacific Rim Christian College in Hawaii. That school has since expanded to a consortium of several campuses in Hawaii, Japan, and Myanmar, each with about 100 students; EBC also has joined the group, which trains, develops and supports emer-ging leaders who will plant churches throughout the world.
    Cordeiro said the Eugene school’s participation in the consortium literally opens a world of opportunities for students. “It gives us the globe as our classroom, rather than just the four walls of the classroom,” he said.
    Eugene Bible College was founded in 1925 and has operated under several names. While it had a peak enrollment of more than 300, in recent years it has struggled with enrollment of less than 100 full-time students. Cordeiro credits Cole with “in candid humility” determining that new leadership was needed. Cordeiro was invited to meet with Cole and with Gary Emery, Open Bible superintendent for this region. They asked Cor-deiro to consider becoming president last year, but he felt unable to accept at the time because there was not yet a succession plan in place for leadership in the Hawaii congregation and its church network.
    But Cordeiro did agree to serve this year as chancellor, providing “vision and direction, serving as an executive coach.”
     Cordeiro has ministry credentials in both the Open Bible and Foursquare denominations. He said the Eugene college will continue to have Open Bible affiliation.
   “We honor those who have put so much into the college over the years,” he said.
    But he noted that the Eugene school already has staff and students representing a wider range of denominational backgrounds, and said efforts will increase to “open the college up to other persuasions and denominations” within the evangelical spectrum.
   Cordeiro said the EBC campus off of Bailey Hill Road in south Eugene can accommodate about 200 students with the long-range planned addition of a performing arts center, communications and technology studies, intercultural studies and prayer studies. He said the college also wants to train students in the fast-growing area of trauma counseling and first-responder disaster relief, as the worldwide need for such programs is sure to increase as Scripture foretells.
    Cordeiro commended the college’s “great, great staff” of “the nicest people,” and he identified some planned additions to the staff roster:
   • new athletic director Jim DeGroot, a former basketball coach for Vanguard University in California who will coach basketball and women’s volleyball at the Eugene college;
  • Larry Powers, who is coming from LIFE Pacific College in Los Angeles, Calif., to teach theology and Bible.
   • Steve Poetzel, a chaplain at Northwest Christian University in Eugene, who will become dean of men at the college.
   • Steve and Cindy Ken-ny, who have been associated in music and fine arts with Cordeiro’s church in Hawaii, and who will lead creative arts programs at the college.
    Cordeiro said there is fresh excitement at the campus about the changes, and he is personally excited to shift from his pastoral ministry to his new work in Eugene.
   “At this season of my life, I just felt the Lord say that I was to be involved with training the next generation,” he said. “These will be those who are harvesters.”