Dr. Halvorson is the 6th president of the college and has served for 11 years, the third longest serving president in the history of the college. Through his leadership, the college successfully navigated a global pandemic and other external challenges many schools are experiencing in the world of higher education.

Dr. J. Derek Halvorson ‘93, president of Covenant College, has announced his intention to end his tenure as president on June 30th, 2023. The announcement was made to faculty and staff on Tuesday, January 31st, 2023, and was previously shared with the Board of Trustees a few weeks prior. The Cabinet of vice presidents will continue to provide leadership as the Board of Trustees launches a national search for the next president, in collaboration with faculty, staff, students, and alumni.
In a letter to the community (linked below), Dr. Halvorson said, “I believe that every institution benefits from periodic renewals of leadership. As I look to the college’s future, it is my sense that the time has come for fresh energy and vision that can lead the college into its next phase of growth and development…I am confident the Board is well-equipped and well-prepared to oversee the transition and find the next person God is calling to serve as the president of Covenant College.”
Dr. Halvorson is the 6th president of the college and has served for 11 years, the third longest serving president in the history of the college. Through his leadership, the college successfully navigated a global pandemic and other external challenges many schools are experiencing in the world of higher education.
Looking back on his time as president, Dr. Halvorson shared “Serving Covenant College as its president is one of the greatest honors and privileges of my life. After Jesus Christ and his church, my family, and my closest friends (whom I met at Covenant), I could not love any person or institution more. I am extremely grateful for the people who make up the Covenant College community. My family and I have been blessed in numerous ways by members of this community, both on and off the mountain. We are especially thankful for the support provided by faculty and staff, the enthusiasm for learning and service that students have demonstrated, and the encouragement provided by alumni and other friends of the college. It has been our joy to be loved by you all.”
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President Derek Halvorson’s Letter to the Covenant CommunityCraig Wood, Chairman, Covenant College of the Board of Trustees Letter to the Covenant Community
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Egalitarianism treats men and women not just as equals but as persons who are equally fitfor various roles. This is a radical departure from the wisdom of our God, who made men and women different from each other and different for each other. And to speak or act in any way that ignores, diminishes, or denies God’s good design is to ignore, diminish, or deny the gender-specific blessings that God intends. 

If the state of Christianity today is disconcerting, the state of Christianity Today (CT) is more so. The magazine that was founded by Billy Graham with Carl F. H. Henry as its first editor-in-chief has  drifted from its historically evangelical roots toward theological and political progressivism. To be sure, CT isn’t alone in this regard. As one theologian lamented,
“You see the collapse of evangelicalism all around us. Pick up Christianity Today: Christianity Today is written by mainline Episcopalians. Go to Wheaton College: Wheaton College faculty is a mainline Episcopalian faculty. Look at Fuller Seminary: It is easier to find a creationist on the faculty at Berkeley than at Fuller Seminary. We [evangelicals] have turned into the culture because we want to be like them.”
Those are the words of Russell Moore in 2006. (Start at the 41:44 mark and stick around until 44:06.) It is more than a little ironic that Moore is now the editor-in-chief of CT. It would seem that not only have the times changed—his convictions have, too. Yet the Scriptures do not change. That is why I am saddened (though not surprised) to see an egalitarian view of the sexes all but cemented at CT these days.
For those who haven’t kept up with the gender debates over the last forty years: egalitarianism is the modern, mixed-up notion that because men and women are equally made in the image of God (which is true) they are therefore interchangeable in various roles within God’s world (which is false). Such an approach entails a quasi-gnostic view of gender that treats God’s design for men and women as arbitrary or superfluous. This contradicts the longstanding consensus of the church across Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant lines, who, for over 1900 years, stood together in affirming that God’s differing directives to men and women in the Scriptures are rooted in God’s complementary design of men and women in creation. (This view goes by many names such as “biblical patriarchy” or “complementarianism,” a term that has picked up further qualification due to divergent trends within the movement.)
CT’s egalitarian trajectory has long been apparent to anyone who was paying attention. But over the last several years, CT has ramped up its promotion of egalitarianism in various forms. They’ve run articles decrying “toxic masculinity” (see here and here) but never toxic femininity. They have published articles discouraging men from asserting traditionally masculine traits and tendencies (see here and here). And they have interviewed Kristin Du Mez on evangelicalism’s alleged obsession with John Wayne.
CT has also run several articles exhorting us to transcend gender roles (see here, here, and here), which is a quintessentially egalitarian way of framing the discussion. Similarly, CT’s editor-in-chief (Moore) recently issued the call to rethink the evangelical “gender wars”, citing his frustration over the “ever-narrowing definition of complementarian [sic]” and his sense of the need for “rethinking who we once classified as ‘enemy’ and ‘ally.’” Meanwhile, other CT articles employ a strategy of dismissing theological discussion about God’s design for men and women as “a political battle that distracts from the gospel.”
CT has also hosted several I’m-not-that-kind-of-complementarian authors who wrote pieces like this one, which affirms the Danvers Statement while decrying attempts to faithfully apply it, or this one, which argues that those who hold to the church’s traditional view of the sexes are paternalistic. And in a move reminiscent of Screwtape’s strategy to entice Christians to bring a fire-extinguisher to a flood, CT ran an article worrying about a “narrowing” complementarianism in the SBC at a time when over a thousand SBC churches have women serving as pastors in open violation of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000.
In addition to all this, CT ran an article about using “preferred pronouns” with no substantive consideration of how lying to others is neither loving nor helpful (Eph. 4:15, 25) or interaction with Scripture’s clear “male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27; cf. Matt. 19:4). Instead, the article calls for us to “give each other grace” as people who are “figuring it out together.” (Which, in truth, is how people tend to talk when they’ve already figured out what they think and are just waiting for a sufficiently large sociological shift before announcing their stunning and brave conclusions.)
Comes now the latest barrage of egalitarian articles from CT, forming the central theme of their April 2024 issue: The Division of Labor. All the usual suspects are there: an article openly endorsing egalitarianism, an interview that calls the church to learn from the world’s diversity of viewpoints on gender roles, an article that attempts to carve a chimerical middle way between complementarianism and egalitarianism, and an article from a reluctant complementarian woman (Have men ever been permitted to write about complementarianism for CT?) who blames conservative Christians—not the gale force winds of the progressive zeitgeist—for the church’s setbacks. In addition to these cover stories, the issue also features an article on Mary Magdalene, which—following the work of Jennifer Powell McNutt, a Wheaton College professor and pastrix in the PC(USA)—equivocates the meaning of “apostle” in order to claim Mary for the egalitarian side of the debate.
Each of these articles probably deserves a rebuttal that roundly criticizes their methods and conclusions, but life is short and I’ve only got time for one. So here’s lookin’ at you, Gordon P. Hugenberger. Arguing that “the biggest New Testament passages on gender roles may have more to do with marriage than with ministry,” Hugenberger’s article is titled, “Complementarian at Home, Egalitarian at Church? Paul Would Approve.”
But actually, he wouldn’t.
Why Paul Isn’t an Egalitarian (And We Shouldn’t Be Either)
In the first place, Paul calls the church the household (oikos) of God (1 Tim. 3:15), that is, the family of God (cf. Matt. 10:6; 1 Tim. 3:4; 5:4). However, positing that God wants his children to live as complementarians in their own households but as egalitarians in God’s household (i.e., the church) would make God schizophrenic. For if men and women are differently directed in view of God’s differing design, then what is good and right in one realm would be good and right in the other.
Hugenberger seems to be unaware of the tension created by his view, as he devotes his arguments to affirming male headship in marriage (with a heavy dose of caveats and condemnations of “meanness, abuse, or even violence against women”) while denying male headship in the church. As I will show below, such a view is internally incoherent.
To advocate for egalitarianism in the church, Hugenberger marshals boilerplate egalitarian arguments, like the argument that ministry is a matter of spiritual gifts, which women possess as well as men (1 Cor. 12:7), or the argument that all Christians are called to teach and admonish one another (Col. 3:16) with “nothing in the context suggest[ing] that Paul has only men in view.” Next comes Abigail’s rebuke of David (1 Sam. 25), followed by Priscilla’s instruction of Apollos (Acts 18:26).
The next stop for Hugenberger is 1 Cor. 11:5 and 14:3, where women prophesy as well as men. This naturally leads him to highlight women like Deborah the prophetess (Judges 4 and 5), Hannah the mother of Samuel, (1 Sam. 2) and Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 1), all of whom “were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write various portions of Holy Scripture.” In this way, Hugenberger says, “Through their writings, these women have taught both men and women with inerrant authority down through the ages.”
There are two problems here. To begin with, Hugenberger is equivocating what it means to “teach.” The apostle Paul knows what he wrote in Col. 3:16, and he knows what he wrote in 1 Tim. 2:12. Thus, unless we were to conclude that Paul is too stupid to realize he has contradicted himself, he clearly refers to a certain kind of teaching (or perhaps to teaching in a certain context) in one verse that he does not refer to in the other. It is not difficult to make this distinction. The second issue is that Deborah’s and Hannah’s and Mary’s words—as wonderful as they are—were not actually written into Scripture by these holy women. Instead, they were incorporated into Scripture by men named Samuel and Luke. This is not a throwaway detail, for the Scriptures sometimes quote pagans (Acts 17:28) and Apocrypha (Jude 14), so the mere presence of words in holy writ does not convey special teaching status or authority on the person who first uttered them.
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Sadly, certain Christian leaders accept every gift, however misguided, They also summon loyalty and extravagant or sinful “favors” from fawning but naïve devotees And it is the worst sort of devotion to assist a man who seeks power to build his name or brand, while calling his fiefdom “God’s work.” We may know this without the account of David’s mighty men and their misguided gift. Yet when David disallowed a hyper-personalized form of devotion, it deepens our conviction that distinctions are necessary: It is beautiful to assist a man of God as he does the Father’s work, but foolish serve a mere man and his ordinary human desires. May we have the wisdom to see the difference and to act on it.

Recently, Christians have agonized over accounts of false devotion to talented but corrupt church leaders. In outwardly successful churches and ministries, leaders have covered up sin, blamed victims, and blocked investigations to protect gifted but fatally flawed pastors and their ministries. To correct our mistakes and restore our integrity, we need the whole of Scripture, including a minor but revealing episode in the life of David that can help us distinguish between wise service to God from foolish service to men.
As the author wraps up his life of David, 2 Samuel 23:13-17 recounts an episode of courageous but misdirected devotion. David’s strength, faith, and skill led hundreds of men to attach themselves to him. Among them, Samuel extols thirty “mighty men” and singles out three, Josheb, Eleazar, and Shammah for a grand but misguided venture.
At the time, Saul was king. David had served Saul in battle and at court, but as Saul fell away, he decided that David was a threat and must be destroyed. Saul’s hunt for David forced him to flee to remote desert strongholds. As Saul focused on slaying David, he neglected his kingly tasks and left Israel weak as Philistines pressed deep into Israel. At one point, Philistine soldiers reached the Valley of Rephaim and Bethlehem, David’s hometown, half-way across Israel. This is like Canada invading America and reaching Denver, St. Louis and Washington, D.C. David, perhaps speaking poetically, lamented her plight with a graphic statement of longing “Oh, that someone would give me water to drink from the well of Bethlehem that is by the gate!” (23:15).
Perhaps that well had sweet water; perhaps it meant “home” for David, but the Philistines, taking land with impunity, now held his hometown. The end of the story shows that David wanted more than water. He wanted to stop hiding and wanted his nation to become strong enough to rout the Philistines from his home.
In their devotion to David, his mighty men, Josheb, Eleazar, and Shammah, took his desire for that water literally. They left camp, probably by the caves of Adullam, crossed ten miles of rugged terrain, risked encounters with armed foes, and then slipped into the city to draw water from the well and bring it to David.
What a gift, purchased with two days’ labor, at the risk of their lives! But when they brought it to David, he refused to drink it.
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