LSTC is the Place. Now is the Time.
Christian Scharen shares his thoughts on embracing new ministries
Rev. Dr. Christian Scharen knows we’re at an inflection point. “The traditional way that theological education has been done is just not working,” he states calmly. “Schools are closing, their enrollments are shrinking. All the traditional markers show that that’s the case.”
The vista seems bleak. I wait for signs of melancholy: drooped shoulders, a sigh. Instead, his eyes brighten. “So,” he says with an air of joyful anticipation, “how do you reinvent it in a way that responds to where the spirit is at work, bringing new things into being?”
Scharen has dedicated his illustrious tri-vocational career in teaching, pastoral care, and research to serving the changing spiritual needs of our world and answering just that question. He believes pivotal moments are invitations to strengthen community, develop new understandings of our church and world, and engage deeply in questions that invite nuanced discussion.
Many times, the invitation begins in the classroom. For Scharen, who has been teaching worship at LSTC even before he was appointed Associate Professor and Braatz Chair of Worship in 2024, building a truly discursive model in the classroom comes from a deeply held belief that students and instructors are co-creators in intellectually generative spaces. “I try to create a space where the teacher is more like a curator of a space of encounter and inquiry,” Scharen says. “And that space includes what we each bring because we have elements to offer each other for learning, especially when there’s as diverse of a student body as we have at LSTC.”
Honoring diversity of lived experience has been at the forefront of how Scharen approaches both his work in the world of worship and his work as a researcher. In worship, he has long looked for opportunities to bring people together outside of traditional spaces. In Brooklyn, Scharen notably served at St. Lydia’s Dinner Church, a progressive LGBTQ-affirming congregation dedicated to bringing community together in spiritual practice over a home-cooked meal. Scharen describes it as a “chance to really live in a church that was designed and started to be a response to what’s happening in the world, to be a new kind of Christian community.” Now, the congregation is celebrating 15 years of service to seekers of all stripes: people looking for community, healing, God, or even just a meal.
“Serving at St. Lydia’s taught me a lot about how the Christian community is changing,” Scharen says. His experience with diverse contexts at St. Lydia’s has deepened his commitment to thinking about worship and pastoral leadership in a way that serves not just traditional communities of congregants but also people who for one reason or another have given up on church, especially queer and BIPOC folks who experience exclusion in church just as in society. It also encouraged him to embrace experimental spaces and expansive mindset in worship that centers practices of welcome.
In the context of acting as the new Braatz Chair of Worship at LSTC, Scharen looks forward to honoring both individual relationships and community-wide relationships.
“On an individual level, there’s a lot of care that has to go into the spaces I’m responsible for giving shape to,” Scharen says. “Think about students some of whom are crossing culture and language barriers, some dealing with economic difficulties…whatever their situation, I want to ask how I can acknowledge them, see the gifts and capacities they have, and honor the struggles they’re dealing with?”
As an instructor, Scharen is committed to providing students with tools from texts like Homiletics expert Lis Valle-Ruiz and Preaching and Worship expert Andrew Wymer’s Unmasking White Preaching: Racial Hegemony, Resistance, and Possibilities in Homiletics as well as encouraging a deep historical understanding of the role of the Church in the creation of empire, the development of race-based political ideologies, and the othering of state-designated undesirables. On a personal level, Scharen brings a deep commitment to inviting discussion, meeting students where they are, and creating opportunities for each student to bring their unique set of interests, skills, and experiences to class.
On a larger scale, Scharen is committed to producing research that will serve the Church and will offer new tools for other subject-matter experts teaching in classrooms. Recently, Scharen was awarded a grant from the Lilly Endowment alongside partners in the ELCA, the Metro New York Synod, the Oregon Synod, LSTC, and several new missional congregations. The research project involves talking to innovative congregations already directly responding to changes happening in church—congregations like St. Lydia’s, for example—and discovering what they’re learning about serving their communities and bringing them together.
“At the very end of the project we’ll have a big conference where these congregations are the teachers of their own practice for other leaders who want to come in and listen and learn,” Scharen says.
While working in the community is proving to be crucial to the development of research and teaching paradigms, Scharen is also committed to advancing the historiography of Christianity. He is currently working on two books: one on Christianity before and after empire as well as another about the Church and the question of European-descended Americans inheriting a settler legacy. At the core of this research lies the question: “what do we do about the Church’s problematic and horrifically violent past?”
As always, Scharen is committed to advancing practical and research inquiries that invite debate, discussion, and connection. “All my projects are related in a way,” he says, “because they’re all about how we can build a more trustworthy, believable, life-giving future for the Church.”
Ultimately, for Scharen, that’s the goal: to build a future at LSTC and in our global community that honors and acknowledges our complicated past, that sets the stage for a more inclusive future, and which creates new opportunities to engage structured practices of opening space for all members of our community. “LSTC is a vital place to be in this moment,” Scharen affirms. “We’re all here to see how theological education can be reimagined to better serve the way spiritual needs are evolving. And it’s really exciting to me.”