Written by Pastor John Rohde Schwehn
The Christensen Scholars Program is a small group of academically accomplished students who share an interest in the theological and practical exploration of Christian community and vocation. I am thrilled to accompany eleven scholars in their vocational discernment during this academic year. Our cohort is diverse in life experiences, religious backgrounds, and identities which span the globe and the generations. This little community of Christian scholars reflects the beautiful diversity present at Augsburg and within the Body of Christ.
While this seminar includes studying Christian theology, its scope is much broader; imparting simple information about the Christian faith is not what ultimately forms us into a faithful people. For millennia, information has gone alongside formation: habits and practices that define a way of life. Accordingly, this cohort will engage with theological texts and with the Biblical narrative alongside spiritual practices that cultivate belonging, connection, and relationship with one another, with the earth, and with God. Vocational discernment happens within this network of relationships and wisdom sources. In her essay Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies With a View to the Love of God, Simone Weil contends that the skills required of higher education actually form habits of humility, attention, and thoughtfulness akin to prayer. These Christensen scholars – who are already daily living into their vocation as students – will learn through this cohort (and through all of their studies) how to engage God and neighbor with greater curiosity, wonder, and prayer.
A cornerstone of this year’s Christensen Scholars Program will be a January trip to Holden Village, an ecumenical Christian retreat center located in the north central Cascades wilderness of Washington. Holden’s daily rhythms are patterned on practices of hospitality, creation care, worship, and study. Our students will live in this community, work alongside Holden’s staff, and explore with Professor Mary Lowe the question of What connects us to one another? Hopefully, students will also experience it as a time of retreat in the middle of a busy year, and an opportunity for a time of deep listening and vocational discernment.
In the spring semester, we will begin applying what we have learned to the current challenges, crises, and issues of justice that our students see in the world. How does study, community, and prayer transform us into people who join, as Pastor Daniel Erlander writes, “God’s unfolding promise to mend the entire universe”? We believe that our students, guided by the lens of faith, have considerable gifts to offer our increasingly pluralistic, complicated, and interconnected world.
Please join us this year by praying for these students, for their formation, and for the world that God so loves. We are grateful for your ongoing support and care of these Augsburg students.
I’m still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer