By Rev. Peter C. Schattauer ’08

Summer Intern Lizzy Schoen ’24

For the summers after her first and second years at St. Olaf, Elizabeth Schoen ‘24 sought out internships in a field she thought she wanted to pursue a career in: corporate marketing. While she had learned a lot at the three marketing internships she had, Elizabeth was beginning to think a different kind of experience would be useful for the summer after her junior year.

About half way through her junior year, Elizabeth began to discern a call to become a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the church of her upbringing. As she wrestled with this nascent call, she looked for ways to use skills she developed through her previous internships while also learning about how she would experience work in a church setting. “I hadn’t really got to do work that I found fulfilling. I’m appreciative of the opportunities I had but I didn’t find the work joyful.” Elizabeth hoped to find a job that she felt fulfilled by, that she felt called to do.

Luckily, Pastor Katie Fick, Associate College Pastor, emailed her about an opportunity offered through the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community at Church Anew, a ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie, MN. Through the creation of a variety of resources, Church Anew seeks to create spaces where Christian leaders are nourished by new ideas and experience belonging. As Elizabeth learned more about Church Anew and the internship, she felt that this experience was a perfect fit for her marketing skills and that it would help her learn more about her call to ministry.

Getting to see all the different ways someone can serve was inspirational, especially because a lot of the leaders I interviewed were focused on healing ministries and bridging gaps between forgotten communities. It was really impactful to see ministers doing this kind of work.

ELIzabeth SCHOEN ’24

At Church Anew, Elizabeth was able to use many of the skills she gained from her previous work experience to lead in different areas of the organization’s work. Elizabeth’s skills and experience in communications and copy-writing helped her manage the blog for Church Anew. Each week she edited, formatted, and posted columns in regular Church Anew blog series.

She also had the chance to expand her range of experience in communications by interviewing and writing several blogs for the Leadership Lab blog series. Each week she interviewed church leaders to learn about their communities and how they think about leadership. This experience was especially important as Elizabeth continued to discern her own call to ministry: “Getting to see all the different ways someone can serve was inspirational, especially because a lot of the leaders I interviewed were focused on healing ministries and bridging gaps between forgotten communities. It was really impactful to see ministers doing this kind of work.”

Another project Elizabeth had the opportunity to work on was A Living Catechism, a project co-led by Church Anew and the Lutheran Center that seeks to explore ideas and beliefs within  Lutheran tradition that are nourishing for 21st-century communities. Elizabeth  assisted  a series of group conversations with pastors, deacons, lay leaders, young adults, and scholars on Zoom to discuss aspects of Lutheran theology and practice that animate their communities. After running tech and taking notes in these conversations, she worked to transcribe the conversations and synthesize the thoughts of the participants.

[My vocational growth] was mostly in the solidification of the idea that this is something I can do. This is not a far-off, weird thing to do, and I got a sense of the community within the church and church leadership that I hadn’t seen.

Elizabeth Schoen ’24

In both of these experiences, Elizabeth learned about the scope and possibilities for work in the church today. She notes that imagining the possibilities within the breadth of 21-century church work is a commonality between Church Anew and the Lutheran Center. Elizabeth thought that she would meet only Lutheran thinkers and pastors through her work at Church Anew, but was amazed and inspired by the intentional ways in which the authors on the blog and the churches Church Anew works with are intentionally ecumenical. Similarly the Lutheran Center roots its work in the Lutheran tradition while engaging with and celebrating the expansiveness of religious expression in its midst.

Through these experiences and her realization of the range of possibility in this work, Elizabeth feels empowered in her call to ordained ministry. Reflecting on growth in her sense of call this summer, Elizabeth says, “[My vocational growth] was mostly in the solidification of the idea that this is something I can do. This is not a far-off, weird thing to do, and I got a sense of the community within the church and church leadership that I hadn’t seen.” Emboldened by the work and renewed in her call, Elizabeth returned to St. Olaf this fall with a greater sense of the work of the church and a fuller imagination of where her future call might take her.