Recent Luther Seminary graduates Elizabeth Hood and Ryan Popineau join an illustrious group of Children, Youth, and Family Ministry graduates who received the CYF Prize for their scholarly work. Hood was recognized for her paper “Why Gen Z Left the Pew for the Pop Pulpit of Taylor Swift,” and Popineau for his paper “People of Virtue: A Critique on Evangelical Old Testament Hermeneutics.” The CYF prize is given annually to one or more students who demonstrate excellence in reflecting theologically, culturally, and pragmatically on the practice of children, youth, young adult, adult, or family ministries.
In addition to sharing the 2024 CYF prize, Hood and Popineau have been friends since their first residential focus session two years ago. “My background is progressive Lutheran and Ryan’s is conservative evangelical,” shares Hood. “So we are perhaps the most unlikely of friends. But we are close friends now, having gone through our seminary studies together and spent so much time conversing about our faith and ministries.”
Taylor Swift and Authentic Faith
Elizabeth Hood grew up in Hawaii on the island of Kauai and attended college at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Working in Lutheran outdoor ministries in California, she was encouraged by many colleagues to consider youth ministry as a profession. Hood says she had other plans at the time but eventually was drawn into professional ministry: “Through a variety of life experiences, I felt called to give youth ministry a try. I moved to southern California and, at first, worked full-time in real estate and part-time in a church.”
Hood’s youth ministry work would eventually become her only gig, and she has now been a full-time staff member at a church in Palo Alto, California, for over 15 years—an unusually long tenure in youth ministry.
A few years ago, Hood met Arlene Flancher, program coordinator and counselor at Luther Seminary, at the ELCA’s Youth Extravaganza. “Arlene asked if I’d be interested in seminary,” Hood remembers. “I replied that I’d been in ministry for 14 years, don’t want to pay to attend seminary, wonder about the value of taking class for things I’ve already experienced in the field, and don’t want to be in school forever. And Arlene replied, ‘Great, come to Luther Seminary. We have the Jubilee scholarship and a two-year CYF program!’”
Flancher put Hood in touch with students in the program “who were encouraging and told me great things about this seminary,” Hood reports. “Two years later, here I am with degree in hand.”
Hood completed Luther Seminary’s Master of Arts in Children, Youth, and Family Ministry and is in candidacy to become ordained as a deacon to a ministry of word and service. She says she could not have done seminary without the distance-learning program and the Jubilee scholarship. “Going to school online has certainly become more common since the pandemic, but I wasn’t sure what it would be like. I’ve found, however, that a mostly virtual degree program can be very accessible. Each professor has their own way of teaching online, just as they do for in person courses. Some add podcasts and other online components, and I would go for a walk or a hike while also engaging in coursework. As someone working full time and going to school full time, this type of innovative teaching and learning was incredible,” Hood shares.
Hood also appreciated being on campus several times a year to build in-person community during resident focus sessions: “I definitely made a cohort of friends who I think will be friends for the rest of my life. And I credit Luther Seminary with being intentional about building community during these residential sessions, facilitating social and other events in addition to the intensive classes.”
In her research, Hood asked why so many Gen Z youth leave Christian communities. She concluded it has a lot to do with two central aspects of a theoretical framework explored by Professor Andrew Root—authenticity and resonance: “Not all Gen Zers are Swifties, but Gen Z’s authenticity meter is off the charts. … [Taylor Swift’s] songs are intimate stories that are also universal. Jesus tells the same kinds of stories in the same way. His stories are universal but are told in deeply intimate ways, often to groups of close friends.”
Taylor Swift is still a product of our consumer culture, Hood notes: “I’m not advocating that we replace hymnody with her songs or anything like that. My paper holds her up as a tour guide to a generation of young people that the church desperately needs to listen to, hear, love, include, and learn from. If the church isn’t following Jesus’ teachings to love everyone, to welcome the stranger and the outcast, and to pursue justice, we are going to lose them.”
Culture Challenges and Biblical Morality
Ryan Popineau was born and raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in a family of pastors. After graduating from Bethany University in Scotts Valley, California, he volunteered at several churches while attempting to attend graduate school, stopping each time for financial reasons.
He found his way to Luther Seminary after attending a Society for Pentecostal Studies annual gathering in Missouri: “For the first time, I heard the philosopher Charles Taylor, and the way he spoke about the world resonated deeply with me. It kicked off a desire to find others who were thinking about Taylor’s questions.”
This led Popineau to Andrew Root’s work: “After reading several of Root’s books, I attended a conference he was speaking at. I was able to have a conversation with him one morning, and he suggested I look at Luther Seminary to study in the CYF program. When I learned about the Jubilee Scholarship, everything fell into place and graduate school became possible for the first time.”
Popineau is now working on a PhD at Luther Seminary and continuing his studies with Root. “I hope someday to be a professor and a teacher in the church, helping pastors minister to their communities in helpful and effective ways,” Popineau says.
For his capstone paper, Popineau wanted to work on something related to politics. “I have lived in the Pentecostal world my entire life and have watched the last eight years with fascination as certain politicians captured the hearts—and votes—of most everyone I know despite our commitments to biblical morality. Reading the work of Old Testament scholar John Walton helped me unpack the connection between this paradoxical support evangelicals provide to leaders who might not live up to moral standards, a connection centered around how Evangelicals read scripture.”
As a Pentecostal at Luther Seminary, Popineau says he has been welcomed and accepted. “While many of my peers might have negative feelings toward my faith tradition, I have been encouraged to share all that my theology brings to the table,” he shared. “My project was crafted with Evangelical audiences in mind, but it also offers my peers and others a way to understand that what is happening beneath the surface in Evangelical theology can be more nuanced than how it appears from the outside.”
In this way, the project was a culmination of Popineau’s time as a master’s student at Luther: “It was a critique of my own theological positions, guided by the larger theological commitments I share with the Lutheran community, while still a respectful appreciation of the particularities of my tradition. My time at Luther Seminary has been about these kinds of open conversations, and I hope this project does justice to everything I learned from the many wonderful professors and classmates I had during my studies here.” He is now working on a Ph.D. at Luther Seminary and continuing his studies with Root.