Concordia Nebraska’s Michael Scheer featured on Barna podcast about church design

Michael Scheer ’14 serves as the interim director of Concordia Nebraska’s Center for Liturgical Art. Housed on the university’s campus, the center is committed to creating art for worship and witness while advocating for visual arts in Christian life and practice. 

“We strive to share the importance of ecclesiastical art and the impact it has on our lives as Christians,” said Scheer. 

Scheer was recently contacted by The Barna Group - a Christian research organization that provides data and insights on the trends affecting faith, culture and ministry today – to contribute to their research on behalf of the center. This included an interview for their publication and a podcast interview.  

Visual art is an integral part of our lives as Christians, and this should be reflected in the spaces we occupy for our services and fellowship. Not only do we create to give glory to God simply through the act of creation, but through creation we can take part in helping others see the beauty of God’s creation. This is also why we should be mindful of the materials we use and how we work with those materials.

“Visual art is an integral part of our lives as Christians, and this should be reflected in the spaces we occupy for our services and fellowship,” said Scheer. “Not only do we create to give glory to God simply through the act of creation, but through creation we can take part in helping others see the beauty of God’s creation. This is also why we should be mindful of the materials we use and how we work with those materials.” 

Barna’s coverage included a three-part series on why church design matters in ministry called “Making Space”. The previous two volumes are titled “Making Space for Inspiration” and “Making Space for Community,” and the volume that they asked Scheer to contribute to is called “Making Space for Formation”. 

“We often see art used in the church for communication, such as a cross being used as a symbol for what we believe,” said Scheer. “Beyond that, we can use God’s gift of art and creativity as an educational tool to teach about our beliefs, as a mediation tool to help us focus on prayer and praise and even as a therapeutic tool that can help us work through stresses and hardships in life. Once we begin to have conversations about the gifts of visual art, architecture, music, dance, theatre and poetry, we begin to see where those forms of art can be applied to our lives of worship and witness.” 

The Concordia Nebraska Center for Liturgical Art was established in 2003 as a result of the vision of Reinhold Marxhausen and the focused efforts of Ken Schmidt and the Lange family to create a program capable of spreading the Gospel through art while allowing students the opportunities to learn about what it means to be an artist in the church.