Fuller Seminary Elevates Arts Center to President’s Office

Fuller Theological Seminary has moved its Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts from an academic division to the Office of the President, a repositioning that took effect Saturday.

The change comes as the center marks its 25th anniversary and as Fuller approaches eight decades in Pasadena, where radio evangelist Charles E. Fuller and pastor Harold John Ockenga founded the seminary in 1947. Classes initially met at Lake Avenue Congregational Church before Fuller moved to its current campus on North Oakland Avenue in 1953.

Seminary leaders say the repositioning is intended to strengthen the Brehm Center’s global reach and integrate its programming more closely with Fuller’s two academic schools—the School of Mission and Theology and the School of Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy.

“For 25 years the Brehm Center of Fuller Seminary has been a beacon illuminating areas where worship renewal, liturgical innovation, and artistic vision is growing the church and deepening people’s engagement with the Gospel,” said Dr. Jeffrey F. Keuss, dean of the School of Mission and Theology. “We look forward to this next chapter of Brehm as an academic and ministerial incubator for worship revival and artistic growth on a global scale.”

The Brehm Center was founded in 2001 with a gift from Fuller trustees William and Delores Brehm. Its mission is to integrate worship, theology, and the arts for the renewal of church and culture, according to the center’s website. The center offers a certificate in theology and the arts, concentrations in worship leadership and theology and culture within Fuller’s master’s degree programs, and cohort experiences for artists and ministry leaders. Its initiatives include Brehm Film, Brehm Preaching, and the Imagining Worship With Kids program focused on intergenerational worship.

Under the new structure, President David Emmanuel Goatley will provide strategic oversight, while Keuss will supervise operations.

“This repositioning will maximize the Brehm Center’s already strong non-degreed and lifelong learning offerings while further developing its capacity to conduct world class research and equip graduate students,” said Dr. Kara Powell, chief of leadership formation.

Goatley, who was inaugurated as Fuller’s sixth president in January 2023, said he would draw on his own background as a musician and pastor.

“I look forward to supporting executive director Shannon Sigler’s scholarship and practice in the visual arts, Dean Keuss’ theological scholarship in areas of literature, theology, and arts, with my ministry experience as a musician and pastor to elevate the focus of worship, theology, and the arts across the institution and expand the Center’s interdisciplinary reach across Fuller’s two schools,” Goatley said in a statement provided by the seminary.

Shannon Sigler has served as executive director of the Brehm Center since 2019. The center recently received a $1.25 million grant from the Lilly Endowment for programming focused on children’s spiritual formation.

Fuller Theological Seminary is located at 135 N. Oakland Ave. in Pasadena. For more information about the Brehm Center, visit brehmcenter.org.

“We truly believe that creativity and the arts have the capacity to revive the worship of the church,” Sigler has said.