My name is Samuel Scalf
After twenty years of pastoral ministry, I became a scholar because Sunday preaching alone couldn’t answer the questions my congregation was actually asking.
For more than twenty years, I’ve lived between two worlds that don’t always speak to each other: the local church and the academy. For thirteen of those years, I served as lead pastor of a diverse, close-knit church community in Colorado, preaching week in and week out, walking with people through grief, doubt, faith, and transformation. Alongside that pastoral work, I’ve pursued serious engagement with the New Testament texts that sit at the center of everything I do.
I came to academic study the way many pastors do: sideways and late. A few years into youth ministry, I hit a wall. The questions my congregation was asking, the pastoral situations I was navigating, the texts I was trying to preach: I didn’t have the tools. At Melodie’s encouragement, I enrolled in Bible college at twenty-four, not out of love for the academy but out of pastoral necessity. I finished in three and a half years with a double major and came back to Colorado to plant a church.
I enrolled in the MA in Bible program at Luther Seminary in 2024 for the same reason I had gone to Bible college two decades earlier: the questions demanded more than I had. This time, the questions were about identity, belonging, and how the Spirit moves at the boundaries of community. I am completing the degree in May 2026 with a thesis on the Holy Spirit and boundary renegotiation in the Acts of the Apostles.
Academic Focus
My research focuses on the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, their narrative theology, literary artistry, and historical relationship to Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. My thesis examines how the Holy Spirit functions in Acts to legitimate the renegotiation of ethnic and ritual boundaries, making way for Gentile inclusion. It’s the kind of question that only gets more interesting the longer you spend in a diverse congregation trying to figure out what the church is actually supposed to be.
Education
- Applying for PhD programs for New Testament for Fall 2027
- MA in Bible, Luther Seminary 2026
- BA in Bible and Pastoral Ministry, Central Bible College 2009
Beyond the Desk
My wife Melodie and I have been together since we were teenagers. We have four daughters, Julia, Sarah, Anna, and Alexa, and we live in Colorado, where we spend as much time as possible outdoors. Melodie runs. I mountain bike. We both agree that bagging 14ers is worth it.