Student Life
Our community shares meals together, worships together, grows together, laments together, and changes together. We’re large enough to find friends different from you, who will challenge your thinking and assumptions, and we’re small enough to learn everyone’s name.
Community
Trinity is a dynamic community where students and their families are known. Some of our students are right out of college; some are further along in their careers; and others are simply lifelong learners, picking up classes here and there as a means of staying sharp and digging deeper. Students move here from across the country (or other countries) and across the state. Others commute from a different side of Columbus. Many are part of the ELCA. An increasing number of students find their home in other branches of the Church.
Student Life Opportunities
Explore Student Life OpportunitiesWorship Life
Worship stands at the center of the day’s activities, and worship services take place mid-morning, when most students and faculty are on campus. We gather for worship at 10:00 am each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday when classes are in session. Usually we meet in Schenk Chapel or the Gloria Dei Worship Center. The Tuesday 10:00am service is a 55-minute Eucharist (Lord’s Supper). Monday and Thursday services are normally 20-25 minutes in length. On Wednesdays, we join the larger University for service convened by the Kerns Center for Faith and Learning. Our worship times together may be a service of Morning Prayer, a Service of the Word with preaching, a contemplative service such as Taizé, or something else entirely.
Faculty and students share in the responsibility of planning and conducting daily worship. Our heritage invites us to employ traditional forms of the historic liturgy and lean into the newness of contemporary expressions of worship. The seminary is proud to host the Seminary Choir and the Liturgical Choir, which are open to students, faculty, staff, partners, and children.
Several other worship opportunities also regularly occur on campus. Embrace Ministries and the Kerns Religious Life Center of Capital University host students, faculty, and staff at 12:30pm on Mondays for 30-minutes of Mindfulness and Meditation in Stegemoeller Lounge. Also, every Thursday at 9:09pm, Embrace hosts Candlelight Worship, a band-led event centered around praise, prayer, peaching, and conversation.
Housing
Many of Trinity’s students relocate to the Columbus-area for graduate school, and moving is a lot-- no matter how far or short the distance may be! Helping our students make themselves at home is important to us.
Many Trinity students opt to live on-campus, either in an apartment or in intentional-living community houses. Availability changes year-to-year, pending on both community interest and room availability. In addition to on-campus options, students procure off-campus options, including some who commute from communities across Central Ohio.
Some of our students reside in the Intentional Living House (IHOP), which is an important anchor of community life. Not only do students living in IHOP support one another as they navigate seminary, they also host our weekly Common Meal, a weekly dinner, and other events.
Living in Columbus
The seminary sits at the corner of Main and College in downtown Bexley, a historic, small town community. It’s only about three miles to downtown Columbus, the fourteenth largest city in the US. Because of the size and diversity of our city, seminary students have the opportunity to connect with a near endless list of community, non-profit, and social service organizations.
Columbus provides ample opportunity to learn from, listen to, and serve a burgeoning refugee population; unpack complex structural ills through participation in a timely hearing or rally at the Ohio Statehouse; and stand behind and alongside faithful community leaders who have carried justice work forward in the region for the last decades.
Drive a few miles outside of the city and you’ll find the heart of rural America, places where country churches, summer parades, and Little League baseball are the talk of the town.
Students are encouraged to discover, explore, and take part in cultural and community life that is different from where they grew up and what they are used to. Central Ohio has a lot to offer!