Scott Savage, B.A. (Point Loma Nazarene University), and M.Div. (Nazarene Theological Seminary)

‘A Reflexive Approach to Christian Witness: A Theology of Social Involvement Through the Life and Writings of William Stringfellow’ (NTC), 2023.

Scott’s thesis develops what he calls a reflexive approach to Christian witness. He argues that the church in the modern era must reconceptualize its understanding of Christian social involvement given the new dynamics of (post)Christendom, secularism, social formation, and justice. However, a theology Christian social involvement must attend to certain significant theological topics such as God’s eschatological sovereignty over the outcome of history, God’s aseity, theological realism, and the church’s relation to the social conditions of the poor, marginalised, and oppressed in order to account for an understanding of involvement that does not transgress these important theological premises. He does this by pairing William Stringfellow’s typology of witness (realism, dissent, and intercession) as well as his method of doing biographical theology, with Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic social theory wherein human reflexivity features prominently, arguing that conceiving of Christian witness in terms of reflexivity, as he develops it, meets the challenge of witness in modernity.

Scott has been the Lead Pastor of Santa Monica Church of the Nazarene since April 2014. He was ordained in 2006 and has been serving in churches ever since. He is married to Katie and they have two kids, two cats, and a dog. He was born in Vista, California and lived there until he went to college at Point Loma Nazarene University where he graduated with a B.A. in Bible and Christian Ministries. He was a youth pastor at Eagle Rock Church of the Nazarene for two years before moving to Kansas City where got his Master of Divinity at Nazarene Theological Seminary. After seminary he was the Associate Pastor at Redemption Church in Kansas City for five years. He married Katie in 2003 and they have two children. He enjoys books, movies, television, music, baseball, running, and California burritos.