The time is ripe for a Christian Study Center at The Ohio State University.

Carmen House Christian Study Center seeks to provide a hospitable place for the OSU community to explore deep questions about the Christian faith in relation to learning, vocation, and human flourishing. We seek to be a greenhouse for Christian spiritual formation, demonstrating the vitality and wisdom of the Christian faith for the life of the university.

We are a non-profit that intends to one day operate out of a beautiful facility on the doorstep of the university.

Wisconsin, Illinois, and even Michigan? It’s time for OSU.

Christian Study Centers are being developed at universities across the country, and now at several Big Ten campuses. We are on the cusp of being a significant resource to OSU and the campus community, but it will not come to fruition without the financial support of ministry partners.

What is a Christian Study Center?

It isn’t a traditional campus ministry, nor a campus church. It isn’t a Christian college, and it isn’t just a spot to go to study. So what is it?

  • Carmen House believes that Jesus Christ is not merely a historical figure in human history, nor merely a means to a feeling of assurance of a desired afterlife. Though it may be as radical an idea as ever, we have been convinced that God has become a human being and has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. With the apostle Paul we seek to see the preeminence of Christ in all things, including all of life at the public university (Col. 1: 17-18).

  • Carmen House seeks to contribute to learning and the pursuit of truth on campus at Ohio State. We desire to help students and faculty, no matter where they are on their spiritual journeys, to explore how their studies and their work on campus could be pursued with Christ, and for Christ. We believe the Christian story can provide a comprehensive understanding of reality that helps us find meaning in God's world.

    Carmen House seeks to host and curate programs that help students, faculty, and staff at OSU explore life's deepest questions.

  • An important ingredient to a Christian Study Centers is a physical location on the doorstep of a secular university. Learning and growth is not best accomplished as isolated individuals. Carmen House is seeking a location where Ohio State students, faculty, and staff can come together and experience the hospitality of Christ.

    Carmen House endeavors to be a hub where various campus ministries can utilize a facility for their own mission, cultivating unity in the body of Christ.

Why bother? Aren't there enough campus ministries, Christian colleges, and libraries already?

Carmen House will be different than all of those. Picture a warm, hospitable place where students and faculty will be met with humility, respect, and love as they explore deep questions on their spiritual journey.

Turn figurative bricks into physical bricks.

Come spring 2025, we will be focusing on a capital campaign in order that Carmen House Christian Study Center might secure a location and have the necessary funds to pursue our mission and vision.

In the meantime, we are still in need of additional support through our current sponsoring organization (Global Service Associates).

 FAQs

  • We are inspired by the Christian Study Center movement, and find the work of Upper House at the University of Wisconsin a beautiful model of a comparable space we hope to someday inhabit.

  • Early in the 20th Century, an Ohio State freshman named Fred Cornell decided to write the lyrics to what would later become The Ohio State University's alma mater: Carmen Ohio.

    In Spanish, "Carmen" can be translated as "hymn" or "poem." It is likely that the word "Carmen" was chosen because Cornell borrowed a tune from a Christian hymnal, the Spanish Hymn, for his adapted lyrics. In Cornell's own words:

    "The ease of singing the Spanish Hymn accounts for much of its use... Other music was considered and discharged, both original and adapted; all of us know the hymn... There is a real and lasting quality about such simple harmonies that lends dignity to the phrases."

    Today, just about every Buckeye is still familiar with the tune of Carmen Ohio, yet few us would remember its origin.

    As a Christian Hymn in many hymnals, a common set of lyrics to the Spanish Hymn would have been Psalm 25. This Psalm, including the first line of the song, prove to be filled with meaning for a Christian Study Center on the doorstep of Ohio State:

    "To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul." (Ps. 25:1 ESV)

    Our use of the name "Carmen" points to the vision that all of life, including life at the university, could be aimed at lifting up our soul to the presence of God.

    • Carmen House Christian Study Center has applied and been officially approved as a non-profit organization in the state of Ohio!

    • We have been building a board of directors, and we held our first board meeting in December of 2024.

    • Aaron Badenhop has been ordained through the EPC to provide leadership for Carmen House (an independent non-profit) while serving as Spiritual Theologian in Residence at Hope Church.

    • Carmen House will be seeking tax-exempt status at the federal level, and we hope to have that in place in 2025.

    • Come February we will be co-sponsoring events for undergrad students, grad students, and faculty featuring guest speaker and Christian psychiatrist (and Buckeye fan!) Curt Thompson, MD.

    • Come spring, we will be focusing on a capital campaign in order that Carmen House Christian Study Center might secure a location and have the necessary funds to pursue this mission and vision.

    • Carmen House has been accepted as a partner of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers.

  • Carmen House will not come to fruition without the financial support of ministry partners. To get behind this important new initiative, donate through our sponsoring organization as we launch Carmen House. Give Here

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Follow the journey from figurative bricks to the official founding of a Christian Study Center on the doorstep of OSU.