Denver Seminary has named Dr. Ryan Tafilowski the inaugural Dean of its newly established School of Theology, effective July 1, 2026. He will lead the School of Theology in partnership with Dr. Gregg Okesson, the seminary’s provost, who carries the academic mission as a whole.

“Ryan Tafilowski holds the hardest questions of the discipline and the plainest needs of a congregation in the same mind. That combination is rare,” said Dr. Mark Husbands, President of Denver Seminary. “The respect he carries into this deanship was earned one conversation at a time, with students and colleagues who have watched him listen before he speaks. He offers the life of the mind to the church, and the heart of a pastor to the academy.”

The deanship is a newly created office. Exercised in close partnership with the provost, the dean carries responsibility for the formation of faculty and students, the strength of the curriculum, and the school’s long-term direction.

Dr. Tafilowski has served Denver Seminary since 2017. He taught his first course as an adjunct and was hired onto the faculty full-time in 2022. He was appointed chair of the theology department in 2023. Dr. Tafilowski holds a PhD in systematic theology from the University of Edinburgh, and on the theology of work he is co-author of Worth Doing: Fallenness, Finitude, and Work in the Real World (with W. David Buschart; IVP Academic, 2025) and Faithful Work: In the Daily Grind with God and for Others (with Ross Chapman; InterVarsity Press, 2024).

His scholarship reaches beyond the theology of work into the modern German theological tradition, including the legacies of Paul Althaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, with peer-reviewed work in journals such as the Scottish Journal of Theology. Alongside his teaching he serves as lead pastor of Foothills Fellowship Church in Littleton, and in 2023 he received the seminary’s Compass Award for Excellence in Mentoring. He brings to the office a project he began on his own initiative, the Dead Preachers Society, a pilot that forms ministers in the competencies the pulpit and pastoral ministry require.