The Crossings Blog

Colleagues, I’d like to bring this topic to closure. But Garrison Keillor says some stories do not end. So here’s a batch of responses from you readers, and some thoughts of mine about what you said. Still to pass on to you are responses from a Lutheran pastor in Singapore, another one about the 11th commandment: ...

Colleagues, Responses to ThTh 157 with its “musings and mutterings” about organized congregations –quite a number of them–have been coming in. I pass some on to you today, now and then with my comments to the response. There’s still more for a later posting. But–no surprise–responses are also coming in to last week’s item on homosexuality, ...

Colleagues, This time a review of a book on homosexuality.I’ve been asked to discuss the topic–this very Thursday evening June 28–with a Lutheran congregation in suburban Chicago. Their last speaker was Stanton Jones, one of the two authors of this book. So for my input at the meeting this evening I’ve opted to do a review ...

Colleagues, Today’s ThTh posting offers you 4 separate items under the broad rubric of “Ecclesiology.” The most important one is the Armenian item, I think. Don’t stop until you have at least gotten to that one. My own education about Armenian Christianity came primarily through my friendship with an Armenian Orthodox priest, Khoren Habeshian, whom I ...

Colleagues, The voters assembly of our congregation recently voted–with one “no” vote, I’m told (I wasn’t at the meeting)–to move ahead on a building project of nearly one million dollars to improve our physical plant. The goal is to make our building more user-friendly. That means for us who use it all the time (regular worshippers ...

Dear Folks, Most of you know me from previous work on Thursday Theology and the Crossings website, though I haven’t been around much this year. I’ve been working on my PhD in Historical Theology at St. Louis University and trying to revitalize urban ministry in the Lutheran church in St. Louis.To that end I attended an ...

Colleagues, Today’s posting is a book review. It’s Richard Lischer’s book about his pastorate in a Lutheran country church not far from us in St. Louis. Such a rural congregation was the church of my childhood, 200 miles farther north on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. So I connect to the story of New ...

Colleagues, I’d (almost) taken a vow of silence on ever mentioning CCM again in ThTh after having done so several times in the past 2 years. My own take was, and still is, that unrestricted church-life between US Lutherans and Episcopalians was indeed a good/godly thing, but that the historic episcopate , now woven into the ...

Colleagues, Tom Getman works in the Jerusalem office of “World Vision.” World Vision is one of the superstars in today’s world-wide Christian mercy ministries. Tom passed this on to some of us yesterday.Even so, Peace & Joy! Ed Schroeder Date: al Naqba Day – May 15, 2001 [Ed’s note: al Naqba, “the catastrophe” in Arabic, is the name Palestinians ...

Colleagues, Two weeks ago Marie and I were in British Columbia, Canada. Main reason was an invitation from ELCA people out in the northwest corner of the USA. They picked Victoria BC–“across the creek” from Seattle/Tacoma–as their conference venue and asked me to speak on the theme “Mission – Inside Out.” Pat Keifert was on the ...