The Crossings Blog

Colleagues, Once before a thoughtful response from nephew Tim Hoyer, ELCA pastor, to these Thursday postings generated another edition of ThTh. Well, its happened again. Read on.  Cheers! Ed Tim, Two postings I have from you, each with enuf questions to exhaust the small handful of answers I have lying around the Bali parsonage these days. You ask: “What is the ...

Colleagues, Christians are 1% of the population of Bali. That’s 30K of 3 million. In that “little flock” we’ve come to know two artists, Ketut Lasia and Nyoman Darsane. These superb craftsmen do their daily work “crossing” Balinese painting and sculpture with the Christian Gospel. One of Lasia’s bas reliefs welcomes worshippers at “our” church here ...

Colleagues. After this 2-paragraph personal prolegomena, the real theology follows. [Journal entry for Aug. 12, 1999 Yesterday’s solar eclipse is followed (so tells us BBC’s “World Service”) by today’s 50th anniv. of the Geneva Conventions for conducting decent wars. I wonder about a connection. To wit, the eclipse (even total?) of what glowed in Geneva a half century ...

Colleagues, Background — In the run up to Seminex’s 25th anniversary gathering (St. Louis , June 1999) we learned of the death of Makoto Mizuno, director of another seminary in exile, this one in Japan. These folks called themselves “Aoyama Seminex” to signal their linkage with us after they were deposed from Aoyama Gakuin, a university of the ...

Colleagues, Mid-summer items on Law and Gospel– Item #1. From Tom Droege, retired ELCA pastor in Atlanta, Georgia, comes this report of something I don’t get to see at my cureent venue. Many of you on this listserve probably don’t either. So I send it on to you FYI and FYE: for your information and for your ...

Ah, the joys of cyberspace — Ed can instantly critique me even when he’s half a world away! Enjoy, Robin Ive read ThTh58, “Poetic Preaching – Part 2,” several times and I wonder– Can a recommendation for “poetic preaching . . . touching the whole person – head, heart, emotions, soul, and body” be grounded in a theology of ...

Last week I talked about an African-American preaching workshop I attended which had been given by Father Maurice Nutt, who is finishing a doctorate of ministry in preaching at the Aquinas Institute here in St. Louis. I talked about the significance of poetic language in proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ, especially at this ...

A couple of weeks ago I was part of a preaching workshop called “Preaching in the African-American Catholic Setting for Non-African Americans.” It was taught by Maurice Nutt, an African-American priest finishing up his DMin in preaching at the Aquinas Institute here in St. Louis. If I were to sum up what I learned in a ...

Here’s a book review Ed did during his time in Australia. Book Review for Lutheran Theological Journal (Adelaide, S. Australia) Tony Kelly is an Australian Roman Catholic, a member of the Redemptorist order. In this proposal for an expanding theology, we have his blueprint for making connections between Christian theology and today’s ...

Colleagues, Three days hence Marie and I, God willing, fly off to Indonesia for my three-month stint as pastor in the English-language Christian congregation in Bali. We hope to have Email access, but at present details are fuzzy. If you need to know, consult ThTh co-host Robin Morgan. She’ll know as soon as we know. Should ...