The Crossings Blog

Co-missioners, Three Sundays ago Pastor Chris Repp preached on 1 Corinthians 13 at Grace Lutheran, the congregation he serves in Champaign, Illinois. He shared his sermon with us a few days later. We couldn’t help but share it with you. Here is the antidote to every harangue you’ve ever gotten on the topic of love that ...

Co-missioners, Our guest writer today is the Rev. Kirsten Worzala Dumke. A 2012 graduate of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, Kirsten is a Board Certified Chaplain on the Palliative Care Team of the University of Wisconsin Hospital’s Carbone Cancer Center. She also serves as the pastor of Parroquia Santa Maria, a Spanish-speaking parish associated with Luther Memorial ...

Co-missioners, We hear from Paul Theiss this week on a topic as timely as timely gets. It begs for a lot of discussion—much more than it’s getting, as Paul points out. If you have reason to launch the conversation in your churchly setting, we recommend Paul’s essay as a solid starting point.

Co-missioners, Today we send you a coda to Marcus Felde’s marvelous essay on reading the Lord’s Prayer through the lenses of Law and Gospel. We got this from Matt Metevelis who quite by coincidence posted it on his personal Facebook page the day after we sent you the first part of Marcus’s essay. It seemed to ...

Co-missioners, Last week was Part 1, a preamble of sorts. This week Marcus Felde rolls up his sleeves and gets to work on the task he set for himself in last week’s final paragraph— “Condensing the into two ‘super-petitions’—first, ‘Be God to us!’ and then, ‘Be good to us!’—has helped me understand the strength of ...

Co-missioners, Our colleague, Marcus Felde, has emerged in recent years as a specialist in the theology of the Lord’s Prayer. He delivered a paper on the topic at the Crossings Conference of 2008. Seven years later he published an article in Word and World entitled “The Lord’s Prayer: Who Could Ask for Anything More?” And then there’s ...

Co-missioners, Lori Cornell, longtime editor of our Crossings text studies, reflects today on her opening months of service as Lead Pastor of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Spokane, Washington. She took a call there last summer. We thank her for the abundance of insight, both theological and pastoral, that she shares with us here. Peace and Joy, The Crossings ...

Co-missioners, We launched the recent Advent season with a startling reflection by Chris Neumann on everlasting life, a bedrock Christian promise that most all of us look forward to with delight. Chris found it terrifying. This brought a response from Bruce Martin, a longtime member of our Crossings Community and the author of many of our ...

Co-missioners, On this final Thursday in the current Advent season, we send you a challenging reflection by Karen Clapp, a member of Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest, Illinois. It’s a sequel of sorts to a presentation she made at the Crossings conference in 2020. Those remarks are available on our website in both written and audio ...

Co-missioners, Last year’s Christmas was the bleakest any of us have lived through. The pandemic was raging. Vaccines were not yet. Seniors stayed home. Their dear ones kept a distance for fear of making Grandma sick. A lot of churches were closed on Christmas Eve. Those that dared to be open kept attendees thinly spaced. The ...