The Crossings Blog

Thursday Theology -full listing Crossings Film Series
  • A Review of Richard Lischer’s The End of Words
    Co-missioners, Today’s contribution is about preaching. It comes in the form of a book review by Bruce Modahl for which a bit of background might be helpful. In 1871 Yale Divinity School inaugurated an annual series of lectures on preaching named after a famous Yale alumnus, Lyman Beecher. Beecher was one of America’s superstar Protestant clerics in ...
  • Remembering Carl F. Schalk—Composer, Teacher, Friend
    Co-missioners, Reformation Day is three days hence, and on a Sunday for once. Lutherans will celebrate, or so one hopes. Will the music be robust and daring, pandemic strictures notwithstanding? One hopes for that too. Lutherans have a deep tradition of singing the Gospel, and often better than they preach it. Here the credit goes to ...
  • Luke’s Gospel Through a Systematician’s Lens
    Co-missioners, This week we send you another a classic from the Crossings’ library. Going forward we plan to do this at least once a quarter. Today’s item was written by Ed Schroeder in 1976 and originally published in Currents in Theology and Mission, launched two years earlier as the theological journal of Christ Seminary—Seminex. (Today it ...
  • Marriage and the Hard Heart
    Co-missioners, Our editor, Jerry Burce, is still the full-time pastor he was when took up with Crossings two decades ago. Much of his theological work spills out in the sermons he preaches at Messiah Lutheran Church in Fairview Park, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Here’s one from the Sunday before last. We pass it along with ...
  • Justification is Not the Gospel?
    Co-missioners, In recent decades a group of New Testament scholars have set lots of Protestant teeth on edge with a so-called “new perspective on Paul.” They argue among other things that the 16th century reformers skewed Paul’s gospel by equating it with his teaching on “justification by faith.”
  • What the Pandemic is Teaching Me about Church
    Co-missioners, Carol Braun reflects today on how the pandemic has driven changes in the way she thinks about church and appreciates it too. We think you’ll want to share this widely. We pray that you will.
  • Finding Gospel in Mark’s Gospel
    Co-missioners, So you thought we had it tough at church last month when we struggled through five successive Sundays of John 6? Comes suddenly another challenge for preachers and listeners alike: a stretch of texts from Mark 8 through 10 that leave us wondering where the good news is.
  • Getting Sermons to Stick
    Co-missioners, Fourteen months ago we published an essay by Pr. Paul Theiss (ELCA, retired) about the potential of small group ministry to help churches rebound from the pandemic. Today Paul reflects on an older and perennial plague that continues to afflict the Church.
  • From Prophecy to Promise
    Co-missioners, Matt Metevelis reflects today on current anxieties about the future of the church and its institutions. As you’ll notice in the opening paragraph of his essay, there couldn’t be a better day than this for getting it to you. God grant encouragement as you read.
  • Lust, Trust, and Scrambled Eggs
    Co-missioners, Our editor reflects this week on a pressing issue of our day. Seriously! Don’t let the opening paragraphs fool you.