The Crossings Blog

Co-Missioners, Steve Kuhl, a frequent contributor of late, serves an Episcopal congregation in South Milwaukee, not all that from Kenosha, Wisconsin. He sends along a reflection he wrote for his parishioners about the recent turmoil there. He’ll provoke your thinking too—or so we trust. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community A letter from Steve Kuhl Dear Christian Friends, We witnessed with ...

Co-Missioners, “Discover a different way of seeing and responding to the Coronavirus pandemic, an approach drawing on Scripture, Christian history, and the way of living, thinking, and praying revealed to us by Jesus.” So says the Amazon blurb about the latest book by N.T. Wright, the world’s busiest New Testament scholar. We asked the busiest reader we ...

Co-Missioners, Here’s another “golden oldie,” as its author would have called it. We found it lurking in our library. It will startle as much or more today as it did when it first saw light forty-four years ago. Is there a one of us who has dared to think of ourselves in terms like these? To ...

Co-Missioners, Today we share what might be called an exercise in devotional theology. It comes from our editor, Jerome Burce. Back in March, when the church he serves shut down its regular operations, he started posting a daily devotion to the congregation’s Facebook page (“Messiah Lutheran Church of Fairview Park”). That’s one way of working from ...

Co-Missioners, We take you this week for another dip in our library, where we dredged up a twenty-nine year old article that Ed Schroeder wrote for Lutheran Women Today, an erstwhile publication of the ELCA. You’ll wonder, perhaps, why we bother you with it. It seems on the surface to be altogether irrelevant to the urgencies ...

Co-Missioners, Today’s offering by our mission correspondent, Richard Gahl, will introduce you to the theologian who is credited with putting the term missio Dei—the mission of God—at the center of missiological conversation over the past several decades. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community Georg Vicedom’s “The Lord’s Prayer: A Prayer for Mission” A Review by Richard Gahl Georg Vicedom’s The Mission of ...

Co-Missioners, We’re pleased to send you a meaty, down-to-earth reflection on one of this summer’s hot issues in the U.S. Our thanks to Steven Kuhl for thinking it through and writing it out. A reminder that thoroughly Lutheran Steve is the rector of St. Mark’s Church, an Episcopal congregation in South Milwaukee. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community Mask ...

Co-Missioners, In the seminary days that some of us remember, they called it “practical theology.” This was the curriculum’s how-to section, offering courses in everything that pastors were expected to do: preaching, teaching, counseling, evangelizing, managing a congregation, and the like. Some students thrived in this. Others opted for as few such classes as they could ...

Co-Missioners, Our writer this week is Carol Braun, a former co-editor of Thursday Theology. Carol also served for a while on the Crossing Board. She was featured about a month ago in the first episode of Crossings’ latest film series, “God’s Peace / God’s Justice.” To learn more of who she is and what she does ...

Co-Missioners, We send you to our library this week for another gem that’s hidden there. It’s a quick little piece. Ed Schroeder wrote it in 1975, a year into the high-risk venture called Concordia Seminary in Exile—Seminex, for short, and, soon thereafter, Christ Seminary—Seminex. No wonder that risk is the topic Ed takes up here. He ...