- Reformation-tide Spin on Law and Gospel (1)
Co-missioners,
Lutheran congregations will celebrate the Reformation this Sunday. Or at least we hope they will. Here we think chiefly of ELCA churches and the pastors who lead them. One of the concomitants of ecumenical rapprochement is a tendency to downplay the distinctiveness of one’s own tradition and witness. To the extent that Lutherans succumb to ...
- Plain(s) Theology for a Pandemic Problem
Co-missioners,
Steve Kuhl has been writing a lot of reflections over the past several months for his Episcopal church in South Milwaukee. Last week he shared another one with us. It speaks to a dilemma that all too many congregations are wrestling with at the moment. We think you’ll appreciate the care Steve takes in addressing ...
- Preach the Gospel! It’s What We Need!
Co-missioners,
Early last month we brought you a review of N.T. Wright’s reflection on the pandemic, published this past June. The reviewer was Matt Metevelis, a hospice chaplain and parish pastor in Las Vegas. Matt is a voracious reader, as we mentioned. Luther and Augustine make his heart sing. He writes a lot too, often on ...
- Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black. A Review
Co-Missioners,
Bruce Modahl, editor of our quarterly newsletter, sent us a book review to share with you this week. We’re delighted to do so.
A reminder that our new offering, Crossings Table Talk, launches next Tuesday at 1 p.m. Central Time (2 p.m. Eastern, noon Mountain, 11 a.m. Pacific). Steve Albertin will lead a discussion of Robert ...
- Offensiveness: Today’s Gospel Imperative. Its Gift Too.
Co-Missioners,
Our editor weighs in this week with some thoughts designed to scrape as they’ve scraped on him of late.
Before we get to that, allow us to invite you to Crossings Table Talk, a new offering conceived and organized by Steve Albertin and Cathy Lessmann. It’s a monthly chance to talk Gospel over Zoom with a ...
- Antiracism as the Way of the Cross
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 ...
- N.T. Wright’s “God and the Pandemic.” A Review
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 ...
- Heavenly Places? That’s You
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 ...
- The Jesus Mask
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 ...
- Ed Schroeder on Thankfulness
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 ...
