The Crossings Blog

Co-Missioners, For this week we asked the Rev. Dr. Steven Albertin, a recently retired ELCA pastor, to look through his files for the Easter sermon he was most glad to have preached over his decades in the pulpit. Here it is. God grant that it shoves some Easter steel into your hearts too. Christ is risen ...

Co-Missioners, Churches across the U.S. are closed this month. Many have found ways to deliver fresh proclamations of the Gospel through livestream broadcasts. Others have not. Most if not all congregations will have people in regular attendance or more loosely on the rolls who don’t use computers, smart phones or other devices that connect them to ...

Co-Missioners, From Bruce Modahl comes this second in our brief (?) series on the covid-19 pandemic. Need we repeat? Bruce edits our quarterly newsletter. He’s also the author of The Banality of Grace, published late last June by Cascade Books. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community Hope and Meaning as the Virus Swirls by Bruce K. Modahl I know he means well, ...

Co-Missioners, We send you the first in a series of theological reflections on the pandemic that now upends our lives. Today’s writer is Steve Albertin, an ELCA pastor (recently retired), a masterful Law/Gospel theologian, and a long-time member of the Crossings Board of Directors. He is also the author and narrator of a new Crossings video ...

Co-Missioners, If my sainted teacher, Ed Schroeder, were still a denizen of this present evil age, you would likely be getting a jeremiad today about America’s refusal to repent and believe the Gospel. Ed wrote a series of these over his thirteen-plus years as founder, editor, and unflagging author of Crossings’ Thursday Theology blog. The first ...

Co-Missioners, We send along another comment by our editor on an item that snagged his eye in recent days. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community Believing is Seeing: A Comment on John 3 While working on last Sunday’s sermon about Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus (John 3), I caught something in the text I hadn’t noticed before. It’s the main verb ...

Co-Missioners, This week we share an exercise in practical, urgent, and down-to-earth theology, anchored in the word and promise of Christ—or so we hope you’ll find it to be. It’s one of what we guess are several thousand letters that pastors around the U.S. have dispatched in recent days to congregants beset with anxiety over COVID-19, ...

Co-Missioners, Our gift today is a homily for Ash Wednesday by the Rev. Dr. Bruce K. Modahl. He preached it twelve years ago at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest, Illinois. Its pertinence to Christ-confessors everywhere in 2020 will be obvious as you read. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community Learning to Beg An Ash Wednesday Homily by Rev. Dr. Bruce ...

Co-Missioners, Our editor weighs in again with a few notes on things that have lately snagged his eye—all pertinent to the mission-minded, he thinks. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community “Mixed Observations, All Brief” Transfiguration Terrors Anyone destined this coming Sunday to attend a church that uses the Revised Common Lectionary is going to hear St. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ transfiguration. ...

Co-Missioners, We send you to our library this week for another gem that lies there unnoticed—though perhaps not forgotten by those who followed Thursday Theology in the days when Ed Schroeder was its editor and main contributor. This item dates to February, 2007, the year the iPhone revolutionized the way we communicate and transact our daily ...