The Crossings Blog

Co-Missioners, Bruce Modahl is the editor of our quarterly Crossings newsletter. He is also an avid reader and cultural observer who keeps his eye peeled for theological themes in what others might regard as strictly secular material. He recently signed on as a regular essayist for Thursday Theology, with the specific assignment of passing along what ...

Co-Missioners, Our editor is also your writer this week. We leave it to him to let you know what you’re in for. Peace and Joy, The Crossing Community January 2019- The classic calendar of the Western Church invites those who follow it spend the first Sunday after Epiphany reflecting on the Baptism of our Lord. That’s set to happen three ...

Co-Missioners, A month ago, we posted the sermon that the Rev. Lori Cornell, editor of our “Sabbatheology” text study series, heard at her ordination on December 5, 1993. Today we pass along Lori’s reflections on twenty-five years of responding to the charge she received that day. As fellow stewards of the “the Word Jesus” you’ll find ...

Co-Missioners, A formal liturgist calls it “The Nativity of our Lord.” The rest of us say “Christmas.” Either way, it’s just around the corner. With this in mind we bring you a sermon that Steve Albertin preached on a recent Christmas Eve at Christ Lutheran Church in a suburb of Indianapolis called Zionsville. Steve, a longtime ...

Co-Missioners, Today we introduce you, in some cases again, to the Rev. Richard Gahl of Westlake, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Dick is a good friend of Crossings. He was a featured speaker at our conference in 2010 and in the years since has published a couple of essays through Thursday Theology. He spent his active ...

Co-Missioners, This coming Sunday, the Second of Advent, will feature St. Luke’s introduction to the ministry of John the Baptist (Lk. 3:1-6). In contrast to his co-evangelists, Luke kickstarts his account with a dramatic rollcall of regional potentates. His point, at least in part, is to trumpet John’s ministry as an event of monumental significance in ...

Getting real about sin on Reformation Sunday

I. Colleagues, I know just enough Greek to be dangerous. On the one hand, when I browse a text in a Greek New Testament I can spot angles that translations obscure. On the other, I can’t vouch altogether for the reliability of the things I seem to be looking at. The danger enters in when I start ...

Colleagues, Some weeks ago I met a young woman who had just earned a master’s degree at a local university in the technicalities required to earn a living as a translator. She had grown up in Switzerland speaking German and came to the U.S. as a college student. Her conversational English was impeccable. So was her ...

The Hallmark Channel would like to get its hands on Stefan and Cindy Munker’s love story for one of its movies. Stefan, a native of Fuerth, Germany, was a theology student at the University of Munich when he left to study for a year at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, PA (now United Seminary) ...