The Crossings Blog

Thursday Theology -full listing Crossings Film Series
  • Missouri Synod / Seminex / Bethel Church In Crisis (Part I)
    Colleagues, Thirty years ago this week–July 6-13, 1973–at the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod’s national convention in New Orleans, the so-called “faculty majority” of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, some 40-plus of the professors teaching there, were declared “false teachers.” By a majority vote of 574 to 451 (56% to 44%) the LCMS delegates passed Resolution ...
  • A Crossing from Psalm 118: What Makes Those Rejects Sing?
    Today’s posting is a reprint from a Festschrift presented to Ed Schroeder when he retired as Crossings’ executive director ten years ago. We hope to post a half dozen more of these essays in the weeks ahead. The bibliographic specs are: A CROSSINGS CELEBRATION. Edited by Irmgard Koch, Robin Morgan, Sherman Lee. St Louis: Greenhorn ...
  • Timothy F. Lull – In Memoriam
    Colleagues, There were giants in the earth–also in our own days. And one more has fallen, Timothy Lull. Tim was an internationally renowned and much published Luther scholar and president of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (Berkeley, California) when he died last month at only 60 years of age. We pass on to you Richard Koenig’s sermon ...
  • ELCA Publication on Homosexuality – Short on Promise, Long on Law
    Colleagues, This week’s offering is a book review by TIMOTHY HOYER. Timothy is a graduate of Christ Seminary-Seminex. He now happily serves as pastor at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Lakewood, New York. His email address, if you want to respond to him, is gloriadei@alltel.net .Peace & Joy! The ThTh desk Faithful Conversation: Christian Perspectives on Homosexuality Edited by ...
  • Reader Response to the Wine/Wineskins of Contemporary Worship
    ThTh #261 comes from SHERMAN LEE.   Sherm is a long-time Crossings veteran, both as student and workshop facilitator.   By day he is an information technology architect for a financial services firm; by night he is husband, father of two, amateur musician, tinkerer, student of pop culture, and has a keen interest in wherever ...
  • Schroeder Summer Sabbatical
    Colleagues,Today’s ThTh posting is number 260. That is 5 times 52 Thursdays–5 full years of ThTh. I don’t remember that we missed any Thursday, but it could have been. Five full years suggest that it’s time to take a time out, especially for a guy who’s been retired for a decade already. So I propose ...
  • “Church of Joy” theology–right here in St. Louis, Part II The ELCA
    Colleagues, Last week’s posting concluded with these words:It’s not just “them” in the LCMS. It’s also us, the ELCA crowd. We’ve got “mega-church-itis” too. Remember that “-itis” = infection. It’s here in ELCA congregations in St.Louis too. SEGUE The newest ELCA church building in St. Louis is a mini-version of Community Church of Joy in Phoenix, Arizona–projection screens, ...
  • “Church of Joy” theology–right here in St. Louis
    Colleagues,The feature article on Religion in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Saturday May 10 carried this headline: SYNOD AIMS TO SPREAD FORMULA FOR SUCCESSFUL CHURCHES. Sub-head: “Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is starting a program where growing churches will serve as mentors for static churches.” Major mentor in the program is the LCMS flagship mega-church in St.Louis, ...
  • Christians in Time of War–Hitler’s Germany, Today’s America
    Colleagues, Art Preisinger’s prose has appeared here before. The ThTh postings for May 28 and November 14, 2002 came from his hand. Those two ThTh postings focused on Christians relating to the Muslim World. Art was embedded there at the time, doing a stint in Beirut (Lebanon) teaching Church History at the Near East School of ...
  • Gospel and Community Church of Joy [CCOJ], Part 2
    Colleagues, Last week’s posting on the topic above drew the most response ever for ThTh. Seven percent of our (admittedly not too huge) listserve-receivers wrote back. Here are a few of them.Some of you asked for more particulars on the CCOJ sermon. I’ll reprint the sermon outline page with fill-in-the-blanks in the worship folder: [Bracketed info ...