The Crossings Blog

Co-missioners, We’re four weeks shy of a Sunday that will rub our faces in Matthew’s tough account of Jesus’ back-and-forth with the Canaanite woman. Today we send you an example—in advance for once—of how this text can be tapped so that it gushes with Gospel for 2023. Feel free to borrow ideas, or even better, to ...

Co-missioners, Last week Carol Braun wrestled with questions about teaching children to pray. This week Paul Jaster draws from a little-known artifact of early Reformation history to imagine how today’s parents might anchor their children in some other essentials of the faith they get to use and enjoy. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community __________________________________________________________________   Johann Agricola’s Catechism for Girls Adapted ...

Co-missioners, Carol Braun reflects again this week on the challenges of faithful parenting. As she wrestles with the question of how to encourage habits of prayer in younger children, she’ll nudge us all toward a more reckless and joyful confidence in the praying we do. Carol and her family live in the Hudson Valley. You’ll likely have ...

Co-missioners, Here is the second half of Robert Bertram’s 1968 commencement address at Concordia Senior College. Back then, had Bob already tumbled to the terminology of Diagnosis and Prognosis that he would later bequeath to Crossings? If not, he was certainly practicing what the terms describe. Last week you got an expert’s diagnosis of the way freedom ...

Co-missioners, Americans will celebrate the Fourth of July this weekend. We can’t think of a better time to send you a reflection on freedom by the late great Robert W. Bertram. Bob took this topic up fifty-five years ago in an address to the graduating class of a late, great school, Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, ...

Co-missioners, We send along a sermon Steve Albertin shared with us recently. He preached it this past May 14th at Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Carmel, Indiana, on the north side of Indianapolis. Steve will soon be wrapping up a year of service there as Interim Pastor. He has also served for many years on the Crossings ...

Co-missioners, For the past two weeks Steve Kuhl has been exploring how St. Paul thinks about God, and how this contrasts with presumptions common to much of American Christianity. Today we send along the final section of Steve’s essay. A reminder that we extracted the essay from a longer paper Steve presented in 1997 at a ...

Co-missioners, Today Steve Kuhl will plunge us into the scandals that lie at the heart of St. Paul’s thinking about God and his proclamation of Christ crucified. We can’t urge you strongly enough to take the time for a close and careful reading—all the more if the theological milieu you interact with regularly ignores the distinction ...

Co-missioners, Last week we sent you a brief exhortation by the late Robert W. Bertram to let Scripture expose the deep problem with God that every hearer is caught in, and for which Christ crucified is God’s liberating solution. This week we send you the first part of a long essay in which Steven Kuhl discusses the ...

Co-missioners, Michael Hoy has rendered enormous service over the years as chief steward of Robert W. Bertram’s legacy as a writer. Aside from ensuring that some of Bob’s work would appear posthumously in book form, he also tackled the large task of assembling a bibliography of everything Bob wrote and published over the course of his ...