The Crossings Blog

Co-Missioners, We’ve been hearing about America’s dwindling churches for several years now. The evidence is easy to find. The trends in your own congregation will likely provide some. Or look at your judicatory’s reports to see how any of its churches have dissolved over the past five years. Steve Kuhl serves an Episcopal congregation that is presently ...

Co-Missioners, Today is the Feast of the Ascension, the most underplayed and underappreciated occasion in the entire church year. Or so opines our editor, Jerry Burce, who trolled his files for an argument that the Gospel on this day is as thunderously good as the Gospel can get. What we send you is the better part ...

Co-Missioners, Today Steve Albertin tackles a question that many are quietly asking, and few are daring to face. Avoidance is rampant also in swathes of the church, where one would wish to find backbones sufficiently stiffened in Christ to have honest and forthright discussions about matters like this. How pleased we are to assume that all ...

Co-Missioners, From Richard Gahl comes another installment in his ongoing series on the mission of the Church. We send it along for your reflection and encouragement. Dick’s closing observations prompt us to remind you of a forthcoming series of Bread for the World webinars. We mentioned these two weeks ago. They’re scheduled for May 19 through May ...

Co-Missioners, Death is on a tear this week. A few days ago, Sherman Lee, one of Crossings’ co-executive directors, lost his father to covid-19. In the wretchedness of this hapless world, Alfred Lee is now a digit in that ever-mounting number of U. S. coronavirus victims, 60,000 and counting by yesterday’s report. The report we get ...

Co-Missioners, A few weeks ago we invited a handful of writers to reflect on the current pandemic from their particular areas of interest or expertise. Today we send the first of these. It’s a pastoral letter that Steven Kuhl sent recently to the flock he serves through St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in South Milwaukee. Steve is ...

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 ...