Co-missioners, The exhibitionism of our latest space adventurers, Messrs. Branson and Bezos—Musk perhaps to follow—prompted Mike Hoy to pen the essay we send you this week. Michael the Confessor (as we ought to call him) will drive us to Christ for the hope these others would seem to offer but …

Co-missioners, Lori Cornell reflects this week on an agony that many other Gospel-trusting parents are facing of late as their children lapse into adulthood. Lori is the long-time editor of the six-step text studies you get from Crossings every week. Read More

Co-missioners, A quick note, tongue somewhat in cheek, before we get to today’s main item: We’ve been hearing in recent weeks about the intense heat on North America’s west coast, reaching all the way up to Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. An ELCA pastor in that area posted a photo …

Co-missioners, Early in the Easter season we brought you an essay on preaching by Steve Hitchcock. Turns out that Steve had more to say. Here’s his second installment, as helpful for Gospel-minded preachers as the first one was. Read More

Co-missioners, Noticing that America’s July 4th super-holiday falls on a Sunday this year, Matt Metevelis was moved to nudge us—his fellow preachers in particular—into some better and deeper thinking about the idea of patriotism. We’re pleased to share his argument with you. Read More

Co-missioners, This week we send a smattering of items that landed recently in our editor’s “Passing Thoughts” file. Perhaps you’ll find them of interest. If so, there are more where these came from. Read More

Co-missioners, As we’ve mentioned here before, Steve Kuhl serves as priest at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in South Milwaukee. Lately he’s been sending us pieces that he writes for the saints there. Another arrived a few days ago. It has to do with revisions to worship plans as vaccination rates …

Co-missioners: With Trinity Sunday still in the rearview mirror we send along another item unearthed from our library. It’s a sketchy little piece by Ed Schroeder about an old issue in Trinitarian theology that continues to resonate in our day. Read More

Co-missioners: Last Sunday was one of the more stressful days in the church year for preachers and hearers alike. The former felt pressed to explain the inexplicable. The latter yearned to be edified and squirmed when they weren’t. Read More

Co-missioners: Our editor had a few mini-“Aha’s” this Easter. We pass them along on the chance you’ll find them useful. Read More

Co-missioners, Two weeks ago Steve Kuhl sent us a reflection he wrote for his parishioners at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in South Milwaukee. It deals with St. John’s vine-and-branches text for this year’s Fifth Sunday of Easter. Yes, that day is already behind us. Not so the days of absorbing …

Co-missioners, Messiah Lutheran in Fairview Park, Ohio, is one of the few ELCA congregations we know of that continues to celebrate Ascension Day with a festive liturgy. While musing on a sermon to preach there tonight, our editor browsed the Crossings library and ran across a fabulous telling of the …

Co-missioners, Apologies. We’re putting the cart before the horse this week. The horse is a little set of gospel gems that one of us has been gleaning from the Johannine texts of the current Easter season. The cart is an example of how it might it look when you start …

Co-missioners, Last week’s post by Matt Metevelis (“Better Medicine”) prompted Steve Albertin to submit a sermon he preached three years ago on the Gospel appointed for the Sixth Sunday of Easter in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary. A lot of us will be listening to this come May …

Co-missioners, Does the church you attend or tune into these days follow the three-year lectionary? If so, you’ll hear a lot about love over the next couple of Sundays. That’s because 1 John is the featured epistle for the current Easter season. Love—agape in Greek—is John’s big word. Read More

Co-missioners, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Thus St. John’s version of the Great Commission. We heard it in church a few days ago as we always do on the Second Sunday of Easter. Those who listened closely caught Christ our risen Lord authorizing a lavish, …

Co-missioners, We celebrated Easter four days ago. For the next several weeks our thoughts in church will be focused squarely on the new age God launched through our Lord’s resurrection. Meanwhile we continue with the rest of the world to stumble through the old age of sin and death. Comes …

Co-missioners, Do the folks who run the church you attend follow the three-year lectionary when they plan their Easter services? If so, they’ll have a choice come Sunday of which Easter Gospel they’ll give you to hear, either St. John’s or St. Mark’s. The ones who love a preaching challenge …

Co-missioners, We are all of three days away from the launch of Holy Week and its deluge of texts that constitute the heart of Christian proclamation. This Sunday we’ll hear St. Mark’s account of Jesus’ passion (Mk. 14-15). St. John’ s account will follow on Good Friday (Jn. 18-19). The …

Co-missioners, Here is one of several reasons for spending time with today’s offering: it will likely be the first time you’ve ever seen Luther’s “Heidelberg Disputation” marshalled as a resource for addressing the hot-button issue of white supremacy as a stubborn feature of American life, and of American church life …

Co-missioners, We’re in the middle of Lent today, yet we bring you a reflection on the Gospel for the Third Sunday after Epiphany. Steve Kuhl sent it our way toward the end of January when the pipeline was still choked with ruminations on the events of January 6. As it …

Co-missioners, The item we send you this week is uncharacteristically brief. It’s also plain, as down-to-earth ordinary as ordinary gets. It doesn’t sound at all like “theology.” We think it’s worth your attention anyway. Our editor calls it the finest example he’s seen of Crossings theology encapsulated in a 250-word …

Co-missioners, Our mission correspondent, Richard Gahl, returns this week with a quick missiocentric tour of the Gospel of Mark, the one that those of us who follow the Revised Common Lectionary are hearing from at church this year. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community Mission in the Gospel of Mark …

Co-missioners, This is the fifth and final installment in a sequence of posts addressing the riot in Washington D.C. on January 6. An unintended sequence, we add. One post led to the other which led to the next, all with little or no planning along the way. We babbled, as …

Co-missioners, Come Saturday it will be a month since we saw the images streaming from Washington, D.C. of things we never imagined taking place in the United States of America. The event has unleashed a Noah’s flood of commentary and reflection, of which our last three posts have been the …

Co-missioners, At the end of last week’s post our editor, Jerry Burce, promised a third installment of some unfolding reflections arising from the Capitol riot of January 6 and responses thereto. What comes your way instead this week is an interlude of sorts—more grist for that third grinding, as Jerry …

Co-missioners, This is Part II of what seems to be evolving into a three-part series by our editor on the tumult of January 6. We pray you find it of use. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community A Sermon in…

Co-missioners, We pass along the first part of an unfolding reflection by our editor. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community First Thoughts on the Sack of the Capitol by Jerome Burce The last thing anyone can need or want today…

Co-missioners, We are either a week or a day late with this post, depending on the item that grabs your eye. The day-late item is a prod to take a look—or another look—at Ed Schroeder’s “Take the Jerusalem Bypass.” Call…

Co-missioners, On this seventh day of Christmas we send along a letter that popped into our editor’s inbox on Christmas Eve. It came from Michael Hoy, the editor of two posthumously published books by Robert W. Bertram. Mike has spent…

Co-missioners, It’s Christmas Eve, a day for all of us to sit quietly with Mary and ponder the marvel of her newborn son. To that end we pass along an extended meditation by Steve Albertin. It rings some cherished Lutheran…

Co-missioners, Our editor, a working pastor and preacher, is also our contributor this week. We pass along a recent sermon of his on a Christmas text that few preachers are drawn to. God grant relief for dark December days, crackling…

Co-missioners, Matt Metevelis, remember? The hospice chaplain in Las Vegas with a side job at a little Lutheran congregation in the downtown area. We last heard from him directly at the beginning of September when he reviewed N.T. Wright’s book…

Co-missioners, Our editor, intent on grinding an axe about the season of Advent and what to make of it, rummaged in our library and found an essay he wrote on the topic some sixteen years ago.  By Ed Schroeder’s sufferance…

Co-missioners, Happy Thanksgiving! To those of you receiving and reading these words in other parts of the world, this is the ubiquitous American greeting for today, the fourth Thursday in November, commonly called Thanksgiving Day. Wikipedia ranks it as the…

Co-missioners, Election Day 2020 is behind us—and the American electorate is as divided as ever. Joe Biden may have won the popular count by almost six million votes, but Donald Trump got four million more than Barack Obama in his…

Co-missioners, We assume that even in these days of Covid 19 many of you are managing to check in at church on Sunday, if not in person then via the internet. And some of you are among the pastors tasked…

Co-missioners, This will reach you two days after the election of 2020. It’s being prepared for publication three days before the election, and the one preparing it has no idea what the outcome will be, reported trends notwithstanding. The shock…

Co-missioners, Today’s episode is the second of two extended clippings from a keynote address we heard at our Crossings conference in 2018. Aside from welcoming newcomers and introducing the conference theme, the address focused on the distinction between Law and…

Co-missioners, Lutheran congregations will celebrate the Reformation this Sunday. Or at least we hope they will. Here we think chiefly of ELCA churches and the pastors who lead them. One of the concomitants of ecumenical rapprochement is a tendency to…

Co-missioners, Steve Kuhl has been writing a lot of reflections over the past several months for his Episcopal church in South Milwaukee. Last week he shared another one with us. It speaks to a dilemma that all too many congregations…

Co-missioners, Early last month we brought you a review of N.T. Wright’s reflection on the pandemic, published this past June. The reviewer was Matt Metevelis, a hospice chaplain and parish pastor in Las Vegas. Matt is a voracious reader, as…

Co-Missioners, Bruce Modahl, editor of our quarterly newsletter, sent us a book review to share with you this week. We’re delighted to do so. A reminder that our new offering, Crossings Table Talk, launches next Tuesday at 1 p.m. Central…

Co-Missioners, Our editor weighs in this week with some thoughts designed to scrape as they’ve scraped on him of late. Before we get to that, allow us to invite you to Crossings Table Talk, a new offering conceived and organized…

Co-Missioners, Steve Kuhl, a frequent contributor of late, serves an Episcopal congregation in South Milwaukee, not all that from Kenosha, Wisconsin. He sends along a reflection he wrote for his parishioners about the recent turmoil there. He’ll provoke your thinking…

Co-Missioners, “Discover a different way of seeing and responding to the Coronavirus pandemic, an approach drawing on Scripture, Christian history, and the way of living, thinking, and praying revealed to us by Jesus.” So says the Amazon blurb about the…

Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself and he always welcomed children. Bruce Modahl enthusiastically talks about how his congregations did just that: from the children who are baptized into the the family of Christ to a refugee family…

Co-Missioners, Here’s another “golden oldie,” as its author would have called it. We found it lurking in our library. It will startle as much or more today as it did when it first saw light forty-four years ago. Is there…

Co-Missioners, Today we share what might be called an exercise in devotional theology. It comes from our editor, Jerome Burce. Back in March, when the church he serves shut down its regular operations, he started posting a daily devotion to…

Similar to the movie “The Sixth Sense”, Marcus Felde sees the Gospel everywhere. He simply can’t not see it. And we’re overjoyed that he shares a number of important memorable moments where he has felt God’s peace and love as…

Co-Missioners, We take you this week for another dip in our library, where we dredged up a twenty-nine year old article that Ed Schroeder wrote for Lutheran Women Today, an erstwhile publication of the ELCA. You’ll wonder, perhaps, why we…

Co-Missioners, Today’s offering by our mission correspondent, Richard Gahl, will introduce you to the theologian who is credited with putting the term missio Dei—the mission of God—at the center of missiological conversation over the past several decades. Peace and Joy,…

Chad Bird talks about growing up in a church that focused predominantly on the Law and the impression that ade on him. He contrasts this experience with hearing the Gospel preached in churches he has attended as an adult. Both…

Co-Missioners, We’re pleased to send you a meaty, down-to-earth reflection on one of this summer’s hot issues in the U.S. Our thanks to Steven Kuhl for thinking it through and writing it out. A reminder that thoroughly Lutheran Steve is…

Co-Missioners, In the seminary days that some of us remember, they called it “practical theology.” This was the curriculum’s how-to section, offering courses in everything that pastors were expected to do: preaching, teaching, counseling, evangelizing, managing a congregation, and the…

Chad Bird talks about growing up in a church that focused predominantly on the Law and the impression that made on him. He contrasts this experience with hearing the Gospel preached in churches he has attended as an adult. Both…

Co-Missioners, Our writer this week is Carol Braun, a former co-editor of Thursday Theology. Carol also served for a while on the Crossing Board. She was featured about a month ago in the first episode of Crossings’ latest film series,…

Co-Missioners, We send you to our library this week for another gem that’s hidden there. It’s a quick little piece. Ed Schroeder wrote it in 1975, a year into the high-risk venture called Concordia Seminary in Exile—Seminex, for short, and,…

Listen to Ben Williams as he tells how he experienced God’s judgement in a high school youth group and how his time at college and his faith set him on a path to pastoral ministry. He shares a story of…

Co-Missioners, Steven Kuhl is our writer this week. He sends along a reflection he prepared for the congregation he serves in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He submitted it under the title “Sing to the Lord: What to do when Times are…

Co-Missioners, For the third week running we send you thoughts from our editor. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community Glimpses of Easter: The Eucharist as a Visual Gift “Now we see in a mirror, dimly….” —1 Cor. 13:12 I saw…

Hear Carol Braun describe times in her life where she’s seen God’s judgment and God’s love at work: from her time in graduate school, interactions with family, and her career as a high school teacher. She shares that we all…

Co-Missioners, Our editor shares some clarification on the item we sent you last week about under-told Gospel and its present consequences. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community Law or Gospel? A Follow-up to the Post of June 11 A treasured…

Co-Missioners, Our editor speaks his mind today. With fear and trembling, he adds. Peace and Joy, The Crossings Community George Floyd as a Summons to Lutheran Repentance If anyone is in Christ—new creation! The old is gone. Look! Here is…

In the final chapter of Steve’s Faith Seeking Understanding, we take a look at fake vs real gospel. “You discover that a beautiful vase of flowers is not real. It is FAKE. It is not the real deal. There has…

  Given the current pan-demic that is wreaking suffering and havoc upon so much of the world, one of the oldest and most persistent questions that both Christians and non-Christians have asked is now acutely relevant: WHY DOES AN ALL-POWERFUL…

Co-missioners, George Floyd is dead. Our cities burn. The nation is awash in wrath, judgment, recrimination and dumbfounded dismay. Against this backdrop, we send you the sermon that Pastor Nathan Hall of the Lutheran Church of the Nativity, North Conway,…

Everyone has an Uncle Charlie in their lives, a good person who never went to church and never believed in God. What about them? Will they be saved? Ultimately, that is God’s problem and not ours. Thank God it is.…

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…

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…

Where have you seen God in your life this week? This is a familiar question asked in many churches sometimes even at the start of a sermon. The answers always focus on the pleasant and happy things of life. But…

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…

Today Steve tackles the tough subject of Christian freedom and cheap grace. As he states, one of biggest criticisms of Crossings and Luther is that both promoted the notion of CHEAP GRACE, that is “Now that you don’t have to…

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…

Now more than ever, we know people need to hear the promise of Christ crucified. In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, I hope Crossings is a source of inspiration and insight for your life and ministry. I invite you…

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…

Today Steve tells us about a different plague from a different time…or is it really that different? At the time of Luther, a terrible disease was sweeping across Europe, the Plague. Today the world is suffering under a different kind…

Listen as Steve explains his take on how the Gospel works. Why is it Good News? What is the role of faith? Luther loved colorful language sometimes crude, even gross. One of Steve’s favorites was his way of describing how…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

Listen as Steve gives a great explanation of the Crossings Method. In his words, the Crossings Method is a way to look at life, culture, film, literature, and Scripture through the lens of the distinction between Law and Gospel. It…

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…

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…

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…

Here are some of Steve Albertin’s thoughts on Law and Gospel. The “proper distinction between Law and Gospel” refers to a theological rule of thumb or interpretive insight for understanding the workings of God in the world. It asserts that…

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…

The Crossings Community is an open worldwide network of Christians dedicated to connecting the Word of God and daily life under the motto, “Crossing Life with the Promise of Christ.” What makes our approach distinctive is our commitment to a…

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…

Author Crossings Crossings is a community of welcoming, inquisitive people who want to explore how what we hear at church is useful and beneficial in our daily lives. View all posts

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…

Author Crossings Crossings is a community of welcoming, inquisitive people who want to explore how what we hear at church is useful and beneficial in our daily lives. View all posts

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…

Co-Missioners, A week and a half ago Michael Hoy sent us a reflection on the impeachment trial that ended yesterday. It still bears reading. Mike served for a time as a Crossings editor. He is also the scholar who ushered…

Author Crossings Crossings is a community of welcoming, inquisitive people who want to explore how what we hear at church is useful and beneficial in our daily lives. View all posts

Co-Missioners, On a day when our editor is still scrambling to get his wits together in the wake of this week’s Crossings conference, we send along a bit of follow-up to last week’s post on the politics of Epiphany. There…