Thursday Theology: A Post-Conference Effusion

by Jerome Burce

Co-missioners,

Today our editor offers some initial reflections on last week’s Crossings conference.

Peace and Joy,
The Crossings Community

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A Post-Conference Effusion

by Jerome Burce

Conference 2025 Audience

Conference 2025 Audience

The then-pending Crossings conference I wrote about two weeks ago is now behind us. I caught a lot of happy sounds on the event’s final morning as people reflected on what they had heard and seen over the past two and a half days. I was happy too. Here are a few things that stood out in particular for me—

  1. The strength of the main presentations. These easily matched the quality of what we’ve heard at past conferences. The conference theme, you’ll recall, was “Hearing Christ: the Gospel for an Exhausted World.” This was tied to the idea of Sabbath, a concept that all four of our keynote speakers explored in one way or another.

      • The first of these, the Rev. Dr. Steve Turnbull of Upper Arlington Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio, gave us a tour de force overview of how Sabbath is presented and discussed in the canonical scriptures. This was Steve’s third appearance at a Crossings event. Once again he left his hearers wiser than they were before he spoke. His driving aim was to show how Sabbath is best understood as a “Day of [God’s] Reign.” To “remember” the Sabbath, he said, is to “confess” and “learn” and “share” the reign of God.

      • Steve was followed immediately by the Rev. Dr. Jason Brian Santos of Community Presbyterian Church in Lake City, Colorado. Armed with a Ph.D. in practical theology and some extensive experience with the Taize community in France, Jason urged us to think of Sabbath as “a day set apart to dwell with God, rest from our earthly labors, engage in joyful play, and celebrate the communal bond we have in Christ. What we do on the Sabbath “ought to reflect” these things, he said.

      • A day later the Rev. Dr. Amy Lindeman Allen, a New Testament professor at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, helped us revisit the great story at the end of Luke 10 about Jesus’ visit with the sisters Martha and Mary. In the classic telling of the story, Martha is rebuked while Mary is praised. Focus instead, said Amy, on how the sisters complement each other, the one supporting Jesus’ ministry through her service, the other benefiting from that ministry through her listening. Taken together, the sisters “can be read as two aspects of each individual’s approach to the mission of Christ.” On the one hand we are all obliged to answer the demands of the Law. On the other, we all get to enjoy the Gospel-gift of God’s rest and reconciliation in Christ.

      • Came at last the Rev. Dr. Adam Morton, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Nottingham. His topic: “Restless Life: Nightmares, Sabbath, and the End of the Law.” As with Steve Turnbull, Adam earned his M.Div. at Luther Seminary, proceeding from there to specialize not in New Testament studies but in systematic theology and philosophy. In this my first-ever hearing of him, I was dazzled by his grasp and employment of the distinction between Law and Gospel. Has anyone done a better job of describing how attempts to keep the Law are intrinsically self-defeating? To put it bluntly, the Law won’t let you keep the Sabbath it insists on and will condemn you when you try. My own teachers of yore talked about “necessitating Christ.” This is the very thing Adam did, a point driven home by the final absolution he pronounced not as a pedagogue, but as a pastor to the people he was looking at in that moment whose pressing need for Christ he had just exposed. I was moved nearly to tears. I heard others say the same.

    1. Matching the strength of these main presentations were the supplementary offerings.

      • The Rev. Dr. Steve Albertin got things started on Monday morning with a classic Crossings exploration of the overall theme: “God’s Word for Weary People,” as Steve titled it. Along the way he introduced newcomers (see below) to some of our standard Crossings terminology.

      • That afternoon Dr. Carol Braun, a third-generation participant in Crossings and a leader too since the early 2000’s, led the requisite overview of the Crossings Method with a particular focus on the newcomers who were with us. Those of us who have listened to this many times before were also refreshed.

      • Late the next morning (Tuesday) we heard from the six pastors who have recently completed three months of work with a Crossings mentor on the critical task of preaching. They were the second cohort in this new Crossings project, so generously funded by the Neeb Family Foundation. All six spoke movingly about the benefits obtained by undertaking this work.

      • Then came a final Wednesday morning session about ways in which Crossings can contribute to congregational life. Matt Metevelis, Robin Lütjohann, Cathy Lessmann, and Chris Repp had some very useful observations to offer on the subjects of grief, service, and worship in particular.

Ella Moehlman speaking

Ella Moehlman speaking

3. And some other bright spots, joys even—

      • In-person attendance at our new conference venue, the Pallottine Retreat Center in north St. Louis County, was fully subscribed. Actual daily attendance was somewhere between sixty and seventy, with still more attending online. Toward the end of the retreat some key conference organizers arranged with Pallottine’s director to accommodate 100 in-person attendees the next time we meet there, assuming we do.

      • Among the attendees were at least five people, maybe more, whom I hadn’t met before. This was their first time at a Crossings event. When I asked how they had heard about, I got answers that made me wonder whether the Holy Spirit had been stirring some things. I say this as a down-to-earth Lutheran pastor who, as a rule, doesn’t pin much on the Spirit aside from the great miracle of working faith in Christ.

      • I think I also saw a shift in the age cohorts of those attending. Gray-hairs like me were still abundant, though not quite so heavily as in years past, or so it seemed.

      • What I certainly was a generational shift in the groups that organized and ran the conference. Here I offer a special tribute to Pastor Ella Moehlman of Lisbon, North Dakota. Ella is a fairly recent graduate of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. She somehow discovered Crossings a few years ago,  and attended her first Crossings Conference in 2020.  She also attended our first post-pandemic conference in 2023, and came back for more the next year. When invited to join the conference planning team for 2025, she not only agreed but signed on as chair of the committee. This led to a noticeable and delightful freshness in the way the conference was organized and run. There was more to evening fellowship, for example—board games; whiskey tasting, of all things. Ties between participants, both old and new, were forged more firmly, I think. And because Ella also took on the role as conference moderator, there was a good-humored lightness in the air as the program unfolded. It also unfolded faithfully as one would expect. Thank you, Ella! Thanks be to God for all the others who helped to shape this as the first-ever post-Boomer Crossings conference. For the sake of the Church, God grant many more.

A final thought: if you can imagine attending a Crossings conference, make sure you do. You won’t be disappointed. Invite others to keep you company there. Next year’s is tentatively scheduled for the 11th through the 14th of January. We’ll update you as the weeks go by and things become clearer. As for the presentations we heard last week, we’ll let you know in a few months when they’re finally available for viewing on the Crossings website. You will want to see them.

JB
Roaming Shores, OH

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Author

  • Dr. Burce is a pastor Emeritus of Messiah Lutheran Church in Fairview Park, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. He began his ministry teaching Scripture and theology at a seminary in Papua New Guinea, where he had been born and raised as a child of Lutheran missionaries. He was introduced to U.S. parish ministry at Zion Lutheran Church in Southington, Connecticut. Dr. Burce received his MDiv from Christ Seminary—Seminex and his DMin from Hartford Seminary. He is president of the Crossings board and edits “Thursday Theology,” a weekly Crossings publication.

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