I-N-G-S is for In Next [year's] Gospel Stories

The Crossings Community is always looking for good gospel stories, even those emanating from the slices-of-life of people like you, our readers. If you are willing, we are able and eager to hear from you, even interview you about your life and ministry.

For now, here are a couple of gospel stories making headlines for the coming year of our Lord 2007. First, the Crossings board is planning an ambitious endeavor: an international Crossings conference, Honest-to-God Gospel for Today's Church and World. The design is to lift up the Law-Gospel hermeneutic as an intelligible, pastoral, and practical lens for engaging today's church and world. We expect this conference will be useful for everyone, from those who know little of Law/Gospel theology but would like to learn (especially about the connection between faith and daily life) to those theologians and pastors seeking enrichment.

The date has been set for January 30-31, 2007, with a pre-conference day January 29. It will be held at The Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville, Illinois (just east of the river from St. Louis, Missouri). One event planned for the pre-conference is an old-fashioned Crossings workshop, designed to teach what we so fondly call the "Crossings matrix," both "grounding" and "tracking." We hope this will help elucidate the Sabbatheologies that we send out weekly via internet.

The planning committee is working to engage speakers. Many have already agreed, including Bishop Marcus Lohrmann, Ed Schroeder, Fred Niedner (who will preach!), Robert Schultz, Jerome Burce, and several others. The conference will first explore what we mean by the Law/Gospel hermeneutic, the "Augsburg Aha" that sparked the Reformation. Then it will explore the implications of that hermeneutic for our understanding of the church and the world. In addition to keynote speakers on these topics, there will be a variety of break-out sessions to choose from in specific areas, (for example, Law and Gospel in Spiritual Care).

A conference schedule and more information will soon be posted on our Crossings website. For now, please mark you calendars: Honest-to-God Gospel for Today's Church and World, January 29-31, 2007!

Secondly, the other "good news" for next year has to do with a new book by Robert W. Bertram. In addition to being the Crossings Newsletter editor, I have been editing Bertram's manuscripts for their eventual publication. Through the assistance of Paul Rorem (Lutheran Quarterly Books editor and Benjamin B. Warfield Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Princeton Theological Seminary) and the staff at Eerdmans publishing company, we anticipate a Spring 2007 release of Bertram's A Time for Confessing and Postmodernity's CRUX: A Theology of the Cross for the Postmodern World.

It has been three year's since Bob's final crossing. So, of course, these works are being published, as they say, posthumously. Posthumous means, literally, "happening after death." I can see Bob smiling already, with an "au contraire" to quip in death's face. We all know, by faith, what that's about that. It's too good to resist. In the joy of Easter's light, a post-modern world is overturned by the (excuse the pun) "post-humorous" that is to come.

mhoy