As I had to learn the hard way at least as far back as graduate school, there must also be another step besides the grounding in scripture, namely, an appreciation ("Tracking") of the world or at least of some "slice of life" from the world. Only then are we in a position to shoelace the two, biblical Grounding and secular Tracking, together into a Crossing. For seminarians at Concordia the temptation often was to fixate on just the first stage, "programming the pericope." For isn't that all that a preacher would need for a ready-made sermon outline? (Isn't it in Joyce's Ulysses that a dock is defined as a frustrated bridge?) One of these well-meaning seminarians later based a whole doctoral dissertation on that fallacy and then, as my colleague on a subsequent faculty, taught his seminarians to preach the six-step outline, as such. At least that is how they perceived (or misperceived) his intention. So they rebelled, finding his approach too narrow, a form of methodolatry. That is an abiding danger with Crossings.
GERMANY
During those same years at Concordia there were two long leaves of absence
in Germany. Though the writing I was assigned to do there was not meant to
deal with Crossings as such but with some controversial theological issues
in interpreting scripture, the fallout for Crossings was enormous. Another
unintended boon was the practical laboratory which Germany provided for
testing these new Crossings refinements. As a Fulbright professor, therefore
with ties to our State Department, I had to interpret to German audiences in
US embassies and consulates and to Germany's radical university students the
theology of Martin Luther King, Jr., which I did via the method of
Crossings. Also, as a civilian chaplain attached to our Department of
Defense I programmed pericopes for European military leaders, not just
chaplains but also line officers, on such biblical texts as Matthew 8, "The
Complete Centurion." (Shades of "The Church When the Boys Come Home!")
By the time the leaves were over -- there would be a third one during the Seminex years -- the Crossings
SEMINEX
Out of that class came some of the student-confessors
who in 1974 helped lead almost the whole student body and faculty into exile
as Seminex. Theirs was a confessional witness against a synod which was
silencing both Law and gospel. For that they paid dearly. If I may say so,
they were Crossings, putting their life where their faith was. When
one of them, Jim Wind, eventually managed to become ordained, Philippians 2
was the sermon text, based on (not parroting) the pericopic
program referred to above.
Not only did the old Crossings courses come along from Concordia to Seminex. These were now supplemented with related courses, like "A Theology of Work" or "America Theologically Considered," which lay experts helped me teach and which more and more lay students began to take -- at Seminex, mind you, a school traditionally reserved for clergy. (The resemblance with my dad's old Luther Institute was one which my mom of course did not fail to note.) Before long there were more and more Crossings retreats, local and out of town, bringing together clergy/seminarians with layfolk. These ventures were not inexpensive, especially since Seminex was in no position to subsidize them, so it was up to my shaky tincup to persuade donors and funding agencies like Danforth Foundation and AAL, all of them laypeople. Crossings was beginning to become an administrative preoccupation, a business, which itself is a lay calling.
Actually, before Seminex ever began or even before we had any idea of beginning it, a handful of us profs and students at Concordia Seminary had been faithless enough to fear that we alone, at most a dozen "church professionals," would be the only ones going into exile. But into exile as what? I still have the old typescript of my then wild proposal: go into exile as "Crossings." What! A little coterie of seminary-types should presume to do Crossings? Not monologically, I hope. Not without laypeople! Whatever happened to the old philosophy-of mix of