Tribute 2001 Edition

Ed Schroeder teaching Crossings (St. Louis, 1985)

With this issue we celebrate one of the fathers of Crossings, Ed Schroeder. Our celebration is a thanksgiving to God. For without Ed's work the--church? no, better say, the world--would be a poorer place.

Here follows a reminder of why we can be so grateful for Ed, written by Robin Morgan, whose path in life is itself a tribute to Ed's vitality and influence. For she first met him somewhat recently in his career, in 1989 at her first Crossings class. Since then she has gone to seminary, served until last fall as a Lutheran pastor in inner-city St. Louis and also as web-editor for Crossings. She is now in a doctoral program in historical theology at St. Louis University.

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• Tribute
  In November Ed Schroeder turned 70. This may be shocking to some of you (as aging tends to shock us all from time to time) whose lives have crossed paths with Ed's, whether it was on the farm, at Valparaiso, at Seminex or during the Crossings years. No matter when your life intersected with Ed's, one thing is sure--you haven't forgotten the encounter. No one will ever accuse Ed of shyness or an unwillingness to seize the day. His energy and enthusiasm for life and work seem to transcend the ticking of the clock. Even in retirement Ed and Marie have lived and worked in Australia, Ethiopia, Brazil, Lithuania and Indonesia. Of course, this doesn't include his usual U.S. teaching gigs and his writing for the Crossings website that reaches a global audience.

• C-R-O-S-S-I-N-G-S is for Care and Redemption Offertory, Says Schroeder, Implements Now God's Secret
  1. A new offertory collect in the Lutheran Book of Worship has the praying people saying this: "We dedicate our lives to the care and redemption of all that you [God] have made." Those two words, care and redemption, designate the twin tasks on which God sends the laity in the Christian tradition. The two terms might appear to be synonyms, two words for the same thing, but they are not.