Archives

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  The Call and Invitation of Jesus to Discipleship in Luke's Gospel

  Vol. 51 No. 4 (2024)

  This issue, The Call and Invitation of Jesus to Discipleship in Luke's Gospel, includes a host of biblical interpreters considering how Luke's distinctive portrayal of discipleship matters and is experienced by hearers and readers today. In Luke's Gospel, after all, taking up one’s cross is a “daily” discipline (9:23). Following Jesus involves setting out without looking back, persistence in prayer, forgiveness, humility, letting go of possessions, being a neighbor to those in need, welcoming the poor, and looking out for the least among us. It means following in the footsteps of Someone who extended his life for the world. With Year C (and its focus on Luke) soon to begin, the diverse contributors to this issue invite us to consider further what discipleship looks like, what it entails, and to whom the call is extended.

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  Flourishing: Rural Communities and Land in Global Perspective

  Vol. 51 No. 3 (2024)

  This issue, Flourishing: Rural Communities and Land in Global Perspective, includes proceedings from the International Rural Churches Association quadrennial gathering in 2023 with the theme, “Flourishing: Land, People, Community.” The word flourishing was chosen with intention both as encouragement to seek out and celebrate rural realities that are flourishing, but also as aspirational to encourage work toward God’s intent for the flourishing of all God’s land and people. The issue includes the Bible study, keynote address, and a collection of articles that give snapshots of the state of rural and small-town contexts globally.

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  Christian Identity in Crisis: The Legacy of Wilhelm Loehe as Inspiration for the Church Today

  Vol. 51 No. 2 (2024)

  This is the second of two issues of Currents in Theology and Mission devoted to the papers presented at the 5th Conference of the International Loehe Society, July 2022, under the theme “Christian Identity in Crisis: The Legacy of Wilhelm Loehe as Inspiration for the Church Today.” The responses of this nineteenth-century German Lutheran pastor to the crises of his own time were both theologically informed and regularly embodied in the communal practices of spiritual care and formation, liturgy, diakonia, and mission. This kind of responsive posture—one that holds together the claims and practices at the heart of Christian identity and genuine engagement with present need for personal and social healing—remains relevant for the church today.

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  Christian Identity in Crisis: The Legacy of Wilhelm Loehe as Inspiration for the Church Today

  Vol. 51 No. 1 (2024)

  This issue of Currents in Theology and Mission—as well as the next—features papers presented at the 5th Conference of the International Loehe Society, July 2022. The Society has gathered periodically since its founding in 2005. The 2022 conference theme, “Christian Identity in Crisis,” offered space to reflect on Loehe’s theological and pastoral work in relation to crises from within and without the church of his own time. Through his many endeavors—in church and mission, liturgy and diakonia, Lutheran confession and piety—Loehe grappled with matters of Christian identity, both personal and ecclesial. The question at the horizon of interest in Loehe’s work is how to understand Loehe’s legacy to us in the face of crises to Christian identity today.

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  Jesus, Materialism, and the Women Who Teach and Preach Mark's Gospel

  Vol. 50 No. 4 (2023)

  After several essays exploring aspects of Robert Moses’ Jesus and Materialism in the Gospel of Mark, readers are invited to engage four women, two biblical scholars and two womanist preachers, as they teach and preach the Gospel of Mark.

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  Out of the Depths: Trauma, Resilience, and Faithful Response

  Vol. 50 No. 3 (2023)

  In this issue of Currents in Theology and Mission, practitioners, preachers, scholars, and professors seek to name, assess, and offer tools for ministry and faithful living amid the ongoing realities of trauma. While certainly not comprehensive in scope, authors offer insight on mass traumatic events such as natural disasters, religious trauma and spiritual abuse; individual traumatic realities such as homelessness or personal trauma recovery, moral injury; historical and cultural traumas such as racism and white supremacy, as well as trauma found and addressed in the biblical witness. While each author brings diverse insights, experiences, and expertise, they share a passion for thinking about the multi-faceted realities and impacts of trauma, even as they lean into a desire for repair and resilience.

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  Embodying the Questions

  Vol. 50 No. 2 (2023)

  This issue is devoted to remembering, celebrating, and building upon the life and teaching of the Rev. Dr. Gwen B. Sayler, Professor of Bible at Wartburg Theological Seminary and deaconess in the Lutheran Diaconal Association. 
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  Eucharist and Online Worship: Toward Extended Theological Reflection

  Vol. 50 No. 1 (2023)

  What are the most crucial theological, ecclesial, and ethical issues for leaders to consider as they reassess eucharistic practices developed during the pandemic and discern faithful ongoing practices in relation to online worship?

  With an eye toward providing a venue for public theological discourse and helping church leaders ask even more specific and probing questions, Guest Editors Erik Christensen and Jan Schnell, along with a diverse group of church leaders and scholars, reflect on emergent eucharistic practices in online spaces, raise concerns and questions about them, and articulate promise and potential known through them.

  Without determining some "right" way, these essays aid ritual leaders and scholars in reflecting on practices they have encountered, clarifying their own thoughts, and leading assemblies into local and faithful ongoing practices of Eucharist. 

   

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  Reading Matthew from the Margins: Finding Faith and Hope in Challenging Texts

  Vol. 49 No. 4 (2022)

  Can the Gospel of Matthew resonate with contemporary religious and public life despite our temporal distance from the Gospel's historical community (c. 90 CE)? Guest Editor Eunyung Lim and the scholars she invited to contribute to this issue demonstrate how, when contextualized historically and approached from various interpretive angles, the physical violence, political and economic oppression, and social prejudices that Matthew’s Gospel documents speak to the grief, pain, and lived experiences of many people in our time.  These essays aid interpreters to teach and preach this Gospel with deeper theological nuance and cultural sensitivity.  They offer fresh perspectives on Matthew for today's civic, religious, and congregational life.

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  Disability and Giftedness: One Body, Many Members

  Vol. 49 No. 3 (2022)

  "Given the multitude of individual and systemic variables that are operating, any discussion of disability in the Church requires deep listening and heroic humility. Even brief experience informs us of disabilities that are easily perceived, and disabilities that would be unnoticed by those passing by.

  "All our communities require the presence and participation of all our members in order to be most vital and effective. Our faith compels us to make sure every voice is heard. 'The love of Christ constrains us.'"

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  The World is My Parish: Festschrift for the Rev. Dr. Norma Cook Everist, Emerita Professor

  Vol. 49 No. 2 (2022)

  The issue contains a number of essays, written to honor the Rev. Dr. Norma Cook Everist, Emeria Professor. "In living out her baptismal vocation, Norma Cook Everist embodies these words from the mission statement of Wartburg Theological Seminary: 'learning leads to mission and mission informs learning.' John Wesley is known for the claim: 'I look on all the world as my parish.' From early life onward and throughout her awe-inspiring career, this sentiment can be echoed about the legacy of Norma Cook Everist: 'The world is my parish.'"

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  Faith and #BlackLivesMatter: Future Directions

  Vol. 49 No. 1 (2022)

  The set of essays offered in this volume of Currents in Theology and Mission brings a variety of perspectives to the topic of race. It is a volume that includes graduate students as well as full professors, BIPOC scholars and White scholars, as well as scholars who span the spectrum of sexual orientation. All the authors here are thus considering the #BlackLivesMatter movement as it pertains to the full flourishing of marginalized bodies of color, as well as what the church’s role is in relation to the wider societal struggle for justice for marginalized bodies.

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  Listening to God's Word: Justice and Mercy

  Vol. 48 No. 4 (2021)

  Articles relate to matters of the first use of the law and the Gospel: justice and mercy, as opposed to the second use of the law, theological or spiritual use.

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  Our Bodies are Sacred: Theology Beyond Cisgender Heterosexuality

  Vol. 48 No. 3 (2021)

  
  This issue of Currents, titled “Our Bodies are Sacred: Theology Beyond Cisgender Heterosexuality,” features a collection of articles from a diverse group of emerging scholars focusing on trans/gender and queer perspectives and approaches to theological and ethical questions that challenge binaries and open possibilities. Together, these articles offer a broad overview of queer and trans/gender approaches to theology and liberation, and they exhibit the ways that intersectionality can make the world both more messy and more liberating.

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  A Teacher's Life Lives On: Remembering Vítor Westhelle

  Vol. 48 No. 2 (2021)

  This issue of Currents, “A Teacher’s Life Lives On: Remembering Vítor Westhelle,” features a tribute to how the teaching and scholarship of Vítor Westhelle continues to influence the lives and scholarship of those who were working with him at the time of his death from cancer in May 2018 and lives on in the work of myriad other students and colleagues in the U.S. and around the world. The commemoration section contains six essays.  The first five essays reveal different ways that Vítor Westhelle has influenced the theological work of PhD students who came to LSTC from various global contexts to study with him, as well as his influence on students preparing for various forms of parish and diaconal ministry. The culminating essay in this section, written by a theological colleague, reflects on the author's own journey with cancer in the light of Vítor’s theology.  The Focus essay section of the issue consists of a practical teaching case study connecting the novel The Gunslinger to key elements of Tillich's theology, as well as a rationale for a social statement on child abuse and child protection.

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  A Breadth of Belonging: Navigating Interreligious and Intercultural Spaces

  Vol. 48 No. 1 (2021)

  Essays include papers from the 2019 World Mission Institute on the subject of "Dual Belonging" as well as other essays on the general topic of missions as it affects and impacts various communities.

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  Exploring Message and Mysteries in Mark

  Vol. 47 No. 4 (2020)

  Essays on various aspects of the Gospel of Mark.

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  The Costly Grace of Racial Reckoning and Eco-Justice

  Vol. 47 No. 3 (2020)

  Section One of this issue is composed of articles delivered at the Convocation of Teaching Theologians, July 2019, dealing with the distinction between God's unmerited grace and North America's unearned privilege. Section Two contains articles concerning the urgent environmental crisis facing humanity and our entire planet. Many of these presentations were made at the April 2020 Creation in Crisis conference.

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  Living Out and Learning From ‘Faith, Sexism, and Justice: A Call to Action’ 2019 ELCA Social Statement

  Vol. 47 No. 2 (2020)

  Over a period of seven years, a diverse national ELCA task force task force studied the many ways that sexism negatively impacts women and girls—as well as men and boys—in church and society. Ultimately the task force crafted the social statement, “Faith, Sexism, and Justice: A Call to Action.â€

  With the task force’s work now complete, the challenge before us all—ELCA lay members, staff, deacons, clergy, and bishops—is to call out the sins of sexism where we see them, live out the statement’s compelling vision of neighbor justice, and ensure the fulfillment of the abundant and equitable life that God intends for all creation.

  This issue of Currents in Theology and Mission focuses on this historic social statement through reflections, insights, and recommendations.

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  In Thanksgiving for Gordon J. Straw: The Weaving Continues

  Vol. 47 No. 1 (2020)

  In this issue of Currents in Theology and Mission, theological educators and practitioners from diverse disciplines and contexts have authored essays in thanksgiving for the theological voice and ministry of Prof. Gordon Jon Straw.  These authors reflect on the commitments Prof. Straw held dear: his Native heritage and the challenges it poses to western theology; his call to face honestly and courageously the devastation to the earth and to indigenous, enslaved, and marginalized peoples that U.S. Christians have perpetrated and perpetuated; and his dedication to the “priesthood of all believers†and the vital role of spiritual formation in theological education. It is the collective hope of all who have joined in this labor of love that Gordon’s legacy live long and prosper among us and continue in the ministries and commitments of the students he loved.

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  The Law of Love in Matthew's Gospel: God's Unrelenting Passion for Justice

  Vol. 46 No. 4 (2019)

  This issue of Currents brings together a range of voices that speak to the justice of God as illustrated in Matthew's portait of Jesus and how judgment is often a facet of that justice.

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  Reciprocating Mission

  Vol. 46 No. 3 (2019)

  Reciprocating mission involves an exchange of gifts leading to unprecedented hybridity in the shape of the Christian witness in our time. The articles in this issue provide distinctive perspectives on multiple facets of reciprocating mission.

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  Honoring Walter F. Taylor Jr.: A <em>Festschrift</em>

  Vol. 46 No. 2 (2019)

  Walter Frederick Taylor Jr. came to Trinity Lutheran Seminary in July of 1981 to serve a little more than thirty-five years as a professor of New Testament studies. He retired at the end of 2016, having impacted the lives of more than 2,000 students.This Festschrift issue contains articles contributed by grateful colleagues.
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  The Life of Faith Initiative: A Radical Paradigm Shift for Christian Mission

  Vol. 46 No. 1 (2019)

  The heart of Luther's theology was driven both by the doctrine of justification and by the power of the Gospel to set us free. This freedom becomes active in love through service to the neighbors God gives us, the people we encounter in our daily lives. This issue of Currents explores the ELCA's Life of Faith Initiative as a movement to activate the latent potential of the Reformation focus on the universal priesthood making it the primary focus of mission in a post-Christian age. The initiative insists on a radical paradigm shift, making the service of the baptized in daily life the primary focus.

  This issue is dedicated to the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Gordon Straw  + 5 January 2019

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  Salvation Revisited: Luke's Dynamic Vision for Restoration, Reconciliation, and Transformation

  Vol. 45 No. 4 (2018)

  Essays on the Gospel of Luke (Year C)